Wanna' read along? Here’s a machine-generated transcript you can use. Yes...expect a few mistakes, especially with funky industry terms, interesting names and tagging whoever's talking. If something sounds weird, trust your ears. But...sometimes that really is what we said!
Announcer: Welcome to Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.
Angry Man: Is this some kind of joke?
Unidentified Voice: Biagio.
Biagio: Who did this episode? It’s episode 84 and we’re having a spooky discussion about your lucky break. The big career factor that’s completely out of your control and how to handle that. How to know if the film and TV career journey is right for you. Feeding your creative soul and. A deep admission from me. Music courtesy Dave Pelman. Music. Dave. Hey everybody. She’s joke.
Joke: He’s Biagio.
Biagio: We’re married. We make unscripted film and television and want to help you do the same.
Joke: Hopefully by teaming up with us.
Biagio: Well, happy Halloween everybody. Who? Yes we are. We’re dorky parents. We’re still recovering from taking our kids trick or treating, which was technically last night. Well, not technically, it was last night.
Joke: Yeah, I think we should ban trick or treating on a Monday on a school night. Yeah.
Biagio: You know, it’s so funny because I officially feel like an old funny daddy because I’m, like, who.
Unidentified Voice: Scheduled Halloween out of school night?
Biagio: Like, if you would have told me I was going to grow up to say that, I would have been like, oh my gosh, I don’t even want to know my future self.
Joke: We did it anyway.
Biagio: We did, we did. We went trick or treating. Anyways, given the fact that it’s that the witching season, it’s a scary time of year. We thought we’d do a little themed podcast, and we thought we would talk about one spooky fact about working in the entertainment industry.
Joke: Only one. There are many.
Biagio: Yeah, yeah, we’re just picking on one today. One. One though that like, I actually have found myself thinking about it a lot lately because obviously a lot of people who listen to our show, they want to break into the industry. A lot of them are just starting out. And, you know, there’s a there’s a fact that unfortunately, it’s pretty spooky. And that fact is that, you know, no matter how good you are, no matter how much raw talent you have, no matter how incredible the projects are that you develop, unfortunately, to make it in this business, you still need luck. You need luck. You just do. You need. You need a lucky break.
Joke: It’s just about writing the wave of life and writing the wave of the industry, and being as ready and prepared for when that perfect wave breaks to. To be able to take it.
Biagio: Yeah. And now, listen, anybody who’s ever read any kind of self-help book or motivate or heard a motivational speaker will tell you when hard work meets preparation. It produces the offspring we call luck. Yeah, yeah, that’s all great. But but unfortunately, luck does not happen on your schedule. And as you all know on this podcast, we actually like to try to give you solutions, not just present problems and complain about them.
Joke: You have a solution to this. You can make luck happen on your schedule.
Biagio: Unfortunately, I don’t have that solution, but I have which I what I think is a much more important solution. It’s really a life solution because the fact of the matter is, once you know that luck that your lucky break is not going to happen on your schedule, once you know it is completely out of your control, then at that moment, more than any other, you can ask yourself. Am I really doing what makes me happy? Because the honest to God’s truth is, this business is so hard that if you’re not enjoying the ride every step of the way, you’re probably not going to end up being happy, at least not happy for a very long time.
Joke: Okay, I have a caveat to that, because, one, I don’t think anybody could be happy all the time.
Unidentified Voice: No.
Biagio: Of course not.
Joke: So I and even even us, like we get down and it’s like, you know, we’re really excited about the pitch and then the pitch doesn’t sell. Like that’s a bummer. Like a really big one.
Biagio: But there’s not happy all the time and there’s miserable.
Joke: Yeah. You have to enjoy the here’s another cliche enjoy the journey. It’s not about the destination.
Biagio: I enjoy the journey when you’re on it with me, babe.
Joke: Oh my God. Thank you honey. But I think it’s like, you know, we’re in a creative field. We do creative things, we all have a creative soul, and that soul can sometimes get crushed if there’s one too many blows. Right. I mean, the truth of the matter is, everything is about timing. And, you know, we talk about you. If an opportunity presents itself, obviously you have to be ready to take advantage of that. And that takes obviously hard work and preparation, which I mean, frankly, by listening to this podcast, you’re all doing well.
Unidentified Voice: Exactly.
