My Salary Confessions: The Development Exec
The first in my series reveals how much people make and spend: 'My career is on life support'
Is there anything more taboo to speak of, still, than money? Not deal money, of course: Hollywood is happy to chatter about overall deals and newly signed talent and rights agreements all day long. But when it comes to personal finances — one’s own money — people largely clam up.
We know bits and bobs from glimpsing the surface: the personal assistant who treks an hour from the Inland Empire to Beverly Hills in a 2006 Honda Civic, the 60-something senior TV exec who retires to Brentwood every evening, the high-level entertainment lawyer who wears a $17,000 Van Cleef & Arpels necklace to play tennis.
But the sheen on others’ lives can disguise quite a lot. Even those fortunate enough to have kept their job amid waves of layoffs may feel no more certain about their future in the business than anyone else.
I put out a call last month for readers to share their most intimate financial and professional lives: how much they make, whether they rent or own, if their careers are where they thought they’d be at this point in their lives. A hearty thanks to the many who had the moxie to answer through this Google Form and speak with candor — please respond if you’d like to share your own story. Anonymity guaranteed to the Series Business audience.
First up is a 33-year-old development executive and producer who works at an independent production company, is getting their hours cut in half and has started working an AI gig on the side in order to stay afloat in L.A. I called up this person after reading their frank responses, and learned that they were being downsized from a full-time job to a part-time one because their bosses were “less enthused about the direction the industry is moving in.” Ouch.
Today this person goes into detail about their salary, rent, savings and conflicted feelings about the industry: “If you're wondering why there are so many mediocre movies and TV shows, it's because people are hired based on their network, not their taste.”
Let’s get to the interview:
Profession: Development executive/producer
Age: 33
City: Los Angeles
