my first job in LA

I've been thinking recently about the first editing job I got after moving to LA. It was 20 years ago, which is hard to believe. I don't remember how I got the job, but I do remember it was on the top floor of a tall office building on Wilshire and had great views of downtown to the east and the Hollywood Hills to the north.

The company was a startup called Spotrunner, and my job was in the "tailoring" department. Essentially I would customize a template ad for a specific customer. So a local dry cleaners in New Mexico could order a generic ad for a dry cleaners and I would customize it slightly, or "tailor it", for that specific business. At least that's how I remember it, it was a long time ago and I don't think I was there for very long. But it made an impression on me, mostly because I was glad to be working after a long stint of being unemployed and trying to get my foot in the door in a new city. I just looked up Spotrunner on Youtube and found this behind the scenes video from around the time I was there:

https://youtu.be/q26HKmpDiiY?si=_11desDqMcXC_GO3

this whole thing feels very "2006-core"

One of my other memories from that job is that I was quite happy to leave it once I landed a gig as an assistant editor on "Creature Comforts America", mentioned before in this blog as one of my favorite jobs I've ever had. Just a touch more creative than customizing local ads for dry cleaners.

The other memory from Spotrunner is that I worked with another Wesleyan grad there named Jen Lame, and we would chat sometimes at lunch about our shared experience as film majors even though she was younger and we didn't overlap on campus. I lost touch with Jen after that job, but a few years later started to see her name pop up in the credits of films and I was happy to see a fellow Spotrunner making it in the industry. And "making it" might be just a teensy bit of an understatement. Jen edited a movie that just came out called "The Odyssey", try to go out and support it in theaters if you can. Second week box office is so important for small indies! I'll be seeing it later this evening at The Grove, just a couple blocks up the street from my old Spotrunner office.