Transcript: Money, Real Estate & Secrets

Rob Long on belt tightening and the things he says . . . in his mind

This is Rob Long with Martini Shot for The Ankler.

There are three bedrock, unbreakable rules to living and working in the entertainment business. The first, obviously, is never work for free. They'll try that— profitable studios and insanely rich producers stay profitable and rich by always finding out, first, what you'll do for free — but you just have to politely decline.

The second rule, equally obvious, is do not read the comments on entertainment industry blogs. You'll fool yourself into thinking it's okay to read them — even, in some perverse way, to write them — as long as the item isn't about you, but in general it's bad hygiene. Get into the habit of skipping the comments and you'll never regret it. Which is impossible, of course, because the comments are the juicy underbelly of the entire enterprise, the insider dish, the anonymous score settling, sometimes nice, sometimes nasty, the stuff that makes the internet worth all of the trouble.

A few years ago, some Silicon Valley entrepreneurs launched an iPhone app called Secret. It allowed the user to post, anonymously, anything he or she wanted, and the resulting "secret" would appear in the Secret timeline of whoever is in the user's address book. 

In other words, you could tell your deepest and most revealing secrets to everyone of your online connections and social media friends and all they’d know is that someone labeled "Friend" has done it.   

Part of the fun was the guessing games that unfolded, the trash talk back and forth, the sudden kindness, the unexpected honesty.

It never really took off — it had a brief moment of popularity, sort of like that Clubhouse app that everyone was talking about whenever that was — I can’t keep them all straight — but imagine if it had, and now imagine there was an app where you could keep up with the fears and confessions of your colleagues and competitors in show business.

Think of the possibilities. People in your circle telling each other little secrets, acting, for the most part, like flawed humans, which isn't something we're terribly enthusiastic about down here.