My good friend (and now co-founder… EEE!) Yoni Rusnak and I are excited to announce that our online course CUT TO: Hollywood is officially live.
When people ask me how long I’ve been working on this, it feels INSANE to say, “two years.” But that’s the truth. Quality things take a good quantity of time.
So… what is CUT TO: Hollywood, exactly? It’s the thing I wish I’d had when I first moved to Los Angeles back in 2009: a map.
Back then, I didn’t have a map. I had a Michelle Roca.
Honestly, thank God for Michelle Roca.
Why some people are always and only referred to by their full name I will never know, but Michelle Roca produced a few films for some of the other people in my year at film school. I tracked her down after noticing that every film I liked that year had her name on it as producer. I asked her to produce my senior thesis film and she agreed. We ended up becoming good friends and moved to Los Angeles together. It turns out that when you’re good at producing films, you’re just kinda good at producing life. She produced our entire move to Los Angeles as though it were a feature film. It was truly professional: there were spreadsheets and meetings and emails and meetings that should have been emails. She was far smarter than I was. One of those people who somehow had that “map” more intuitively built into her soul.
I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her.
Michelle Roca knew how to make things happen. I learned more than just producing films and how to move across the country from her. I learned how to live an efficient life. It’s no surprise that she’s still killing it as the COO of Port City Films. She taught me how to get my foot in the door. She introduced me to a lot of people. One of them hired me to load heavy computers in and out of award show control rooms. These computers played the “and the nominees are…” video packages.1
That job didn’t lead to my next job, though. My next job came from Bryce Hudson, who I knew from our film equipment room at college. I didn’t really know him that well, but he agreed to a coffee meeting after I moved to L.A. and got settled. How did I know he moved here? How did I get his email? One of my college professors, Lisa Cook (now Lisa Peterson), put together a list of about 20 alumni who moved out here. I emailed every single one of them and about five of them were willing to meet up. Bryce and I had a great meeting that led to him recommending me to a one-day set PA gig for HBO. When I was on set, Johnna Bond, the production coordinator, noticed me and said, “Do you have a few minutes to chat?” We chatted. She ended up hiring me for a nine-month gig as an office PA on 10 Things I Hate About You, the TV show reboot of the iconic film.
But what did I say in my email to Bryce that made him want to meet with me? And what did I say at coffee that convinced Bryce I was worth taking a chance on for an HBO job? And what in the hell was I doing when Johnna noticed me on set and asked if I wanted to chat? And then what did I say to her that convinced her I was worth hiring as one of three office PAs on a major TV production job?
Exactly.
Someone might say, “Well, well! Lucky you! You just happened to know all these people.” But if you stop and zoom in, you’ll realize that luck is being used in this context as an excuse: other people are just lucky so there’s really no point in trying. Wrong. I didn’t know these people. I took notice of who was involved in the films I enjoyed, and then I took action and asked Michelle if she’d produce mine. And I emailed every single name on Lisa’s list. And then, when opportunity knocked, I knew how to open the door, walk through it, and be someone everyone on the inside wanted to keep around.
It is luck. But it’s not blind luck. It’s luck I went out and built.
This whole process I’m describing—breaking in and staying in Hollywood—is mysterious and often counterintuitive. And it’s kinda that way on purpose. There are gatekeepers. And with AI, the industry is changing as though recording sound was just invented. And with all of this upheaval comes fear and uncertainty… and people are scared and scarcity-minded.
Except: we’re not.
We think now more than ever is when artists need to come together and share everything they know about how this opaque industry actually works. So we’re pulling back the curtain and teaching people how to truly stand out to the people who do the hiring. And in an industry where talent is the price of admission, you have to learn the right skills to signal your value in a sea of baseline-incredible competition. Distilling all of this information took a long time because it’s incredibly complex. But after we folded all these strategies into a streamlined curriculum, we realized that complex doesn’t have to mean hard. Mazes sometimes look impossible until someone just shows you the path they’ve already traced.
I invite you to check out our homepage and send it to anyone and everyone who might be able to grow from the content we’ve made. Keep in mind it’s not just a course, it’s an online community as well. We have monthly virtual Office Hours as well as in-person Meetups so that we don’t just stay anonymous web friends. We organically and generously help each other get from wherever we are now to wherever we need to get.
I’m thrilled not just because this launch is finally out the door, but also because the truly challenging work of changing people’s lives is ahead of us.
CUT TO: Hollywood is a Michelle Roca in course form. It’s everything Yoni and I learned from her, Bryce, and the hundreds of other friends and mentors we’ve had along our path. Every lesson learned. Every mistake made. We took the time to build this because we know that not everyone has a Michelle. Not everyone starts knowing where the doors are or how to open them. Or what skills are needed to signal value. This community is for any kid who graduated from film school and thought they were ready and found out they weren’t. It’s for every lover of stories who, like us, watched a movie or television show and felt their life change, and now wants to follow in those artistic footsteps and tell their stories at the highest level in the world… and just needs that little bit of direction.
Seems like something that a MacBook Air could have done—and maybe in 2026 they do—but that wasn’t the case in 2009. Damn those towers were heavy.