pastfuturebrett
@pastfuturebrett
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screenwriter from the deep south. writing for/about poor and working-class people. stubbornly optimistic anti-capitalist. rep: Sovereign Talent Group
New Orleans, LA
Joined June 2023
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Writers friends who were raised poor or working class: here’s some lessons from my ten years of trying. Would love to hear yours.
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1) you have to be an autodidact. When you come from nothing, there’s nobody waiting to be your mentor, to take you under their wing and show you the way. You have to teach yourself, which involves a lot of failure and a fair amount of embarrassment.
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4) You will always feel behind. You see 23 year olds playing Sundance and winning Cannes. You look up writers on IMDB and it seems like everyone was in a room by 30. But their path is not your path. Usually, they had access to resources, mentors, opportunities much earlier…
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3) Your upbringing makes you an alien in college, in Hollywood, in most art circles. The fact of the matter is that most people making stuff, and basically all the people deciding what gets made, come from means. That’s okay. It’s part of your voice, your story. Hold it tight.
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5) Being a writer from the working class is a gift when you make it, because that mystical “audience” every studio is trying to find—that’s your mom, your coworkers at the grocery store, your friends. You understand them better than the execs ever will.
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2) You don’t need to move to LA or New York (yet). I wish someone had told me this when I was 23. I moved with $500 in my pocket and I struggled hard, every day, for years. I was so busy juggling multiple jobs that I had little time or energy for my creative pursuits.
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4 cont’d) … You didn’t even realize writing could be a job until you were their age. Don’t let it dishearten you. It takes time and you’ll get there if you keep scraping.
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5 cont’d) So what makes you special is in a sense that you are not special. Most Americans, most humans, live hand to mouth. They struggle like you struggle. Mine your suffering, cultivate stubborn hope, be indignant when it’s productive.
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7) But to you, it can be fuel. This is what I mean about productive indignation. You see the way the game is rigged against you. If you fall into self-pity, you’re done. You’ve got to believe, stupidly, that you are the exception. You have to get mad, work harder.
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17) You are good enough. You won’t feel like it hardly ever. Most days you will have doubt. Some days that doubt is crushing. But that’s okay. Like my mom says: you’re writing your story, honey. And when you break through it’s gonna be so sweet.
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6) People from wealthy backgrounds will sometimes hold your background against you. It makes them uncomfortable. Don’t expect pity and don’t expect sympathy because you won’t get it. At best, it is amusing to them. Like tv.
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2) cont’d… I managed to make some things and write some things, but it came at the expense of my mental health and my relationships. LA is a networking town, and it helps to be there. But if I could do it over again I would have waited until I had honed my craft to move.
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8) The best job to have in the meantime is any job you can leave at the door. You might get offered a promotion if you work hard, and it’s tempting because you’re so poor, but that’s a trap. I’ve done it. Get comfortable with the bare minimum. Let your work sustain and drive you.
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9) You don’t have to run up credit card bills at bars to network. Go to film screenings. Talk to anyone who makes something you like. Find people at your level and ask them to grab a coffee. Offer help now and receive help later.
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14) Encourage your friends, your family, your poor and struggling peers, to follow their dreams. Tell them you believe in them. Because you’re also talking to yourself.
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13) Hold onto your gratitude, your amazement. No one you know has ever done something like this, probably. It’s a dream, you’re making movies. When you get into rooms, that wonderment is infectious. It reminds the weary and jaded why they’re here. They’ll love you for that.
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10) Don’t pay attention to trends or fads. You might think you can find a foothold that way, but that stuff changes so fast that you’re already behind by the time you’re noticing it. Just make stuff you like. Have fun. Put your heart in it, truly.
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11) You can eat tofu every day without health issues. It is versatile and protein-dense and cheaper than just about anything else.
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12) At some point, you will ask yourself, could I do something else and be happy? If yes, do that. If no, back to work.
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15) Keep friends outside of film. Find the beauty and excitement in their lives, their dreams, even if they’re different than yours. It’ll make you a better writer, but more importantly a better person.
