“If you want to take the island, you need to burn the boats.”
—Tony Robbins, Unleash the Power Within
In 2016, my wife and I were invited to Tony Robbins's Unleash the Power Within seminar in San Jose, California. There was much excitement throughout the weekend as we got to know, and fire-walk with, some impressive people sitting in our section. Actor Gerard Butler, World Champion Triathlete Siri Lindley, and physical therapist and strength coach Rory Cordial, who is so good at his job that Beyoncé and Jay-Z bring him with them on their world tours to keep them limber and healthy, were among the folks with whom we were fortunate enough to connect. I was inspired enough to jumpstart my then-nascent idea for the 10,000 NOs podcast, and many of those people have since been guests on the show. That weekend, the majority of topics that were covered resonated for me, but the one that really stood out was the idea behind burning the boats.
It was so appropriate for me at that time because we had just left our rent-stabilized apartment on the beach of Santa Monica earlier that week to move into a house in the neighborhood where our kids had been commuting to school. While this move doubled our monthly expenses, we knew the risk we were taking was an attempt to put our kids and our family in a neighborhood where we could thrive the most.
The idea behind “burning the boats” is simple: conquer or die. The literal burning of the boats refers to a historical invasion, although there are disputes as to which one. One possibility is Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés's conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1519. With the intent to seize treasure, Cortés led a large expedition to invade what we now know as Mexico. His invaders were outnumbered by the warriors defending the shores. Cortés ordered his men to burn their ships before taking the island. Within two years, the Aztec Empire belonged to Spain. For me, the lesson is that there is no opportunity for the glory of victory if one does not place him or herself in a position where he or she may face real danger or defeat.
I see the core principle behind “burning the boats” applying to any decision, large or small, that we may face throughout the course of one day, or our entire life. In the early 2000s, while struggling with the decision of whether I should remain in New York City or move to Los Angeles, a trusted confidant simply looked at me and said, “If you move to Los Angeles, you'll miss out on opportunities here in New York … And if you remain here in New York, you'll miss out on opportunities in Los Angeles.” It was comically simple, yet true. No matter how much money I pay an acting coach or therapist, or how much advice I seek from a colleague or mentor, ultimately the decisions I make come down to me and my desires, no one else's. And every single one of those decisions contains risk, whether I'm aware of it or not.
The challenge is not in understanding this simple principle. The challenge is that most people would rather remain comfortable than risk financial failure or physical and psychological pain. The truth is that we all need to take risks. But how much risk should you take? And when you should take it? There is no guaranteed correct answer, but it's just as important to keep in mind that while passion and courage are essential, so are intelligence, wisdom, patience, and strategy. If you veer too far to either side of this spectrum, you can end up flaming out before you've reached your goal or never stretching enough to have great opportunities.
If ever there were a guest on the 10,000 NOs podcast whom I would deem a risk-taker, it's Alison Levine. Not only was she the captain of the first US female expedition to climb Mount Everest, but she has completed the adventure grand slam, which entails climbing the highest peak on every continent, and lived to write about it (in her New York Times Best-Selling book, On the Edge: Leadership Lessons from Mount Everest). What makes her story even more remarkable is that she was found to have a hole in her heart as a youngster. While her entire life and career revolves around risk, she still preaches safety and sensibility while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of her capabilities.
“Your plan is outdated as soon as it's finished. So it is good to plan 'cause that can help you get on track or stay on track, but you cannot be hell-bent on sticking to that plan no matter what. You have to adjust, change your direction or take action based on the situation at the time.”
—Alison Levine, Mountain Climber, Speaker, Author
After the rollercoaster of 2001, when I proposed to my now-wife in late August only to face the loss of friends and peace in New York City on September 11, I was cast on The Sopranos just before the start of 2002. Getting that call on December 20, 2001, was, and will probably remain, the most dramatic “yes” I have ever had in the business. This is not only due to it coming on the heels of the biggest tragedy our country has ever faced or The Sopranos' place in cultural history at the time, but also to my relative youth. Despite being thirty years old, I still possessed a naive perspective on my career, fame, and life in general. While I continue to get excited about jobs to this day, the excitement pales in comparison to milestones like watching the births of my children and other significant familial experiences. Also, at this point I have peeked far enough behind the curtain of Hollywood to realize that the effects of big wins, while always welcome, are much less dramatic and life-altering than I imagined they would be when I was younger. The result of landing The Sopranos was that, having weathered the depressing events of 2001, 2002 felt like a new beginning for me. After seven years slugging it out in New York City, I was finally able to tell strangers that I was an actor without having to include my usual ten-minute monologue that explained where I bartended, where I waited tables, and where I took scene-study classes. It felt like the struggle was over.
The struggle, it turns out, was not over. And yet, this break was big and it did help me considerably. But my story of getting The Sopranos is about the risks that were taken to put me in that audition room in the first place.
After four years of college that had prepared me for some high-paying jobs in professions I had little interest in, choosing to be an actor without giving myself a Plan B is probably the first risk I took. Not long after moving to New York, I scored a big break when a film in which I was cast as the lead turned from non-union to SAG (Screen Actors Guild) because actor Frank Vincent (Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino) signed on. Up until this time, none of the projects I had found in Backstage magazine paid me or did anything to raise my profile. But this film turned out to be different. While it didn't earn me a penny, The North End had a festival run that helped move me out of total obscurity and into a smaller pool of actors. In post-production, when the filmmakers told me they were short on cash, I risked my reputation by going to my brother and his friends, who owned and operated the successful midtown bar that I'd been tending, asking for the money that was needed to finish the film.
They stepped up and we contributed almost $20,000 combined, including $2,000 from my own hard-earned stash. I did not have a lot of money at this time. I was living in a fifth-floor walk-up, rent-stabilized apartment on the Upper East side of Manhattan and supporting myself by bartending and working the counter at California Pizza Kitchen.
