Hollywood Confessional

Class Con

• Ninth Way Media • Season 3 • Episode 5

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Scam artists steal dreams. We're finding ways to get payback.

In this incendiary episode of the Hollywood Confessional, we hear from an aspiring writer who pursued a seemingly great opportunity: taking a class from a mentorship program, the stated goal of which was to help underrepresented voices get into the industry. The first thing they learned? Some so-called "mentors" can't be trusted.

Red flags abound in this story of a dream gone wrong... but so do glimmers of hope. Ultimately our confessor realizes they've been conned out of their intellectual property, but is it too late to do anything about it?

Join us for a discussion on industry scams, how to avoid them, and what you can do if you find yourself caught in one. Spoiler: The answer is definitely NOT slashing tires.

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Hollywood Confessional is a Ninth Way Media production, produced by Meagan Daine and J.R. Zamora-Thal.

Sound Effects and Music provided by Zapsplat and Pixabay.

Keywords: filmmaking podcast, film podcast, screenwriting podcast, entertainment podcast, Hollywood, filmmaking, writerslife, actorslife, setlife

Speaker 1:

In nomine Cinema e TV, espiritu Streaming Amen.

Speaker 2:

Hello Hollywood faithful, Welcome back to another episode of the Hollywood Confessional. I am your favorite podcast priest, Megan Dane.

Speaker 1:

And I'm JR Zamora-Thal. Megan, you sound so far away. What's going on?

Speaker 2:

Oh, that's so mean, dude, so mean. So the writer's room technically ended. I am no longer employed and JR is still happily employed on the same show. So we're in separate spaces now and I have the shitty mic and he has the good mic.

Speaker 1:

Besk in the glory of these dulcet tones.

Speaker 2:

So if I sound tinny and annoyed, you'll know why listeners.

Speaker 1:

But we can actually finally tell people what we were working on, because it was finally announced.

Speaker 2:

Yes, oh my God it, because it was finally announced. Yes, oh my God, it made it feel so much more real.

Speaker 1:

I know it feels like there's actually going to be a show on television now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, should we say what it is?

Speaker 1:

I don't know. We've gone this far without saying it.

Speaker 2:

I don't even know if we should, maybe you guys should just look it up on your own.

Speaker 1:

No, we for the past, oh, I don't know seven, eight months now?

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean, if you don't count the strike, it's been like two straight years.

Speaker 1:

I was only considering season two. You know what I'm ready to say it. We were on cross season two.

Speaker 2:

We got a season two Hell yeah, the, the first season was just officially announced, so so go check it out online, check it out on YouTube or whatever the official amazon prime video accounts.

Speaker 2:

They have the teaser for season one and it looks amazing and it's so exciting this is the show by the way that, like so, we got greenlit to have a writer's room for season two even though season one had not premiered, which was quite um, unusual and very exciting and wonderful, particularly coming right after the strike. We're so lucky for that. And then we started to watch the daily or not the dailies the cuts right of the episodes, and I was like so into the cuts that I would be late for work some days. I'm like I got to find out what happens, even though I absolutely know what happens because I was there like every step of the way in season one.

Speaker 1:

Oh man, it's like one thing to read it, though, but then to see it on screen and see it come to life is just like insane. Like it's so much more engaging when it's on screen, with those actors saying the lines like it's, it's incredible.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's true. I mean it does help that we have Aldous Hodge yes, yeah, that's true, I mean it does help that we have Aldous Hodge yes, and Isaiah Mustafa, and and and we could I mean Ryan Eggled like we could go on and on with the list of just incredible actors. Um, I mean, gosh, the cinematography is amazing. Like I'm not I'm not trying to make this a cross ad here I'm just really excited, uh that the trailer finally come out, even though I am now unemployed.

Speaker 1:

It's going to be amazing and season two is going to be amazing. I don't know if we can talk about any of the cast or anything really. I just know that it's been officially announced so we can say that it exists. But yeah, it's going to be really fun when that comes out. So, yeah, lots of excited.

Speaker 2:

So thank you all for bearing with us all this time, as we've been talking about it in code, and go check it out online If you're so inclined. Let us know what you think, and meanwhile we have our own show. Hey, hollywood.

Speaker 1:

Confessional. That's what we're here for. Why don't we jump into what we've got this week?

Speaker 2:

This one's been like a long time coming right. We recorded this pre-strike but you know what, as I was reviewing the episode after all this time, it still got me so fucking mad.