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16) The value and/or meaning of any pursuit is directly related to how difficult that thing is to achieve. This is hard, which makes it meaningful. Isn’t it beautiful to want something so much you’re willing to suffer this much for it? Gratitude gratitude gratitude.
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So heartened to see how many poor and working class writers there are out there. Here’s a little thread to introduce myself, would love to hear from y’all too!🧵
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@zhuphilia
There are two kinds of people who love M Oliver's poetry: those whose lives have destructed so fantastically as to deliver them back to a place of simple amazement at the miracle of life, and those who don't really read poetry. I'm in the former camp.
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The piece of the
@dbessner
's "death of Hollywood" article that I think hasn't gotten enough attention is the observation that despite the recent-ish attempts to promote diversity in writer's rooms, poor and working class writers have been entirely left out. (Short 🧵, probably)
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Writers need to have more fun. Everyone does, but writers especially. Y’all (we) take everything so seriously, even comedy. Do shit FOR FUN and no other reason. Just bc you like it. Not every single moment of your life needs to be either productive or anxious about unproductivity
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A lot of writers seems to think finding an agent or manager will solve all their problems and catapult them to success, so that’s where they put their energy. But it doesn’t work like that. You have to make your own momentum.
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@dbessner
Striving for diversity without considerations of class then create a monoculture of affluence. As the wealth inequality in America widens, the purveyors of entertainment and culture are increasingly disconnected from the majority audience (poor & working-class people).
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I've been having a lot of conversations lately with friends who are waking up to the bullshit of capitalism and its iron grip on their lives but are struggling to make changes to their consumption. A couple practical tips for budding anti-capitalists, probably a 🧵 /1
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Did not expect that thread to resonate like it did. Class solidarity! Social media makes me anxious and also preys on my (recently diagnosed) ADHD but would love to connect with y’all in the old fashioned fleshsuit way. Hit me up! Or don’t; I’m rooting for you either way.
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Marched with the WGA all summer. Got lucky and met an agent. Got even luckier that she really liked me. Signed a deal a couple months after the writer’s strike ended. That’s my story up to now. Thanks for tuning in.
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@theiachatelle
Manufacturing consent requires exactly this: that the educated class inherit the responsibility of maintaining and perpetuating the false narrative of American moral authority
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@SHW508
Oh man, the way I am constantly on guard for fear of outing the gaps in my knowledge or my own ignorance about certain things. Yeah, def best to keep quiet until certain.
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@dbessner
I learned from a young age that my day-to-day life resembled my poor black friends' WAY MORE than it resembled the more affluent white kids' in my town, and further bore almost zero resemblance to affluent people of any kind in other communities, regardless of ethnic identity.
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@TulikaBose_
What I’ve found is that classism is socially acceptable among liberals (despite the fact that POC are historically economically disadvantaged and therefore more likely, at least statistically, to be poor). Liberals use nicer rhetoric but they’re not morally superior
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@dbessner
I've thought a lot about this, and about how contemporary politics urges people to align themselves based on identity, rather than values or class. Obviously, diversity is good-in writers' rooms, academia, elsewhere. But growing up as a poor white kid in a majority-black town...
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Increasingly disturbed by the # of ppl I see online (with whom I’m mostly aligned) getting absolutely fucking irate at anyone who does anything fun or frivolous bc “what do we have to celebrate in America?” Like come on fam, joy is a rebellious act
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The most shocking thing I learned while “networking” in Los Angeles is that people were orders of magnitude more interested in my job at Trader Joe’s than in the dozen un-produced scripts in my backpack. Having a job is, like, so in
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@dbessner
To argue otherwise is to suggest that minority groups are a monolith, and I can tell you, my hometown friends from Macon, GA. have little in common w the people of the same ethnic backgrounds I met in art circles in LA, or during my brief stint at an expensive liberal arts uni.
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Working on a pitch deck and losing my mind a little. It's wild that writers are also expected to be professional-level graphic designers (and salespeople), as if the skill of building worlds and people out of abstract symbols isn't enough to keep you busy for a lifetime.
