Soon after moving to Los Angeles several years ago, Jodi Nelson mailed some 300 résumé-and-headshot packets to potential managers. She received three responses and took three meetings. One was held in a closet-size office full of buzzing flies and jangling phones. Another was at a larger office, with two auditors sitting at the far ends of the room and people walking in and out as Nelson presented her monologue. But at the third, she was lucky.There Nelson met Ken Kingsbury. Despite an initial mix-up (Kingsbury confused Nelson with another performer with the same name), the two proved a good match, and Kingsbury wound up serving as Nelson's manager until his death in 2007. He helped secure agents for her, she says, and was "out there hustling every day for me and keeping me aware of things that were going on."But if Nelson were starting out today, she would not use.
- 7/13/2011
- by help@backstage.com (Mark Dundas Wood)
- backstage.com
After earning her Mfa from CalArts in 2003, Jodi Nelson found work before and behind the camera. "In all, I worked for eight straight years," she said. "I went to Cannes. I made headway. I was networking." Then the recession hit California and work "vanished overnight."But that wasn't the worst of it. "I lost my day job, lost my apartment, then I became literally homeless," Nelson said. "I gave away or sold everything because I couldn't afford movers. I hopped from friend's couch to friend's couch and was choosing between living in my car or moving back to my parents in Oklahoma. Then my manager died—I found him in his home. Now I had to find representation all over again. My unemployment ran out. It's one thing to suffer for your art. It's another to recalibrate your engine."So when her parents sold their house, bought a trailer, and started traveling,...
- 8/11/2010
- backstage.com
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