At Waterman Theatre, students listened to four media professionals discuss how to get a career behind the scenes in Hollywood. Their answer: work hard.

The event was the 19th annual Lewis B. O’Donnell Media Summit, hosted on Oct. 25. Panelists included Paramount executive Aunrée Houston, screenwriter Jeremy Garelick, television producer Christy Somers and SUNY Oswego screenwriting professor Juliet Giglio. The panelists discussed topics such as the recent Writers Guild of America strike, the prevalence of artificial intelligence and diversity in representation. Actress and career coach Megan Mazzoccone moderated the panel. 

Somers denied the idea of a specific set of skills as the key to success. Rather, she argued success comes from being a hard worker.

“I think it depends on what department you decide you want to do,” Somers said. “The truth of the matter is, if someone approaches me as an organized individual that cares and wants to do good and shows up every day and puts in the work, they always are the ones that win in the end.”

While the panel’s discussion focused on how SUNY Oswego students can obtain careers in Hollywood through hard work and perseverance, the panelists made sure to mention their own privileges. Three out of the four attended elite private universities: Giglio and Houston went to graduate school at New York University and Garelick attended Yale University. is the only panelist to have SUNY Oswego as her sole alma mater, although Houston did attend Oswego for his undergraduate degree. Houston also acknowledged the benefit of his godmother’s role as a vice president at HBO, which he called a gift.

Somers advised students that they will not be able to do “incredible, creative work” at their first exposure to the media industry. She said that many students expect to be working full time immediately after graduation. Instead, students should hone in on internships and entry level jobs that might not feel great at first.

“It’s perfectly normal and it’s standard for the industry,” Somers said. “The more you show up and give 200%, the more likely you’re gonna get a call back quicker.”

Houston said he was at first apprehensive about working a corporate job at HBO and felt he belonged in a theater directing plays, not a boardroom at a corporate building. He eventually grew into the job, a position he described prior to the event as unexpected.

“So much of business is like theater,” Houston said. “There’s a lot of business acumen that’s a part of the experience and there’s transferable skills moving from theater to television media.”

Giglio and Houston encouraged students to keep producing material outside of college.

“If you’re a content creator, you definitely should be creating content,” Houston said.

“You always need to have three projects going,” Giglio said. “You got the one you’re really working on now, you got the one that’s already kind of out there, and then you have the one that you’re creating and thinking about.”

At a point when students asked the panel face-to-face questions about their careers, cinema and screen studies major Jude DeBiase asked how to deal with rejection.

Somers suggested not relying on a narrow idea of what you want to do.

“I really highly encourage you to keep an open mind,” Somers said. “You can be a rockstar editor, and you should pursue that if you love it, but try directing, try writing, try gaffing. Whatever it is, I think it might lead to something even more that you love and it does make you more marketable as well.”

“Be prepared now to be rejected everyday,” Giglio advised. “You have to kind of spin it and look at it as a positive thing. By getting rejected it means that someone’s looking at your material, and sooner or later somebody will say yes, and all it takes is one yes.

The rise of generative AI remains a threat to the job security of Hollywood writers, recently prompting the WGA to strike. Two of the panelists, Garelick and Giglio, picketed with the WGA in Los Angeles, and Garelick additionally picketed at the Fox headquarters in New York City. Garelick humorously noted that while he received many emails from the WGA about the results of negotiations, he has not yet read them.

Giglio explained that the studios and the guild settled to ban studios from using AI in productions, though screenwriters can use them for their own purposes.

“Did I save you a lot of reading time?” Giglio jokingly asked Garelick.

From the corporate angle, AI has led to legal conundrums. Houston mentioned an experiment at Paramount involving an AI-designed campaign.

“It was stunning, it was fabulous [but] we had to trash it for legal reasons,” Houston said.

Garelick said that writing can involve sitting in a room alone working on a script. He found the strike to be fun, allowing writers to collectively protest with their peers. Garelick also saw some of his creative idols at the marches, including “Seinfeld” creator Larry David.

The topic of diverse representation in entertainment arose. Garelick explained what he called “the sad truth of our business,” that despite the well-intentions of creators, the real determinant of trends in the film industry is profit, even if the director is a woman or person of color.

“Money talks. At the end of the day it’s a business,” Garelick said. “If that movie is good and it makes money, somebody’s going to want more of it.”

Giglio countered Garelick’s point by asking the audience what the biggest movie of the year was. The audience replied with various answers, including “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” and Garelick’s answer of his own writing credit, “Murder Mystery 2.” After a second, a unison of voices answered “Barbie,” the top-grossing film in the United States in 2023. 

“Do we have a lot of female-driven stories in production?” Giglio asked. “I don’t think so. Sadly, [executives] may think, ‘Oh, that means ‘Barbie’ did so well we’re gonna make some more toy movies, which was really not what ‘Barbie’ was.”

Houston also brought up that while working at Paramount, despite the popularity of films starring Black actors and directed by Black directors, he was told the company still would not invest more in Black programs.

“Thank God my bosses were very blatant, and they would say, ‘Black movies don’t sell,’” Houston said.

After the summit, the panelists, along with alumni invitees known as “career connectors,” met with students outside Waterman Theatre in the Tyler Hall lobby. Several students helped coordinate the event with the help of faculty advisor and broadcasting professor David Crider.

Photo by: Evan Youngs