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@dbessner
Frankly it's offensive to suggest that a person who grew up in an affluent suburb and graduated from an exorbitantly priced university should speak for them because their skin is of the same tone. Which is not to say that there aren't some shared experiences.
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Levels of trauma
Lvl1- bitter asshole
Lvl2- recluse
Lvl3- has a niche hobby (i.e. building foam puppets)
Lvl 4- has read Body Keeps the Score
Lvl 5- meds don’t work on them
Lvl 6- commits life to the service of others
Lvl 7- born again Christian
Lvl 8- stand up comedian
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@dbessner
But simply to suggest that class is also a factor which we don't consider, and in not considering it we are not only hurting poor white artists, but poor black, brown, and indigenous ones as well.
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Not to open a whole can of worms here but I sorta feel like the way we critique, teach, study, and evaluate writing is necessarily limiting and often not conducive to the creation of really powerful, transformative, cathartic work.
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@dbessner
where the promise to "meet 100% of demonstrated need" no longer applies, even if accepted. The thing is, I met dozens of students when I was there, and virtually all were very clearly affluent, even the ones of color. This is the problem. Diversity is not a be-all end-all. /end
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“Write what you like” is not a guarantor of success but rather a way of saying, the odds are slim no matter what, so you might as well write shit you love and have fun doing it bc in the short term all you’ve got is the enjoyment of the work to sustain you
honestly, my biggest publishing fear is that the "write the book you want to read" and "don't write to trends" pieces of advice are both lies, and we won't know better until we follow those suggestions and never get an agent.
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If you don’t pour a little water into the marinara jar and then shake it to release the last few dregs of pasta sauce we would probably not be friends
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Once had an industry kid tell me I “shouldn’t make being poor such a big part of [my] identity.” Like, sorry fam, maybe if I could’ve afforded robotics summer camp or private oboe lessons I’d have something else to hang my hat on.
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How late-stage capitalism created and benefits from the Loneliness Epidemic: a 🧵
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@dbessner
Admissions was very candid in telling me that I had been preliminarily accepted, but that my economic position would require them to offer me a total scholarship. Because I was white, and did not add to their diversity statistics, I was moved to the waitlist..
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For two years I have been typing my screenplays on a laptop with a broken ‘A’ key. I told my co-writer this and she screamed. “That’ll be a fun tidbit for the presser when this show sells.”
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Last year I quite caffeine cold turkey and for 8 months literally thought I was developing schizophrenia 0/10 do not recommend
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My dad always dreamed of being a racecar driver. When I was 9, he bought a shitty old camaro body with no engine and towed it home. Mom was incensed: what kind of midlife crisis is this?
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My name is Brett. I was born in Juliette, GA (of Fried Green Tomatoes fame) in a tiny little trailer. I moved to Macon, GA at 7 and grew up there. It’s a fairly typical failing mid-size Southern city. At one point it had the highest # of churches and violent crimes per capita.
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If you’re feeling hopeless about the g*n*c*de, the state of American politics, the climate crisis, or other huge, seemingly insurmountable issues, please: find some way to invest yourself in your immediate community. Remind yourself that your efforts can have an impact. 1/
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Non-writer friends: before you buy the writer in your life a notebook/journal for some special occasion, ask their preference. Writers are picky about this shit. I’m left-handed so I only do spiral-bound, and I hate lines. I’ve got a stack of about 40 notebooks I’ll never use.
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Finally got reasonably financially secure. New Orleans is cheap, and production jobs pay decently. Figured out a work-life balance, which made me happier, which, again, made my writing better. Started going back to LA for spells of time, this time more prepared.
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My mom had her first kid at 16 and taught herself how to cut hair. My dad was a construction worker. We had a big, weird family with a lot of problems. Reading was how I dissociated. Writing was how I processed.
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I managed to get a full ride to a fancy liberal arts college. I decided I’d try to go into Human Rights Law. But I got to college and only lasted a few weeks. It fucked with my psyche to be surrounded by people with such different life experiences. I felt like an alien.
