How being Broke and Stranded in NYC Kickstarted my dream career.
I’ll never forget the day our 1985 church van crawled through New York City at 35 mph, on the brink of disaster.
I’m 22 years old, in the driver’s seat, rushing my band to our first-ever record label showcase. The transmission is blown, but little do I know that this ‘bad thing’ would lead to a series of events that would change my life forever.
People are PISSED. Horns are blasting, and middle fingers are flying. *Sigh* New York.
We knew something was wrong outside the city, but we couldn’t stop. We’d just pulled an all-nighter to be here on time.
Atlantic, Universal, Vagrant, and a few others are waiting to see if we have what it takes to be the next band on their roster.
And because we can’t even drive the speed limit, we’re dangerously close to being no-shows.
We finally make it to the venue, followed by a smoke cloud that smells like a mix of burnt rubber and transmission fluid, just in time for sound check.
We play the set, shake the hands, and exchange the information. Mission accomplished. But now,
we have bigger problems.
You see, we did what we came to do, but now we’re stuck in New York City, 1,200 miles from home, with a blown transmission.
And because we’re in a dinosaur of a people mover, the transmission shop across the Hudson tells us it’s going to be at least 10 days before the special order for the transmission parts will arrive to make the repairs.
We’re stuck. Stuck, stuck.
For what ends up being three weeks waiting for parts, we’re stranded in a two-bedroom apartment with some friends. Eight people in a Manhattan apartment. Yeah.
We spend a couple of days sightseeing, but before long, we’re out of money and on a financially induced house arrest.
We're broke, frustrated, and stir crazy. It’s miserable.
All we can do is watch the 30 or so DVDs in our friend’s collection and rotate between flavors of ramen noodles.
Watching Sweet Home Alabama for the fourth time is anything but glamorous, so on a whim, and out of sheer boredom, I decide to start watching the behind-the-scenes features of every single DVD.
Little did I know, this decision would change my life.
Looking back through the years, this single event is what sparked my interest in filmmaking. It’s because of this that, as my music career started to dissolve, I began pursuing acting.
My curiosity about the filmmaking process, birthed from this event, led me to buy a camera. From there, I learned everything I could about shooting and editing so I could create my own content.
When I started pursuing a career as a stuntman, it was that ability to shoot and edit, and my understanding of the filmmaking process as a whole, that gave me an unfair advantage over my competition and ultimately landed me on stunt teams working on the biggest Hollywood films.
The point is this:
If you look at my band and me being stranded in New York City with a busted transmission as an isolated event, it sucks.
But this “bad thing” started the landslide of events that has created almost everything I’m passionate about in my life.
I think it’s tempting to see our strokes of bad luck at face value—to see the bad things that happen to us as just bad things.
But the reality is, the things that happen to us are just things that happen to us.
It’s up to us to take the lessons we learn or the experience we gain from our misfortunes and sew the silver lining into our lives.
It’s an active, conscious process.
When I look back through my life—from my struggles in the band to my inability to get auditions or book an acting role for two years to my battle with cancer—each and every one of them is lined with lessons I learned and experience I gained that I now leverage for every good thing in my life today.
So when things aren’t going my way, I refuse to believe that a bad thing is just a bad thing. Time and experience have taught me it isn’t.
I hope this helps.
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Now here are some things in the works:
As usual I'll be pumping out loads of free content you can use on your filmmaking journey and if you missed it, grab the free LUT Filmic Fade I launched a few days ago here:
I'm also working on these more extensive projects
• Filmmaking course: Learn the techniques that helped me break into the film industry.
• Color grading tutorial: Getting cinematic color in your videos.
• Gallery prints: Check out my photography work on instagram at @calebspillsphotos
I'd love to hear from you, what you'd like to learn, things you're having trouble with, or things you'd like to see more of. Drop me a line - I read every message.
Thanks for being here!
Caleb
