I Advise You To Seek Out Zombies And Heartbreak

Dear Modern Philosopher,

I don’t live in Maine, so I was unable to watch The Nite Show last night, but I bet you did a wonderful job in your on air appearance.  Was it a hit?  Did the audience laugh?

If I remember correctly, this was the second time you were on the show this season.  Congratulations!

That’s two more TV appearances than I’ve had in the past year, and I’m an actress.  Can you give me some advice on how to get on TV?  What was the secret to your success?  How did you get your big break?

Also, I wanted to tell you that I had a first date planned for last night, but canceled it after reading your post about How To Tell If Your Date Plans To Kill You.  Thank you so much for writing that, as you probably saved my life!

Can you save my acting career, too?

Chasing The Dream In Hollywood

Dear Chasing The Dream,

Yes, my appearance on The Nite Show went well.  I think I looked like a total dork, but the audience did laugh.

I am thrilled to hear that reading my article might have saved your life.  It’s always great to get that kind of feedback on my writing.  Just think, if you had been killed last night, you wouldn’t have been able to send me this email for my Sunday advice column.  It’s so weird how our lives interconnect like that.

As Keanu Reeves has said in any number of his film roles, “Whoa!”

As to your question about how to jump start your TV acting career…

I advise you to seek out Zombies and heartbreak.

Yes, that was the secret to my landing my acting gigs on The Nite Show.  I wrote a screenplay called The Retirement Party after I had my heart broken.  I sold the script, it got made into a movie, and I appeared on The Nite Show to promote it.

Later, I wrote a blog post about The Walking Dead’s Live Episode In Maine, which went viral and ended up getting 57,000 hits in one day.  I emailed Danny Cashman, the host of The Nite Show, to tell him about the post’s success.  He had read the post because it was all over the internet at that point, and that led to his offering me a position on The Nite Show’s writing staff.

Being a writer on the show allowed me to write the Timbo sketch, and I insisted on playing the role of Timbo.  The rest is TV history.

So get your heart broken and write about it.  Then write a viral blog post.  Before you know it, you will be acting on TV.

Hope that advice helps.  Good luck.  Let me know when I can watch you on TV!

Austin