Speaker 1:

Oh, this episode is the one that I've had the most reaction to Editing it this last week. I am just reminded how furious I get when they're people that take advantage of the people trying to come up in hollywood. I mean the people that are, you know, living on hopes and dreams and have nothing but that there are still people preying on them and it's like what are you even trying to get out of them? Like it's so infuriating.

Speaker 2:

I'm still stuck on the fact that you said that you have had this episode since before the strike and you just edited it this week.

Speaker 1:

I was working on a little show called Cross.

Speaker 2:

Okay, okay, well, with no further ado, this is Class Con, and I think it's about time to get into it. What do you think, jr?

Speaker 1:

Let's get into the confessional booth.

Speaker 3:

Forgive me, Father, for I paid big bucks for a writing class that turned out to be a grift.

Speaker 2:

Motherfucker. Okay, this one is already pissing me off.

Speaker 1:

We're about to take it from podcast priest to podcast. Vigilante, tell us how the fuck it started.

Speaker 3:

Okay, well, I'm really bad at networking. I don't like talking about my craft, I just like doing it. I see people sit around and talk about art all the time and I'm like I can't do this. So that's been a big hurdle for me as I'm working my way into the industry. I can imagine, when it's all about who you know, you kind of have to get to know people.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing that paid your rent for a year.

Speaker 3:

Where are you living, wouldn't you like to know? Thank you, it was my first big contest win. It paid for my small life for a year and it helped me see that the way I network best is to take a class, have other people read my stuff and see how I give notes. I find just doing what you do is the best calling card right.

Speaker 3:

Right there with you. So at my university they had an email list. Mostly it's a bunch of GoFundMes. Sometimes it's like I'm teaching a class and it's supposed to be vetted by professionals from our circle. So this thing popped up on the list called the B. Their mandate is to help underrepresented voices get into the industry and it's run by a woman named B.

Speaker 2:

Putting it on the hit list.

Speaker 3:

We don't even know what she's done yet, but I like where your head's at. She was the teacher and had some professional credits under her name. Class was about 10 weeks, I think, and at the end of it there was a showcase, a reading with professional actors, of your script. To get into the program, you sent an email, you had to submit a script and then there was a call where program. You sent an email, you had to submit a script, and then there was a call where I talked to you over the phone. She sounded very professional. She was like what?

Speaker 2:

are your writing goals? What do you want to do?

Speaker 3:

That kind of thing. Now, this was not my first rodeo, so I asked a lot of questions about how it would go and the details about the showcase. At the end, everything she said sounded great. There were literally no red flags. But then I started taking the class. This is where it starts to get a little dicey. The class cost $750 for 10 weeks, which is comparable to a lot of graduate level courses and private classes. So I went in thinking they were going to be held in a classroom or some kind of professional setting, but it turns out they were in the teacher's apartment building. So my first red flag is you don't have any overhead, so you're just pocketing 750 straight Cool. The next red flag was there was no teaching period. What happened was every week you would turn in so many pages, we would open up your document in class, people would give notes and the teacher would go last.

Speaker 2:

So she would basically just listen to what other people were saying and then base her notes on that.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. And then it gets better. Sometimes people wouldn't get feedback. There were so many of us. Sometimes people would just leave after hour three or four. They'd be like I don't want to sit through anyone else and we're not going to get to mine, so bye. So I was literally paying to write and turn in pages and then get notes from people who are all over the spectrum in terms of experience. Some of them had never written anything before, which is wonderful, and everybody needs to start somewhere. But this thing was vetted as a professional writing workshop and it was totally not what it was supposed to be. Then it got even better. About halfway through the class, six or seven weeks in, I got a call from B***h on the phone. She was like I have a question. Would you like to be my assistant? I wasn't working at the time, so I was like absolutely. And she said Cool.

Speaker 2:

You mentioned in your resume that you had been an assistant in development.

Speaker 3:

This was in reference to a gig I had back in school. In that job my boss would be like Watch this movie, read this book, and we'd have weekly phone calls to discuss them and bounce ideas off each other. I was like a sounding board and that boss paid me well. She'd be like Charge me for the hours you spent reading this. She'd be like charge me for the hours you spent reading. This is a real job. I soon realized this was not that. When I talked about the job I said I have helped with development before that kind of stuff. At last.

Speaker 2:

She said awesome, I'm pitching something. Can I send it to you and let you do your thing with it?

Speaker 3:

so she sends me a document. I open it up. It is the title, it is the character's names and what their job was. And she was like I need a season.

Speaker 1:

Put her on the hit list.

Speaker 2:

Hell yeah, that is absolutely a qualifying factor.

