How to be a producer - Part 2

A Chicago and LA story.

To my fellow outlaws, outcasts and misfits,

I hope you are sitting in a castle somewhere nibbling on a Nutter Butter, sipping champagne and ready to dive into this week's story.

Substack sent me an email last week letting me know I am now in 40 states and 19 countries.

What started out as a weekly nugget of writing to around forty people has grown into something wonderful. THANK YOU!

Which is a nice transition to today's story!

So without further ado, away we go!

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When I was eighteen, I was lost in every sense of the word. My aunt and uncle took me in so I could finish high school without having to go into a state home. I finished high school and with no dough or direction, I was headed into the Marines. I thought maybe I could do the Marines for four years, get out, join an outlaw biker gang (already had a chopper) and write poetry on the side. Then I caught a last-minute scholarship to college. But unbeknownst to me, the things I thought I pushed through, I actually just pushed down.

I got written up the first night at college for fighting, drinking and having sex in the bathroom. The head of the dorms sat me down and said you could get kicked out for any one of those and I did all three - on my first day. So she gave me a break and let me stay if I promised to calm down.

Over the next few months, two sisters of my best friends passed away, another friend passed away the same way and my grandmother, who raised me on the weekends throughout my childhood died. When I got back to the dorm after my Irish grandmother's funeral, there was a kid named Luke from Tennessee in the hallway wearing Union Jack boxers. I punched him in the face. That was the end of that dorm. The dorm lady moved me down the street and I got kicked out of that dorm and then the university.

I got a job valeting cars at nightclubs downtown, so I'd have cash to eat and drink daily.

Then I met a girl, pretty, funny, loving. We got serious pretty quick.

What do you want to do when you get older, I asked?

I don't know. What about you, she replied?

I wanna do something. I don't know what it is, but something. Writing. Poetry. Maybe something in comedy, maybe stand up like Richard Pryor or Robin Williams, or Saturday Night Live. Or write plays. There's a theater, in Lincoln Park I think, called Steppenwolf, that's supposed to be doing cool shit, or maybe even Second City.

She listened patiently and then replied, How do you do all that stuff?

I got no idea, I said, but I wanna try, you know, just to see. Why not?

But money got tight again, so I called Harley McPherson, my Marine recruiter, and told him I was finally ready to go in.

He came over with the paperwork and as I was filling it out, my girlfriend came over for her lunch.

What are you doing, she asked?

Going into the Marines, I replied, I got no other choice.

Get out, she said.

Me? I replied.

No. You, she said and pointed to Harley.

Ma'am, it's gonna be fine. You can see him after bootcamp and the housing on base is wonderful. You'll love it.

I said get out, she growled.

He leaned back and looked me like what are you gonna do?

I shrugged and said, Don't think I'm marrying you so looks like you gotta go.

There will be times when other people will make hard life decisions for you. Sometimes they will go the right way, sometimes they don't. It takes courage and honesty to know which is which and react accordingly.

Now I was broke with dreams I didn't fully comprehend or understand bubbling underneath the surface of my consciousness, gnawing at me, haunting me. I was nineteen. I got a job as a waiter at Bennigan's to make some dough while I shook shit out.

It took a five years before I signed up for my first class at Second City down on Wells street and six years before I did my first open stand-up comedy mic. What happened? What stopped me? Who stopped me?

Me. I did.

I was scared, terrified. I thought other people were smarter than me, better than me, funnier than me, more talented than me. They had parents with information and statistics that was passed down generationally which gave them the rule book to succeed in whatever they wanted.

Or so I thought.

It turned out fear was making a daily case to keep my feet nailed to the floor, to protect my feelings, to protect what little comfort I had.

Let me just go down to Second City, I thought, like just go to the building, walk inside and see what's up.

So I did.

I asked about classes and before I left, signed up for one. I was terrified. I was scared.

The night before the first class, I was terrified and scared. The night of the actual class, I sat in the car trying to talk myself out of going. I was scared. I was terrified. I went upstairs to the class. I could hear people talking and laughing behind the door. I was terrified. I was scared. I opened the door and saw all the new people and the improv teacher. I was terrified. I was scared. But I walked through the door. The first class was fun and awkward and all the things you'd hope for with some wins and some whiffs, but I knew I would come back for the second class.

Once that bubble popped, where I called fear's bluff, and just moved my feet, everything changed almost immediately.

At this point in the story, you may be asking: what the fuck does this have to do with producing?!?

Because I view the word producing not in the traditional "Hollywood" sense, but in producing my dreams, producing a life that I find worth living.

After a year at Second City, I wanted to try stand-up comedy. There was a list of open mic in the Chicago Reader, so I picked one at a bar called the Bird's Nest. The same thing happened. I had no idea what to expect, who would be there or what to do once I arrived. But I went anyway. Turns out two local comics ran a comedy open mic there every week. I saw the paper with the list you signed up on, but when I started to write my name down, they said they show was already full. I pointed out that there were still spots on the list. Sorry, the one comic said smarmily, the show is full. I smiled, nodded and sat at the bar, steaming.

