Launching my business

My father said that knowledge, grace, and a willingness to shovel manure were essential for success. Growing up, we learned something new everyday—from which planets were visible from Washington Square Park to why St. John’s zone defense was letting them down. He figured that by helping along my education, and exposing me to a wide variety of experiences, that I’d have a good base for choosing a profession someday.

This was not as easy a process as he originally conceived. After a series of failed experiments including: volleyball, experimental theater, haiku, cello, billiards, and Irish step dance, I fell into film production completely by accident. It was one of those post-graduate odd jobs that I did to help out my then boyfriend who was just beginning his career as a director. I suppose I had a kind of knack for it, although having had no prior set experience, it felt like flying blind through an Iraqi air strike with your feet tied over head. I did learn quickly though, and eventually line producer began to be my main gig. “Line producer! That’s like shoveling horse manure for a living!” My father screamed. He was right. It was a thankless job in which you put an entire production together, hire everyone, orchestrate location, cameras, solve the talent’s body image issues, get the clients Starbucks, all while maintaining the budget and appearing calm throughout the whole thing. Then rinse and repeat. I didn’t love it at first, though being around all those creative people inspired me to revisit an old passion for writing which eventually led to my first film, a short entitled “Flushed” which I wrote and produced.

As with anyone’s first creative project, I had the lofty misconception that this film would be an instant success and that it would immediately land me a literary agent and put me on Miramax’s speed dial. Had I known then that short films at festivals (if they even get accepted), are used as vehicles not for writers but rather for directors, or if I had had the perspective to understand that my script was what can only be described as a heartbreaking work of staggering mediocrity, I might have been a little less gung ho and thought better of spending all my savings on making the damn thing. My father always said that personal projects are like jewel heists: In trying to achieve them you inevitably go out of pocket and no matter how much you plan, there will always be at least 50 things that go wrong. If you can think of 25 of them, you’re a genius. He, being a genius, probably would have made a great jewel thief.

Things did go awry. A few weeks before we were scheduled to shoot the film, three things happened. The restaurant that we were supposed to shoot in sprang a leak and we had to push the shoot dates back by a week. This setback in turn caused my line producer, (the perpetual manure shoveler), to go on hiatus the week before the shoot due to a family hiking trip that had been scheduled for months, and subsequently caused my director, who at the time was my boyfriend, to lose all faith in my ability to make the production happen.

My line producer didn’t leave me totally high and dry; she found a replacement for the week, a guy named Nick, and informed me that he came highly recommended.

Nick and I spoke over the phone and he said he was flying in from LA on a red-eye and that he’d be at the office (my apartment) by 9AM, first thing in the morning. He sounded pleasant and professional and I felt like things might actually work out with the project. Suddenly I felt back on track to be on Harvey Weinstein’s speed dial someday.

I opened my door to Nick the next day at three in the afternoon--six hours late. To add insult to injury, I realized that Nick was not a thirty-something professional, as implied on the phone, but rather a scruffy ragamuffin in his early twenties. Clearly he believed that neither showing up for a job on time, nor picking up the phone to place a courtesy call was of any importance. I was prepared to thank him for his time and send him away when I noticed a gigantic suitcase next to him.

“My plane was delayed in Buffalo. For 5 hours. I really wanted to call but they wouldn’t let us get off the plane and by the time we landed I figured it would be faster if I just came straight here.”

I decided that he was either telling the truth or a very good liar, crafty enough to bring props to sell his story. I let him in. In one seemingly continuous and fluid motion he dropped his suitcase in the foyer, sat down at my dining room table, took out his computer and began to work.

“Do you have a purchase order book started yet for this?” It felt like his tardiness had been something I imagined and that he had been there all morning. I sat down and began to work beside him.

Watching Nick work was like watching a man walk the high wire while juggling knives. I’d never seen anyone so adept at organizing chaos the way he was and found that I learned more in that one week with him than I’d learned in the past three months from my line producer. With all this new knowledge, I found working in tandem with Nick not only much easier than it had ever been, but also realized that producing was not this awkward and janky occupation; it was the role of the magician who pulls a three ring circus out of a hat in one swift motion.

After finishing the film successfully, Nick and I began working together on everything. We worked freelance together on various music videos and commercials, and began pooling our money to work on personal projects. Almost every day for the next year we worked at my dining room table putting together production after production. In January 2006 we bought our first printer and copy of Quickbooks. That spring, we had done about 15 projects together and every day there seemed to be more and more people, both new faces and old, visiting the apartment. By summer we were running three projects simultaneously and the dining room table was overflowing with paper and people, and even my living room was now filled with interns sitting cross-legged at my coffee table with their computers. We needed more space. So in October we moved into our small downtown office and made it official. Greencard was born.

It’s not easy, and with each project there’s something new to learn and more horse manure to shovel. There are grueling, 80-hour work weeks; there are open invoices and unpaid bills. But it’s worth it, because now Nick and I get to pull those circuses out of those hats everyday—each unique, each filled with a new and diverse group of inspiring young talent and creative jewel thieves.

Advice for others

Knowledge

Educate yourself thoroughly when you begin. Surround yourself with a good team. You'll learn as much from them as they'll learn from you.

Grace

Lead with grace. Make your own three ring circus look effortless. When times are tough, it will be what keeps morale and dedication going.

Shovel Horse Manure

It's grueling in the beginning. In a small business you have to be scrappy and hands on. Even after success continue to do this, and you'll never lose sight of what you set out to create.