Support an Entertainment Industry Worker in Crisis

Hey everyone,

I know I'm not alone in the struggles of the past two years, so I've tried to refrain from this route, but I'm really out of options.

My current situation is that I'm sporadically working in the theater, I have overwhelming debt, a car that's underwater, and now I'm housing insecure and struggling for a regular schedule so that I can have more time with my two-year-old daughter. Here's how I got here:

I entered the film industry in 2016 after graduating from college with a BS in Film Production. By 2017, I found myself working full-time in the Production Office as a PA and worked consistently on multiple film and television projects over the years. I had very few gaps in employment until the world ended in 2020 with the storm of COVID. I also happened to go through a divorce in 2020 and moved out, taking on a whole new host of expenses that my PA salary couldn't quite handle. It was a struggle, but I made it work, and in August of 2021, I was promoted to Production Secretary on the final season of Ozark, which helped me get back on track with putting aside money for savings.

However, administration life wasn't great for me. I could do the job and do it well, I just felt a bit cooped up. Around the end of 2021, my partner and I found out we'd be welcoming a little baby in 2022. That, and the fact that I was losing my insurance after every show and that it'd be a while before I got a union position in the office, I decided to take a step back in April of 2022 after my Secretary job on the Ms. Marvel reshoots ended and reassess. The opportunities that started opening up to me were in the crafts where I could get union health insurance, portable benefits, and make about two to three times what I was making in the office.

By May of 2022, I was working as a set dresser. I was offered a job for a TV show while I was working on a pilot. I was told the new job would start in a couple of weeks, but entertainment being entertainment, a couple of weeks turned into almost two months before I started. The uncertainty of that made finding work a bit complicated. It finally started about two weeks before my daughter was born, so I took two weeks of paternity leave. I was tight, financially, but still doing okay and was feeling secure because I had good-paying work when I got back. But then my two weeks off turned into three, and then when I got back, I worked for four days before I was informed that I'd no longer be working there because of man-hour cuts. My gang boss did put me in contact with another crew so that I could start somewhere else. So for the next couple of months, I bounced between the two shows, slowly getting my footing back. I finally got onto a show much more regularly by October of 2022, but all of the gaps had put a lot of pressure on my credit cards.

By the end of 2022, I was working regularly as a set dresser, but my credit card debt was mounting as other emergency expenses came up and now having to split daycare costs with my partner. So, for holiday hiatus, I signed on to the food delivery apps: UberEats and DoorDash. I also signed on with the Money Management Institute through IATSE and took on a debt repayment plan just to stall my credit cards for a bit until I got caught up. The plan was to do the apps and hold back my credit cards until work came back after the holidays.

But it didn't come back. My lack of seniority as a set dresser meant I was nowhere near the top of the list to get called back. Two of the shows I was working for got canceled, and the third show I was working brought me back for six days before cutting their manpower as the show wound down. In reaching out desperately to every gang boss and leadman and best boy and coordinator and PA I knew and beyond, I heard the same story: that they didn't have anything lined up, or if they did, they didn't have the manpower budget to take me on. So what was supposed to be two weeks on the apps turned into almost six months making less than I was as a PA with considerably more expenses and now, no access to credit.

To add insult to injury, my car's transmission went out in February of 2023. I could not afford to fix it and didn't have access to enough credit to get it fixed because I wasn't making enough money working the gig apps. So I was forced to take out a new car loan and get a new car. The car I did have, I only had for two years, so I still owed $9k on the note, so it rolled over onto my new loan, tripling my car debt and almost tripling my monthly car payment from $215 to $560. I wasn't making enough money on the delivery apps to cover these new expenses, so I had to start thinking about other options.

In March of 2023, I started applying to all sorts of jobs and tried to find work outside of the industry, which was extra difficult in the scrum to just keep up with immediate expenses. However, nothing ever got back to me, and the job hunt was proving more difficult than it was before I entered the film industry. By May, I stopped doing deliveries on the apps and switched over to rideshare since it paid better. And it was okay to start, so it gave me a little extra space, and I was able to regulate my own hours a little better to be available for my family and work more family-friendly hours.

Also in May, I finally got a callback from a job application to work for an events and staging labor company that will remain nameless. It paid $19/hr, which was about what I was making doing rideshare, but in this case, I'd at least have access to overtime and wouldn't have to be 1099 or put more wear and tear on my vehicle. However, the joke was on me. What I thought would be full-time work would take over a month to send me a single job, and the jobs would only be, maybe, a couple of days at a time. The company would give me, on average, around five days of work a month, which is difficult to do, schedule-wise, when you have an infant and a partner who also works. So I started trying to diversify a little more while continuing to apply for regular jobs. I signed on as a referral with IATSE 927 to try and wait out the strikes a bit. However, 927 work was also rare until I made some contacts with a theater company.