Speaker 3:

In my previous experience it was very clear I was the assistant, I was helping springboard and if the show got picked up I was going to be staffed. I had known the teacher, my mentor, for a while and we were on good terms, like I knew I could trust her. I thought this was going to be the same type of situation where I was like you're my teacher, you've read my work, I think I can trust you because of all the vetting, and then you send me a blank document to do my thing. This is before I knew anything about WGA rules or anything like that. So I'm like, fuck, yeah, I'll do it. I'm going to get paid by the hour minimum wage, but still I was in her class and then I could charge my hourly rate and work on her stuff.

Speaker 3:

So she sent me the thing. I was like, oh cool, when do you need it by? And she was like as soon as possible. I said my weekly turnaround is 40 hours a week. I think I could do a half hour season in two weeks. Let's do that. So in two weeks I had 10 episodes, three storylines, eight characters, story arcs for all of them. I did the job. Oh my.

Speaker 1:

God, you did your job. You did the job.

Speaker 3:

I turned it into her. She had some notes. I took the notes. Then she said I have this other thing I'm pitching, Can you do it again? And I did it again Four times for four different shows for her, which I then know she took around town to pitch to and other places.

Speaker 1:

I swear to God if you tell me one of those shows got made without your name on it.

Speaker 3:

No, I think one of them got traction at one of the places, but I would have went in hardcore if that had happened.

Speaker 2:

It's still fucking wrong. She's using a student paying the minimum wage to develop an entire TV show, which she then put her name on, Even if she didn't sell it. She had meetings, she made connections, she got opportunities, and all those people were under the impression that she was showing them her ideas.

Speaker 1:

So what ended up happening with the class?

Speaker 3:

Remember there was supposed to be a showcase. What that ended up being was you got 10 pages of your script read in her apartment building just for the class, nobody else. Oh, wow, at the end of it I was like, hey, I was in your class, you really liked my work, I took all your notes, I was your assistant. You brought me along to do your professional work for you. Do you think you could give me a recommendation to a manager, or something like that?

Speaker 2:

And she was like if I know anybody who's looking, I'll let them know, and and she was like, if I know anybody who's looking, I'll let them know, and I never heard from her again. I am trying so hard not to hate this woman.

Speaker 1:

No, you can hate her.

Speaker 2:

I mean they say that's bad for you more than it's bad for the person who is hated. I mean, I don't know. I don't know this woman, but how much more exploitative can you get? She could have asked him to be her unpaid intern, Jesus this is depressing.

Speaker 3:

She's a very smart businesswoman as far as I know, I'm the only person she did this to on this level. But she also started a fellowship that cost money to apply. She paid the fellows $750 to adapt a book, take her notes and write a movie, and are you ready? At the end of those weeks the writers kept zero rights. They went to the publishing company.

Speaker 1:

Holy shit.

Speaker 3:

So when that happened, I was like oh, this is your job, You're a hustler. Yeah, she's a con artist. The thing about underrepresented voices is we aren't allowed in the room a lot and we're not allowed in the industry a lot, so we don't know a lot of the lingo and the rules about what's good and what's not. So some people are like oh, I'm getting paid $750 to adapt the book. Who cares about the rights? They're happy to get paid for writing, Just like I was happy to get paid for being an assistant for $15 an hour. But the people who are trying to take advantage of us, they do know better. So there you have it. I took a writing course and it turned out to be a grift, I mean. On the other hand, it was also very validating to be like oh, you think I'm good enough to write your stuff.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's a very slim silver lining and I admire you for finding it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so for everybody coming up behind you, how do you avoid stuff like this? Or see those red flags to begin with.

Speaker 3:

My advice for people who do it is to always vet, always vet, always vet. I did the interview. It seemed legit. She had regular references. She was really in the writer's guild. Everything about this woman should have checked out. There is no way this should have happened, but, damn it, it did. So vet, vet, vet, vet. And my new rule is ask them to see their stuff first. If someone says, hey, I want to bring you onto this project, I say I want to see it first to make sure I'm the best fit. And then, if I get a blank document, I say I'm not sure I'm the best fit for this, and also, I want to get paid more. I never give a rate and I never commit to anything until I've sat with it by myself and gone through it. So that was the main takeaway. Also, screenwriting courses are bullshit.

Speaker 1:

Amen, you think all screenwriting courses are bullshit.

Speaker 3:

I think the writing class format is bullshit. You have to go on blind trust. You're going to pay this money, assuming the person knows more than you, and you're going to learn to get more out of the class than what you had going in. That's the gamble of the writer's class or writer's workshop. What you pay for a writer's workshop, you should be paying someone to do something with your writing. Don't pay to write. I can do this in my house. I'm paying you to do something with my writing, whether it's to workshop it or to have a showcase, but I'm not paying somebody else for me to do my job. So when I say writing classes are bullshit, that's what I mean.

