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For those of you who don’t live in the Los Angeles area, LA Weekly ran a cover story this week on Cassandra Peterson (aka Elvira Mistress of The Dark) who turns 60 next year (!!).  You can read  Karina Longworth’s detailed and highly engaging article here.

In LA, everything points back to the movie business and it seems like every other person is working some angle to either break in or stay in.  (two very different but equally difficult challenges).  A common theme that you see out here is some variation on the jackpot equation, “If I could only (blank) then I could (blank) thus securing my path to fame and fortune.”

Do you know anyone that ever won a BIG lottery?  I don’t.  I’ve certainly never won one, but some people do.  A very tiny percentage of people do win the lottery, and that miniscule percentage fuels this mentality.

Forget those people.

Put them right out of your head.  I’m not saying to give up on your dreams.  I’m saying that waiting for the perfect score to fall in your lap is a VERY long wait, and even if it did come you might not recognize it.

For example let’s look at Elvira.

In 1981, after stints as a vegas showgirl (where she dated Elvis and Hendrix), fronting an Italian Rock band, and played a bit part in Fellini’s Roma, Cassandra Peterson was a struggling actress in LA.  While she was on her honeymoon she got a call from a friend to hurry home because a local TV station was looking for a host for it’s weekly schlock  horror show.  Cassandra replied, “I’m not coming back from my honeymoon just for that!” – though when she got back she did audition for the part which she got.

She wasn’t particularly psyched about it.  But her reasoning at the time was that it paid $300 and was only one day of work a week so she could look for other work while she was doing it.

Here’s where it start’s to get interesting.  In lieu off a raise  they started giving percentages of the rights to the character to Cassandra early on (after all if the show flopped they weren’t out any money) – until she owned all the rights to Elvira.  And pretty soon the show got popular.  Really popular.

“Peterson quickly realized that leaving Elvira behind would mean walking away from a potential fortune. ‘Every time I make a licensing deal or do a show I get 100 percent of the proceeds.  So I thought, Why the Hell am I trying to do something else? Go work for Universal and get paid a dime on a dollar?  It just didn’t make sense.’ “

In her heyday, she was pulling in seven figures annually.  But it started VERY humbly with a tremendous amount of work, and even with everything she’s done – she can’t just rest on her laurels.

“People think I have been retired, in a trailer in Pacoima…but in fact I run a rather large merchandising and licensing business.  Elvira has a lot of spin-off items and licensing and appearances to support the licensing.  It’s still year-round full time Elvira.”

The point I’m making is – the Elvira empire started with a talented person who took a $1200 a month job and leveraged it to her fullest advantage.  If she was holding off on doing everything for the chance to star in a film with Brad Pitt, she’d be a 59 year old bartender instead of a 59 year old millionaire.

The other point is, she made an opportunity out of a small thing.  Hence my comment before that  even if the perfect opportunity did present itself to you –  you might not recognize it right away.

I’m not saying to turn your back on the big score.  If Aerosmith gets back together and you get a call to come down and audition – you should RUN down and give it your all – but you should count on doing a lot of good quality work and building your reputation slowly rather than blindly getting that call.  It will probably serve you better in the long run and you never know when that small gig that you were about to pass up for watching a TV rerun might be something big.

One last point of interest about Cassandra Peterson (and I think one of the most remarkable about her) as a child she was accidentally burned by a full pot of boiling water.  ”She was left with burns covering 35% of her body.  Much of the skin hidden by the dress is still scarred. ‘I had bad scars, and I was made fun of all the time when I was a kid.  I used humor as a way of getting around it.’ ”  It takes real strength of character to put that behind you and take on a role that requires people looking at you very closely.  She could have easily made excuses for why she couldn’t do the character.  But instead she just took it on.

A good example to follow the next time  you start to psych yourself out about how you can’t do something.

“If you think you’ve got 100 extra years to mess around you’re wrong
This time is real. your time is now….it’s time to shine.”

-Henry Rollins, Shine

(By the way, if you don’t own The End of Silence or Weight – you should correct that immediately.)

Thanks for reading!

-SC