What Are Friends For?

I felt the sudden urge to email one of my best friends today. He lives in Vancouver, Canada now (the lucky bloke). He and I have spent literally thousands of hours discussing art, life, passion, celebrity, failure, success, actors, writers, directors, musicians and everything else related to this business we call the Entertainment Industry. It is our main topic of choice. He is a multi-talented and gifted artist and yet, like most of us, he struggles to make a consistent living at it. And he has had some big opportunities in his life. 

As he has done for me many a time, I felt the need to explain and inspire. These are the words that came across my keyboard:

There is a great website/forum called Wordplayer.com, which is primarily for writers. It is lovely to browse. I love reading other people's questions, advice, stories, rants, raves, whimpers and whines. This one particular post was chosen as one of the best of all of 2008. It definitely caught my eye. I have a long running philosophy in life that goes something like... "The man who dies with the most REAL FRIENDS... wins... and gets most of the good jobs.. and most of the best women... and generally has enough money to be happy." Something like that anyway. 

I read recently about an investigation that was started in order to determine what makes the best salesmen. The ironic conclusion was the one thing most of the top salesmen had in common was they were social drinkers, usually sharing a couple of glasses of alcohol each night." It's not the "drinkers" part that caught my attention, it was the "social" part. Of course they did well, they had "buddies" who could enjoy a common form of fun and buddies buy things from each other. 

Or from another angle, one of the interesting things about going to Yale is that most of our country's presidents went there too. But it is common knowledge that friends who school together help each other out, whether in the business world, dating world or social world. Yale grads stick together. Friends help friends, especially in the political world. The same is true in the Entertainment Industry with schools like AFI or USC. I have heard it said many times that one of the biggest benefits of going to AFI is that grads keep helping each other to get jobs for years and years. 

All that to say, of all the areas in my life I feel I have failed at the most, making and keeping good friends tops the list. And that is what this blog gets right to the heat of. Check it out, see for yourself. I love his closing lines:

http://www.wordplayer.com/forums/scriptsarc11/index.cgi?read=158555

*(Nothing like posting someone else's blog for your own personal blog on your own personal site. I'm still learning!)