Speaker 1:

I think that's a really important distinction.

Speaker 3:

You get what you want out of a class. Some people came in and they're like I paid to write a pilot and that's what they did.

Speaker 1:

That kind of accountability is really important to a lot of people, myself included. They feel like if they pay for something, they will actually do it.

Speaker 3:

But you don't have to do that. Pay yourself, put a coffee can in the table and put 750 bucks in it and then tell yourself when you finish a pilot, you're going to Disneyland. That's what you should do with that money. So here's my advice If you hear anyone on the street saying I'm thinking about taking a class at you, tell them to take that money and go to Disneyland.

Speaker 1:

I'm not going to Disneyland, but I might take myself to Republique.

Speaker 2:

Man 750 bucks.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, with the wine, the appetizers, the main course.

Speaker 3:

Wow, okay, I want to go with you.

Speaker 1:

We better end this before I get too hungry. Go create in peace my child.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you go create in peace. I'm about to go slash some tires.

Speaker 3:

Amen to that.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so you said, jr, that this story makes you the maddest of any that we've ever gotten and I am feeling kind of that way too, like talk more about that, and I was ready to jump at any opportunity anybody would give me to write, and I've been in those situations where you agree to do some work for somebody and they're less than professional. Maybe they're promising you money that they can't pay you. Maybe they're promising that the project's going to go somewhere, even though they have no way of knowing that it will, and a lot of times you just have to learn from your own mistakes, which sucks, and so when I hear of somebody else preying on people who were just like me at one point, I just get so angry.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I totally hear you and I feel exactly the same way. I mean, I think about all the times that I fell into some kind of trap like that and what, honestly? What makes me particularly angry, especially at this point in time? And I will say, by the way, listeners, the person who is like the villain of this story is still out there and is still very active and is still offering all these fellowships and classes and all this kind of bullshit. So you have to be really careful and I really want to say who this person is.

Speaker 2:

But I'm going to honor our code, not name names, because we are protecting the person who went through this experience, not because we are protecting the perpetrator. But all that to say, what makes me the angriest is that they prey on people who are underrepresented in the industry, right, like the confessor was talking about, how you know, a lot of times underrepresented voices. They don't get to talk much in the room, they don't get an opportunity to to write something, to be heard, to have their ideas come to life, and so they, when they like, hear somebody say and so they, when they like, hear somebody say I see you, I'm going to give you that chance that nobody else will give you. Of course, their hearts respond to that and I think it's just absolutely the foulest thing that someone could do to prey on those kinds of people and their dreams.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you're totally right, and I mean we can't name names because we are protecting our confessor. But one thing we can do is talk a little bit about what people can do to make sure that they avoid situations like this in the future. And the first thing you got to do is check for red flags. Opportunities like this, I would be so excited my brain wouldn't even be thinking about anything, but like the story they wanted me to write, and so the first thing you got to do is just take a beat, take a breath and think about what the actual opportunity is like.

Speaker 1:

Who's giving it to you? What do they want from you? What are they giving you in exchange? How is everything working? Rather than just being excited about the opportunity which I know is hard, because opportunities are so far and few between sometimes, it's really hard to take that breath and go in with a mindset that you might have to say no to something.

Speaker 2:

Oh, that's so true, that's so true.

Speaker 2:

And like talking about learning to recognize red flags as far as classes and fellowships go and fellowships go, or fellowships it's not like that I use that term very loosely Um, but uh, I, uh, we asked around a little bit, um, listeners, to get some advice from some you know, people we respect on what you can do in situations like this.

Speaker 2:

And, um, one of the pieces of advice that I got that I thought was really helpful is that teachers good teachers they always have ground rules and they should say something up front, Like if you pitch an idea for someone else's project, you are giving them that idea. You are giving them that idea, that's a gift. But if someone takes an idea that you have from your project, that's theft. They should make that very clear upfront, because classes are a sort of a difficult political atmosphere to navigate. You're a bunch of writers, a bunch of creative people all sharing ideas and trying to learn and grow from each other's ideas, and having that distinction is very important. And if a teacher establishes that up front, then you have a pretty good idea that they're legit.