Joke: Still, though, even we can look at our career and go, that was a lucky break. That was a lucky break. It was a lucky break in timing. And then we had it in take Advantage and turned that lucky break into an opportunity that propelled us forward and upward. So it’s important as you wait for that lucky break or you don’t wait for it, you just keep going. But, you know, as you’re hoping for that, that magic to happen, that you you self-assess and if you’re like, oh, I’m getting really down on myself that you find ways to keep you inspired. Right. So what, that’s by doing a passion project on the side or what that’s about finding a supportive community or a supportive group of people that do appreciate your creative talents. You know, it’s just important to keep that soul fed. And even for us, when we come from a really heavy, intense project, you know, we like to take a week to just kind of decompress and, you know, get fill that well up again.
Biagio: Yeah. But you have to ask yourself that ride that you’re on, that journey you’re taking. Is it one you want to be on? And now listen, I’m going to open up amid something that my wife doesn’t know I’m going to talk about.
Joke: So I always love when you caveat like that.
Biagio: Listen, I, I’ve been extremely fortunate. I know a lot of you who listen, who’ve listened to all the podcast episodes, know that. You know, I used to be an actor, right? I originally started pursuing acting, and I got a lucky break. I was cast as the, you know, the nerdy next door neighbor on Kenan and Cal, which was a big teen sitcom at a time for a kid coming from Cleveland to actually land a regular acting part on a TV show and then, you know, pop up on a few other, you know, a few other shows along the way. This, to me, felt like all my dreams coming true. I got my break. You know what I found out? I really did not enjoy that journey one bit. Joke. What was I like when I was auditioning?
Joke: Do you want me to stay nice?
Unidentified Voice: No. You could be honest.
Joke: Yeah. You were pretty miserable.
Unidentified Voice: I was, I was miserable.
Biagio: I did not enjoy it. You know what? Right now I can go out and shoot and edit a pitch tape, do a pilot, or just even just do a promo that maybe we only ever pitch to our agents. It never goes anywhere. And I enjoy the heck out of that. It. I couldn’t go to an audition and not get a part and be happy about that, but I have found in my life that I can create a pitch tape or a pilot, or even do a television series that only goes for one season, even if I’d like it to go for many and still feels so fulfilled. So for me, this is my journey. This is the journey that makes me happy. And that’s what you have to decide for you, you know, is being an unscripted television or being in film and television at all? Is that the journey that makes you happy? Because you’re going to need to enjoy every bit of that journey until you get your lucky break? I have been extraordinarily fortunate because I’ve had three lucky breaks. I feel like in my life that are outrageously lucky. In one was getting the acting role on Kenan and Cal. One was launching a new career in unscripted television that makes me so happy. And the biggest one was meeting my wife, which, as we all know, it’s not easy to meet someone that you can spend your life with and makes you so happy every day. Those are my three big breaks. I can’t ask for more. I feel like the luckiest guy alive.
Unidentified Voice: Oh happy Halloween.
Joke: Yeah. No, I mean, listen, you know, I mean, not that. Do you probably have lots of little lucky breaks?
Unidentified Voice: Oh, sure.
Joke: You know, there’s the big ones, and then there’s, you know, right place, right time, right person, right match. You know, sometimes it’s just a chemistry match between people, right? Like, hey, do you like working with this person? And finding a team that works is amazing. So anyway, long story short, it’s not. It’s not all up to you. Some of it is just up to luck and and being there. It’s just one. Those moments happen. You just need to be prepared and you need to allow yourself to go on that journey and just and also watch out for those opportunities. I think a lot of us let some of those opportunities pass by. So yeah, that’s a that’s a spooky fact about working in the entertainment industry.
Unidentified Voice: That’s a spooky fact.
Biagio: And I think what you can do about it is know that your lucky break will come eventually. Just make sure you’re doing something that you enjoy enough that you can you can keep with it until that break happens. Now, if you’re in unscripted television, you never know.
Unidentified Voice: Your lucky.
Biagio: Break.
Unidentified Voice: Might be with us.
Biagio: Just like the people who pitched us what became MTV’s Caged or Bio and LMS Ghost Inside My Child, or even our MTV True Life Special. So if you would like to learn how to pitch a show to us, it’s really couldn’t be easier. Just head on over to producing unscripted. Com, sign up for the newsletter and follow the directions. And who knows if I. If you have a project that we think we can be helpful with, maybe we can team up and turn that into a TV show. That’s why we do this podcast to meet other great people. And, you know, even if we never make it to a one of your TV shows together, we’ve met a lot of really talented shooters and editors and just great people that we’ve ended up working with in other ways. So one way or the other, we hope this podcast helps you achieve your dreams, whatever they are, and we hope that this spooky fact can turn into something inspirational. So that’s it.
Unidentified Voice: The out.
Joke: I’ll see you guys in two weeks.
Announcer: Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.
