Mondays suck (and so do the Tuesdays after a holiday weekend)—especially if you hate your job. But the day doesn’t have to be a total waste. You can look forward to reading about ReadyMakers who have worked their way into f*&%ing awesome jobs—and maybe find a little inspiration to jumpstart your own career in the process.
For a good portion of the year, Doug Jones’ job consists primarily of watching movies. As the Associate Director of Programming for the Los Angeles Film Festival, Jones is responsible for picking the comedies, documentaries, adventure movies, three-minute indie shorts and crowd-pleasing features that light up screens all over the City of Angels during the ten-day annual event. This year’s Festival runs from June 17 through June 27; it will present 200 films from over 40 countries. To find out what’s playing and buy tickets, which go on sale on June 1, check out the Los Angeles Film Festival website.
VITAL STATS
Occupation: Associate Director of Programming for the Los Angeles Film Festival
Location: Los Angeles, CA (and movie theaters all around the world)
Age: 39
First Job: It was at the Hollywood Theater in Sioux Falls, SD. I was 14, but I told them I was 15. That was still too young to sell tickets, but they let me handle popcorn and candy. There’s now a parking lot where the theater used to stand.
Best Job: Video store clerk. (There was something about alphabetizing videos I found very soothing.)
Greatest Professional Challenge: Keeping up with emails. I thought the paperless office was supposed to make things easier. I’m actually nostalgic for the time I used to spend huddled around a fax machine.
Salary During 20s: Not so much, then a little bit more, then not so much again
1. Hi, Doug Jones. How did you get that f*&%ing awesome job?
Hello. Well, there was one particular morning that set things in motion. Back in 1994, I was living in Minneapolis, working in various movie theaters and film societies, when one morning my clock radio went off and the DJ comes on and says, “The wind chill outside is about 60 degrees below zero. If you don’t have to go outside, don’t. If you do, don’t expose any skin.” Shortly after that, I decided to move to California.
There, I landed a job as the print shipper for the San Francisco Film Festival. I was responsible for getting every film print to the festival and then sending them away afterwards. The next year I came back to work in the programming department, so I didn’t have to lift the movies anymore; I had to watch them. With each passing year, I got more and more involved, until finally I joined the staff full-time. After almost a decade with San Francisco, I started working with the Los Angeles Film Festival.
2. Is working on the L.A. Film Festival a year-round job for you? Is it your only gig?
Even though the festival only lasts for ten days, it takes most of the year to put it all together. The festival takes place at the end of June, but I start watching movies and talking to people in September. There are a lot of people who work at two or three festivals a year, moving from one temporary job to another. I am incredibly fortunate to have a year-round home.
3. I heard that you started out in film at age 14, working behind the concession stand in a theater in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. That’s a pretty picturesque story! What was it about film that was so alluring?
Even as a little kid, I knew movies were “my thing.” On weekends, I spent Saturday mornings watching cartoons and Sunday mornings watching Academy Award Theater on TBS. (Thank you, Ted Turner and Bill Tush.) I still remember seeing certain films on the little black & white TV I had in my room: Harvey with Jimmy Stewart, The Greatest Show on Earth with Jimmy Stewart…I guess I watched a lot of Jimmy Stewart movies.
And then, of course, there was Star Wars, followed a few years later by Raiders of the Lost Ark. That was it. It was all over for me.
4. What is your typical day like?
It depends on the time of the year. Two things are fairly constant. Every morning I take my son Wylie to school, and, at some point in the day, I usually watch a movie. When I’m working on the film line-up for the festival, I start watching more and more movies each day, until it reaches a point when that’s all I’m doing. Feature films, shorts, fiction, documentary, music videos, American indies and international stuff—I’m watching it all.
I also do a lot of traveling, going to other film festivals in other countries to find movies to bring back to Los Angeles. At a festival, I’m usually watching my first movie by 9 in the morning, and then I’ll keep going until maybe a midnight show. I think my record for the most movies I’ve watched in a theater in one day would be seven or eight.
5. What’s your favorite thing about your job? Any things you could do without?
There are a lot of great things about my job. I get the opportunity to see movies that most people have never even heard about. And then, when I find something I really love, I get to work with the filmmaker and share it with other people. To be in a theater with an audience who loves a film and to know I had some small part in bringing it to them all is one of the greatest feelings I know.
That said, not every film I see is, um…going to become a classic. I am the first to admit that making a film—even a not-so-good film—is a lot of work, but sometimes so is watching them. Let’s just say that I watch a lot of 30-something-white-guys-with-a fear-of commitment-learning-to-say-I-love-you movies, so you don’t have to.
Above: Doug Jones with actor Clive Owen at the Los Angeles Film Festival screening of I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead in 2004; Top: Doug Jones at the 2009 LAFF filmmaker retreat.
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