Working as a union stagehand was much better than working for the non-union labor company. I jumped between the two while also doing rideshare to try and make ends meet, but the gaps in stage work were difficult to manage, monetarily. And every paycheck would immediately get taken out by a bill or some unforeseen expense.

When the strikes ended, I immediately started reaching out to people for work, but none had anything or had the manpower they could extend to me. There was an uptick in stagehand work in early 2024 that was helpful, but the paychecks didn't last long. In April, I finally got a callback for an interview at Amazon as a DSP driver. Unfortunately, it was a cattle call, and they were only looking for people who could work the weekend shift, which I can't work. When I went in for my one-on-one interview, my interviewer saw film on my resume and immediately saw me as a flight risk and declined me.

I was managing to get on to some theater shop builds in the summer of 2024 and was finally able to get a couple of days here and there of film work, which again, was helpful but not enough for me to get enough stability to really tackle my expenses and debt. The stress of it all got to the point that in late June of 2024, tensions overloaded, and my partner kicked me out of the house. We did a nesting arrangement so our daughter could have stability for a period until she asked me to come back. It was during the nesting period that I posted a cry for help on Facebook to my friends trying to find some steady work outside of the industry. I was given a bunch of leads that I followed up on. I got more interviews as a result of that post than I had at any point over the previous year and a half. None materialized into a job offer. I was rejected for a trainee position because of my lack of customer service experience, one was a speculative interview just in case the company decided to expand in Q4, one was a cattle call at another warehouse that rejected my application the next day, etc. I've been in purgatory-type talks with a couple of companies as of late, but none have sent me concrete job offers at this point. I tried to make my position at the theater company more tenable so I wouldn't have to do show calls, but the proposal was rejected due to a lack of budgetary funds to take on another production employee. Over the last year and a half or so, I've applied to over 200 jobs, and I've still yet to receive a concrete offer for a job outside the industry.

Moving back in with my partner and daughter in August of 2024 was one of the happiest developments of my life. We talked and decided that I'd keep up with the theater work for the time being while I continued to aggressively search for a job outside the industry. I worked with the union theater company sporadically through August and September, doing rideshare on my days off to keep up with expenses.

Then October came. The show I was on ended, and there was a gap until the next show. For those in the know, rideshare has become increasingly expensive as fares have reduced, so I started reaching out to other theater companies to get some more stop-gap work so I wouldn't have to do rideshare anymore. I got about six days of work at a reduced rate. The paychecks were supposed to pay for my bills coming out and pay for a trip to Kentucky for my brother's wedding, but the paychecks were late. I've finally started working again on the next theater show, but there was some schedule confusion that reduced the amount of time I'd be on the build. I'm still waiting on my first paycheck. I've applied for relief from the Will Rogers fund and for the ECF. But where I made around $3k in September, I've made $1.5k in October.

The drop in income from the gap as well as the scheduling confusion was the last straw for my partner, who has kicked me out again. We will not be doing a nesting arrangement. I am not going to be able to spend significant time with my daughter or have any hope of getting my family back until I can get back on stable ground. I'm in dire straits.

My current debts and expenses are as follows:

This is why I need help. Not just monetarily but in terms of advice:

Car debt: $21,000 at $560/month

Credit Card/Debt repayment: $17,000 at $517/month

IRS debt from rideshare: $4,000, 1040X pending

Medical debt: $800

Non-debt related monthly expenses: $2,300/month

I'm also needing to raise money enough to give me space to afford rent and a deposit on an apartment in a neighborhood suitable for a guy with a two-year-old. I don't have a number on that as of yet.

Plan:

I luckily have some theater work lined up for the rest of the year. I have a four week gap I'm trying to fill while I continue to look for a stable job outside the industry. I currently have a job interview on Tuesday 10/29 in the afternoon, I have applied to a job at a company my friend works for. I hope to hear from them on Monday 10/28. A company I've been applying to has asked if I was interested in a position that pays less than what I need to cover expenses. I have counter-offered but haven't heard back. Either way, I'm needing a cushion to get me over the hump of transitioning to different work.

So, if I reach my goal of $5k, that will cover two months of basic expenses, which will allow my wages from theater work to get ahead of my debts a bit, get caught up on my car payment, pay for food and well-being of my daughter, and save.

Anything above the initial goal of $5k will go towards securing housing in the form of a deposit and a first month's rent. Budget TBD upon some apartment hunting.

If I'm super lucky and this raises enough to cover all of that, funds raised beyond even that will be directed to my debts.

I hate that my life has gotten to this point. I know there's been a lot of suffering across our industry, so I hate asking y'all. But if you can spare a little just to help me get a little ahead of all of this and get some breathing room so I can deal with my health and my relationship to my family, I would greatly appreciate it.