Hollywood also requires a whole lotta luck. The common saying is, “every movie is a miracle.” Nepotism is power, the ability to influence an outcome. That power is on a sliding scale.

I don’t think there’s an all powerful god in Hollywood. Not even Spielberg. I’m sure he’s been told no before. But probably not often.

So nepotism allows you to influence the winds of fortune. Strings get pulled. Luck becomes less of a factor. Merit now gets more of the stage.

But merit is still a relatively small factor.

Most people who managed to succeed, previous unknowns and anybodies, who think they got to the top on merit alone suffer from survivorship bias. There’s more talented people out there who don’t succeed for whatever reasons.

Here’s a quote from the Little Miss Sunshine screenwriter:

“A number of people who know my story have been quick to seize upon it as a rewards-of-virtue narrative — all that effort and persistence, they tell me, was bound to pay off. In this view of the world, character is destiny and success is the logical — almost inevitable — consequence of hard work, patience, and a shrewdly applied intelligence.

That is not how I see things.

From my perspective, the difference between success and failure was razor-thin and depended — to a terrifying degree — upon chance, serendipity, and all manner of things beyond my control. A thousand things could have gone wrong in the five years it took to turn Little Miss Sunshine into a movie, any one of which could have destroyed the project.

Yet at every turn the script was met with good fortune; every setback was revealed to be a blessing in disguise. I was lucky to stumble upon the right agents, who got it to the right producers, who chose the right directors, who cast (perfectly) the right actor and hired the right crew. A single misstep in this concatenation and the film would have been made badly or, more likely, not at all.”

Without LMSS being made AND becoming a hit (Plenty of good movies like The Shawshank Redemption flop) Michael Arendt doesn’t win an Oscar nor have a career.