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I’m gonna sound like a boomer here but I really hate how titles like “influencer” and “content creator” degrade the purpose and value of art, which was always meant to be a conduit between two human souls
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Anybody got any tips on breaking into the Generational Wealth industry? Feel like it might open a lot of doors for me.
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Got pretty drunk on my date last night and definitely overstated my hair cutting ability but she let me give her bangs with a pair of dull kitchen scissors and then we fell asleep with no funny business and who said romance is dead
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Wrote this Anti-Capitalist Filmmaking Manifesto a couple years about the ethics of making low-budget movies, mostly as a letter to myself. Sharing here in case anyone is interested.
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When you do this enough, you realize how self-perpetuating the capitalist system is. We are in a constant loop of burning out, and then purchasing luxuries and conveniences to offset the exhaustion. We want to own our time but we're caught in a trap. /8
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No one in my family had ever gone to college. I was a smart kid and I wanted desperately to get out. I applied to some colleges out of high school, but couldn’t afford to go. I took a year off and worked for an NGO, lived with some incredible activists and North Korean refugees.
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Hitting rock bottom was the best thing that ever happened to me. It allowed me to start from the ground floor and build the life I wanted, instead of the one that was expected of me.
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@dbessner
I'd flown out, slept for two nights on the street, and had an incredible interview. When I was waitlisted, I was bummed. My interviewer reached out to say that they had given me a glowing, forceful review and were incensed. So I reached out to admissions.
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Got therapy, finally. Started dealing with my shit. Leaned into my community. Started healing from a lot of trauma (it’s a lifelong process, of course) which made me kinder, more patient, more stable. My writing got better. So much better.
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The pandemic gave me space to clear my head. I found community. Started working professionally on bigger sets and learned how things were done. Went from PA to AC to Lamp Op to gaffing and DPing. Met the most incredible community of filmmakers and artists and humans.
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I started writing seriously. Reading books, teaching myself how to work a camera, how to edit. Had some friends in bands ask me to do music videos. Got hired to ride around in tour vans across the country and make little videos for them.
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Ever notice nobody will call it a recession until the corporations are losing money?
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My friends and I created a game where you write down the titles of the first 5 recommended Youtube videos on your page and put them in a hat. Then you pull them one by one and guess whose is whose. It’s a great way to find out who the psycho in the friend group is.
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Love this. I think we also don't talk enough about that almost-30 crisis. You start to sense your mortality, the passage of time. You do the math--if you want a family, you better start soon. But also you feel so far from everything you've been working towards... (cont'd)
When I was younger, I didn't understand why so many people have a crisis when they enter middle age.
But now I'm middle-aged and I have seen friends completely wreck their own lives
Here's why it happens-
Middle age is when all the decisions you made start really playing out
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So I left, to the heartbreak and dismay of everyone in my life who believed in my potential. I moved back to Macon, dejected. So I made a feature at 19 with a few hundred bucks I earned at Starbucks. It was terrible, but it was the first time I’d ever felt alive.
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@dbessner
A story I don't often share, partly because it I worry that it will incite the wrong kinds of conversation or backlash, but which pertains to this issue, is that I was waitlisted from [Redacted], a prestigious, expensive university at 18 which promised to meet 100% of need.
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Being an anti-capitalist doesnt mean not spending money or not having an iPhone. You dont have to eat from the dumpster behind Trader Joe's (though there's lots of very good, unopened food in there). It's about valuing your time more highly than your employers are willing to. /11
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@frecklysoprano1
Honestly, I’ve spent the last several years of my life trying to unlearn certain things LA instilled in me. If I have any advice, it’s try to find a community that holds your values outside of “the industry.” Bc the industry can pull you away from yourself.
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Today I wrote FINAL on a draft and meant it. Over a year of revisions, pitch decks, feedback, conversations, heartwrenching therapy sessions with my writing partner, etc. and now it’s finally ready to share widely. No telling if anyone will love it like we do, but it feels good.
