Betting the house

Another out-of-town gig this week meant another few hours idly chatting with comics positioned on different steps on the comedy career ladder. Late on the drive home a particular question crystalised: -

Under what circumstances would you decline the opportunity to appear in a pilot for a TV comedy?

Unsurprisingly, popular wisdom's answer to this is 'never'.  For the vast majority of comics anywhere in the world, television is the ultimate goal if not the sole reason for taking up stand-up in the first place.  Why would anyone ever decline such an opportunity?

Well, because most TV pilots are horrible. Often career-limitingly so.  The shows that make it through to series often aren't much better.  Ridiculous production deadlines, poor decision-making and inexperienced directors all conspire against the first-time writer-performer. In an industry as absurdly fixated on novelty, you don't get too many failures as a fresh-faced new talent before your face is no longer fresh and the talent that got into the room in the first place gets called into question.

Holding out for the 'right' project takes a combination of strategic nous (is this the right idea backed by the right team?) and sheer nerve (can I survive financially as a jobbing comic until that right project comes my way?): -

Under what circumstances would you accept the opportunity to appear in a pilot for a TV comedy?

A serious and talented Australian actor I know has a great response to this.  Real estate.  She'd sign onto absolutely any project (except pornography) that would put her within five years of owning property.  The contract itself didn't have to match the purchase price but it had to amount to a deposit sizable enough to make her five-year plan a realistic one.  She worked out that property ownership was the one thing that assuaged the fears of her thoroughly middle class parents.  Achieving a permanent roof over her head put her in a place where a lot of other questions stopped being asked.

To her, this was success.

The caveat here was that there was a well-paid TV job at the beginning of it all; she wasn't so naive as to attempt to service a mortgage based solely on the proceeds of her live performance. That way lies madness.

You're the 'hot new thing' for such a short time in a long career.  But if you have sufficient talent (and sufficient belief in that talent) then you have more choice over the timing of that short time than you perhaps realise.  If you make that horrible choice then at least be able to look around your own kitchen and think, "Hey, it bought me this."