Within six months I found a bar that let me host my own comedy night, that I promoted while I did open mics at night, trying to figure out how to be funny enough to hold a crowd's attention for an hour, while taking classes at Second City and driving trucks for Home Depot during the day.

There is always a way. Figure out YOUR way.

For the next five years I did improv and stand up at local shows, then finally broke into the professional comedy club scene, while always producing my own night which guaranteed I’d have spot every week to perform.

In 2001, I got a spot in the Fresh Mugs portion of the Chicago Comedy Festival. Agents and managers flew in from LA and NYC and I got signed. Six months later, I moved to Los Angeles and joined millions of people with a smile and a dream.

If Pittsburgh runs on steel, LA runs on desperation and anxiety. I had never seen anything like it. People couldn't look you in the eye when you talked to them, their eyes constantly scanning the room for somebody more important. Everybody talked like they were somebody while at the same time worked on their dreams like they were already retired. None of it made sense.

I went to my first acting class, a twenty dollar a "pay as you go" class in the valley above a bakery. I was terrified. I was scared.

It was a cold reading class, which means you get the scene you will perform minutes before the performance. All the other actors were wandering around reading their scenes aloud to prepare. I felt way out of my depth until I heard an actor reading with a New York accent. Finally, a real human, I thought. I looked down and saw he was wearing a pair of lime green Converse sneakers.

I wandered over and said, "Nice sneakers, fuck face."

But instead of firing back at me for a laugh, he went pale with fear, glared down at his shoes and whined, What's wrong with my shoes? There's industry here. Now I have to go home and change my shoes.

Then he left to change his shoes.

I had to ask people what "industry" meant. Turns out it means anybody who can do anything for you in showbusiness.

Through a strange series of events, I did my first stand up TV performance within my first month, but all that really got me was a few spots at comedy clubs like the Improv. The vibe was that you needed to "hang out" but every time I "hung out" it was only people who complained about how awful their careers were going. Everybody talked about work, but nobody talked about doing work. You would even be at a restaurant, and the waiter would ask, What do you do? And I really didn’t know. I wanted to write, act, do stand up, produce, and was doing all those things, to some varying degree, but didn't know how to articulate it properly. So I would always ask back, What do you do? And they would always reply, I am an actor. To which I would reply, Awesome. What are you doing? Where are you training? And they would always reply, I'm not training anywhere or doing anything right now. Actually, I haven't done anything since I've gotten here, but it is what it is.

So you can just call yourself anything? What do you do? I'm a surgeon. Wow. What medical school did you go to? None. Just waiting for somebody to call who needs surgery. But what will you do if they call, like you have never done surgery before? I'll just figure it out when I get to the operating room.

Now, I am a huge fan of fake it 'til you make it (unless it comes to surgery) but fake it 'till you make it only works if your feet are moving.

So while I was faking it 'till I made it, I hung out at The Improv, the Laugh Factory and the Comedy Store.

One night I landed a set at the Comedy Store. The lineup was a mixture of newer comics like me and some comics that were big in the 80s who's star had faded, but they either did not know that or refused to accept it. One faded 80s comic in particular was very mean and dismissive to me, which I took quietly, thinking that was all part of the game.

The next night I went back to hang out some more and low and behold, the same faded 80s comic was posted up at the outside bar loudly holding court. He turned, looked me up and down and shouted, And what do you do in Tinsel Town?

Clearly he did not remember me from the night before. My mind raced. Do I fire back at this guy and embarrass him in front of his small crowd of wanna be acolytes? If I tell him I'm a comic, he'll just rip me to shreds. So I took a swing and said, I'm a producer.

His face fell. His tough posture folded in on itself. He held up a finger and said, Wait right there.

He ran, literally ran, to his car parked in back and returned with his headshot, resume and VHS tape.

Here you go, in case you have anything that's right for me.

It was in that moment, that I realized I had been on the wrong side of this game. In Chicago I made things happen, but after I moved to LA, I made the mistake of waiting for things to happen.

I was no longer having a relationship with something I loved or cared about, I was having a relationship with the opinions of strangers, which dictated what my other relationships could or would be.

I love writing. I love acting. I love producing. I love making people laugh. If I want to experience those things, it is up to me. I can find a reasons to increase and nourish my relationship with those things, or I can find reasons to move further away from them.

This simple approach has led me to four stand up appearances on TV, some acting roles on TV and in movies, a few comedy festivals, a few film festivals, writing and producing tv shows and movies and producing around a thousand live comedy shoes.

None of that could have happened if I wasn't a newspaper delivery boy, caddy, fence, waiter, cook at KFC, bartender, bouncer, dealer, fence, pool hustler, forklift driver, truck driver, delivery man, valet parker, telemarketer, security guard, Teamster, barista, production assistant, sign maker, short order cook, comedian and bag boy. What I thought were my failures and liabilities, turned out to be my assets, my art school.

I want to produce moments that get me closer to the creative things I love so deeply. The closer I get, the more I learn, the more I learn, the more I love and the more I love, the more I learn how little I really know - and that beautiful cycle loops over and over until they finally lower me in the box with a fucking smile on my face.

Much Love,

Mick

©MickBetancourt 2025