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Started a DIY Collective called “Nobody’s Empire” with some friends. We pooled our resources to make short films and hosted premieres in our studio apartments.
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The regressive idea of Southerners (hicks, hillbillies, rednecks) held by people I meet in LA/NYC/PDX/other large liberal enclaves seems to totally omit the fact that the South is the only region in America that is majority black, and it's not even close.
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How many hours of my life does this sandwich cost me? About one hour. How many hours for these shoes? About three. This simple reframe changes the way I think about spending money, because dollar amounts are abstract but I know how valuable an hour is to me. /5
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Remember when our President announced coolly, over ice cream, that a ceasefire should happen by Monday? How many Mondays ago was that? How many have died since?
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I've talked a little about dropping out of college, but the truth is I did not drop out; I was kicked out by administrators who weaponized my poverty and mental illness against me. This happens all the time to poor people, and I think it's time to have a conversation about it. 🧵
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Got out of an unhealthy relationship which had followed me from Nashville. Couldn’t afford rent. I moved into an artist commune—30 beds and 2 showers. Slept in a pod. Met some incredible people. Made more movies. Kept writing, every day. Up at 6am no matter what.
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@baddestmamajama
Totally agree. Any attempt to critique art based on some arbitrary objective criteria necessarily diminishes the impact and misses the point. It also leads to sterile homogenization of work. You can see this in the way screenplays are evaluated.
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Quick little 🧵 about some recent lessons I’m learning about compromising your work for marketability purposes…
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By learning to make do with less, to accept sacrifices, we earn ourselves time. This opens doors to rethink our relationship to work. How can we spend less time indentured to an employer and more time liberated to be in community with each other? /9
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But also maybe there are purchases that really do add value to your life, and that's okay. It doesn't mean you can't buy things, just that you understand that you're paying not with money, but time. /end
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It's an hour I can spend writing, or sitting under a tree reading, or being in conversation with friends, riding my bike, whatever. There's never enough time. So I start there. If I'm okay eating beans and rice for dinner instead of ordering, that's two hours I can afford... /6
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Is there a word for when a piece of music, line in a poem, or scene in a film crawls inside of you and sets all your nerve endings aflame for a moment, like getting swallowed up in a wave, waking you from the dissociative state that has become an accidental default?
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I never thought I’d like Mardi Gras but there’s something really special about seeing a city brim-full of people expressing radical joy and sharing space together, in defiance of all the fucked up shit that usually gets us down
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There's a poetry to this life. There's a way that sacrifice brings us beauty delayed that in the moment is unimaginable. These are lessons I'm still learning. Stories I'm still trying to figure out how to tell.
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Forged my eye prescription with a Google docs template for nearly a decade because I didn’t have insurance but now I can SEE (thanks
@iatse
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In 2017 I moved to LA with $500 in my bank account, no car, no job, just a bunch of scripts. I saw a Help Wanted sign at Trader Joe’s on 3rd and La Brea. Got the job. Met some people who wanted to make some things.
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Took a manager job at Trader Joe’s. Took a manager job at the commune. Didn’t sleep, just worked. And wrote. Eventually burned myself out. I moved to New Orleans on a whim a week before the pandemic, totally unsuspecting. What a blessing it turned out to be.
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As a freelancer, I don't accept every job I'm offered. My time is too valuable. I know how much I need to be secure, and it's not a lot. So I work when I need to, but once my needs are met, I focus my energy on things which are more fulfilling to me than excess income. /10
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I spent my days off at an unpaid internship in Brentwood. I rode my bike like 17 miles across town those mornings to read scripts for free, and then back home after dark. I ate once a day. Snacked on expired “spoils” from work when I was really hungry.
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Finally did my taxes and learned my 2023 income was about 25% of my 2022 income thanks to the strike and industry slowdown. But by all qualitative metrics my life was much better this year. A few examples:
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But I still felt stuck in that town, like the walls were closing in on me. I moved to Nashville on a whim. Worked a bunch of jobs, made some bad country music videos, struggled, but always wrote. Every day.
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