How to Schmooze
For an exceedingly social person, I haven't a fucking clue how to network.
I am currently at the Sundance Film Festival, working in a semi-shit job capacity, and am at the moment in the festival headquarters lounge, where networking, schmoozing, and miscellaneous sucking-up is happening on all sides of me, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do within the midst of it.
The surprising thing is that my less social boyfriend is unbelievably at ease with it. The same boy who will leave a party ten seconds after arriving because "it's too hipster and [he] feel[s] uncomfortable" is able, at a moment's notice, to start talking up his projects with small-to-mid-sized lies and exaggerations, commanding respect from all sorts. At the moment, his goal for the festival is "finding an executive producer" for a project. It sort of kills me that he'll probably succeed, especially as his job puts him in far more contact with the public than mine.
I'm waiting for the Gay Condo to get here. My friend John is hooking me up with his friend Steven (who I vaguely know), a gay editor who will be attending les festivites with two well-known gay film directors on a quest to 'queer Sundance'. Considering that this probably means getting drunk and hanging with homos, I think I might be far better at this than, say, trying to schmooze out a network contract.
Why can't I schmooze, though? Why can't I network? What gene is lacking?
It's a little frustrating.
I am currently at the Sundance Film Festival, working in a semi-shit job capacity, and am at the moment in the festival headquarters lounge, where networking, schmoozing, and miscellaneous sucking-up is happening on all sides of me, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do within the midst of it.
The surprising thing is that my less social boyfriend is unbelievably at ease with it. The same boy who will leave a party ten seconds after arriving because "it's too hipster and [he] feel[s] uncomfortable" is able, at a moment's notice, to start talking up his projects with small-to-mid-sized lies and exaggerations, commanding respect from all sorts. At the moment, his goal for the festival is "finding an executive producer" for a project. It sort of kills me that he'll probably succeed, especially as his job puts him in far more contact with the public than mine.
I'm waiting for the Gay Condo to get here. My friend John is hooking me up with his friend Steven (who I vaguely know), a gay editor who will be attending les festivites with two well-known gay film directors on a quest to 'queer Sundance'. Considering that this probably means getting drunk and hanging with homos, I think I might be far better at this than, say, trying to schmooze out a network contract.
Why can't I schmooze, though? Why can't I network? What gene is lacking?
It's a little frustrating.