Speaker 1:

I think that's great, and I think the other thing you need to look at with regard to classes is both the teacher and the institution. You should check the teacher's IMDb page. What have they done? What have they worked on? Who have they worked with? What are they bringing to the table? Are you taking a comedy class from somebody that's only worked in drama? That's probably not ideal. And look at the institution, too. Are you taking a class at, say, ucla extension, or are you taking a class from a piece of paper that you ripped a phone number off of in Silver Lake? I mean, those are two very different class types.

Speaker 2:

That's a very specific hypothetical. I've lived on the East Side a long time I've been out here.

Speaker 2:

Oh my God. So yeah, and I mean basically like what we're saying is, and what a lot of people said when we reached out for advice is an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Right, it's much. It's going to be much better for you in the long run If you do your due diligence beforehand before saying yes to something, to make sure that this is indeed the type of opportunity that you want to invest your time and energy in. And one of the things you can also do preventatively along the way. Say, you're in a position like this, confessor, where somebody is asking you to write something for them. You can copyright that shit. You need to create a paper trail, and I know that there's a certain amount of reluctance to do that, sometimes because you're thinking well, if they rip me off, like well, you don't, you don't want to imagine the possibility that they might just steal it from you, right? You want to imagine that you're going to be treated fairly.

Speaker 1:

Or you might just not want to spook them off, like maybe you're scared that they're going to run away after you've been given this opportunity, but if you're scared they're going to run away and they run away. It was never an opportunity in the first place.

Speaker 2:

That is a hundred percent true. And, oh my God, we're just going to go on about this, guys, cause this is, this is very important, and it's more important now than it ever was before, because people like this, bad actors like this, thrive in hard times, and it is a hard time in the industry. So there are going to be people out there who are looking to make some cash or looking to drum up some ideas, because they don't have any of their own, and they are going to be looking to prey on people. So that's why we're so passionate about this. But the thing that you just said, jr, that reminds me of another story that I was told that I cannot share, but it basically is about people or a bad person who got spooked because someone set boundaries right. That is a huge red flag.

Speaker 2:

If you set some kind of boundary up front, if you say something like the confessor said hey, I'd like to see the work, I'd like to see what it is that you're asking me to do before I say yes to this, and they get pissed off major red flag. It means they were just trying to use you and, like JR said, it wasn't an opportunity to begin with. So back to, uh, what I was saying before about like registering your shit. Um, you don't have to use the copyright office. That is. It is probably the strongest legal defense, but also poor man's copyright. You email things to yourself, you mail them to yourself, you do all these things just to establish that you are the person who's creating these documents and keep track of that, just in case, just in case things go wrong and you decide that you want to do something about it.

Speaker 1:

And now in our confessor's case, they did their due diligence, went down the road, and this scammer was extra nefarious because they put up a front that looked extremely legit. And so say, if you get in a position like this, confessor, and you get down the road and you need to hire a lawyer to sort some things out but you don't have access to a lawyer, we've got a resource for that, thanks to Megan Dane doing her due diligence, and that's California Lawyers for the Arts, and you can find them at wwwcalawyersfortheartsorg. Based on information that you provide them, cla will connect you with an attorney on their panel for consultation. There is an administrative charge of thirty five dollars, but that is much cheaper than hiring a full on attorney. And again, their Web site is CA Lawyers for the Arts dot org no-transcript.

Speaker 2:

sue someone because then you may never work again. Well, there are other, more discrete options that an attorney might come up with. For instance, an attorney could send a letter to the representatives of the person who is stealing your intellectual property and just say hey, just to let you know, we have a paper trail that proves that this was created by someone else. It's very under the radar, it's not going to cause a big stink, but it will notify the reps of this person that they can't move forward with this project without some serious legal encumbrances.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. And for those of you inclined to slash tires never stab into the tire. The knife could pop out under air pressure.

Speaker 2:

That is the best advice I've ever heard. Thank you, JR. That's all we've got for you this week. Guys, Thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 1:

We'll be back in two weeks with a really awesome part one of our two-part interview with Mo Ryan, the author of Burn it Down, the bestselling book. That really does a journalistic job of what we try to do on the podcast exposing the corruption and abuse in Hollywood that keeps all of us down.

Speaker 2:

That's right, and Mo does name names, and until then go create in peace in Hollywood.

Speaker 1:

That keeps all of us down, that's right. And Mo does name names and until then, go create in peace. Cool, I think that was pretty good. The Hollywood Confessional is produced by Megan Dane and Jair Zamora-Thal. Joelle Garfinkel is our co-producer and AJ Thal is our post-production coordinator and editor. Our cast today Amy Baclini. Special effects provided by ZapSplat and Pixabay. Hollywood Confessional is a Ninth Way Media production. Follow us on socials at FessUpHollywood.