Raising this money solidified my relationship with the filmmakers, who then tapped me to play the lead in their follow-up film, which would be shooting in Italy. I paid for myself to take a bus up to Boston for multiple table reads of the Italy film before production would move to Italy to begin shooting.
As that second film got closer to production, the filmmakers hired casting director Georgianne Walken to help them find their cast. She was not aware of my work at the time, but when the filmmaker brothers told her that I was their choice to play the lead, she talked them out of it. Instead, she convinced them to hire an actor she believed was more suited to the role. The film was made in Italy without me, and Walken was not my favorite person. She was also, however, the casting director for The Sopranos, and in the years that followed she brought me in to audition for various small parts on the show. While I was never cast, I was usually called back to read for the producers.
In 2001, when the audition came in for Cousin Brian, a much bigger part than the previous roles I'd auditioned for on the show, I read the material and thought, “I could play this guy.” The audition material consisted of mostly financial jargon as my character was a financial advisor. He was tasked with pitching his cousin's husband, who happened to be Tony Soprano, ways in which he could invest his money. Many of my friends from college worked on Wall Street and the majority of the customers I'd been slinging drinks for at the bar spent their days on the stock exchange. This gave me the confidence that I could handle the lingo and lend credence to this role. I then took my next risk: rather than bartend the night before my initial audition, I gave my shift away. While this may not sound like a big sacrifice, at the time that was worth three to four hundred dollars that I could have put toward my rent and other expenses.
Given the fact that, statistically speaking, I could go in for 30 to 50 auditions without landing a job, choosing to give that money up for a chance at scoring this role—I wanted to be as fresh as possible—might be viewed as a dumb risk. However you view it, that risk ended up paying off when that initial audition impressed Walken enough that I was sent to the producers with her championing me to get the role. (More on that later, but I got the gig. Eventually.) And 2002 did end up being a monumental year: I shot the majority of my work on The Sopranos, did my first legitimate off-Broadway play, and got married only eight days before all of my episodes began to air on HBO. It was a very high peak amid a career full of valleys, and it led to what I thought was going to turn into a triumphant mountaintop in 2003.
If my 2003 could be placed on a line graph, it would look like the backside of a mountain, a high point followed by a sharp drop-off. My confidence and momentum remained sky-high through March and then, by April, plummeted to a low that rivaled that of early 2001. Due to the run of the off-Broadway play in 2002, which began rehearsing just before our wedding, my wife and I postponed our honeymoon to Hawaii until January 2003. So, despite that small sacrifice, we began the new year in luxury, counting the blessings of the previous year, excited about the big risk we were about to take—relocating to Los Angeles so I could be there for my first pilot season. That proved to be a huge swing and a miss.
The combination of having just gotten married and my wife not being passionate about her career in ad sales prompted me to convince her to quit her job and come with me to Los Angeles for a few months. I was riding high off of The Sopranos, having received a lot of attention for it on the streets of New York. My agents and I believed that it was time to “strike while the iron was hot.” So, after our honeymoon, we illegally sublet our rental apartment in New York and took on a sublease from one of my high school friends who was looking to unload her place in LA. It was not exactly glamorous, but the palm trees made up for it and, most importantly, I wanted to be right in the mix as they began to cast all of the following season's series now that my career seemed to be on track.
Pilot season 2003 began with a frenzy. Never before had I received so much attention or had as many shots at potential gigs. Everywhere I went I felt like a celebrity. I remember driving to Burbank for a meeting with all the SVPs of casting at NBC and having them gush over me to the point where one of them said, “Oh my God, Cousin Brian! You have to sign a headshot for the guy who cuts our promo videos! He loves you!” I figured I was going to have to fight potential employers off with a stick due to all the demand on me. After all, they loved me … right? February flew by, March continued the frenzy but it slowly began to grind to a halt so that by April, not only did I not have a job, I had not tested for any pilots. In layman's terms, not testing means I never really came too close. The nearest I came to landing an actual job was when I was called back for what's known as a “mix-and-match session” for a “highly anticipated series.” Even though I was never a part of it, that series, much like my pilot season, ended up being a bust anyway.
By the middle of April, we had rifled through more wedding money than I would like to admit, despite being frugal. While I desperately hoped for more opportunities, I was painfully aware that this risk was not going to work out the way I had imagined it. And while there is no silver lining at the end of this particular segment of my life, and I was destined to return to New York City with my tail between my legs, there is at least a small but worthy story about risk that I can share with you.
Knowing that pilot season was essentially over, we went down to Coronado to visit my college friend who was a Navy SEAL and stationed there. After spending the weekend with a large group that consisted of my buddy and his elite friends, one of them invited my wife and me to a Dodgers game the following Tuesday in LA, where he'd be parachuting into Dodger Stadium before the game.
“You have to bet on yourself because if you don't believe enough in yourself, nobody else will. We're all gonna die. The question is: Are we all gonna live? I didn't want to look up from a hospital bed and wonder, why was I too scared to try?”
—Roger Fishman, Adventure Photographer, former Chief of Global Marketing, CAA
Gus Kaminski was a Captain of the Navy SEAL Leapfrogs, their skydiving team. And after watching him and his teammates float onto the field at Dodger Stadium, my wife and I sat with him to watch the game. After telling him how envious I was that he could basically experience flight with a parachute, I lamented about how dead my schedule had become as we stuck around for one last chance at a show. Seeing an opening, he invited us back down to the San Diego area to skydive with him the next day. I wouldn't say that skydiving was necessarily on my bucket list, but when you have a personal connection to a Navy SEAL who is willing to show you and your new bride the ropes, you kind of have to take him up on it. After complaining of being bored by a lack of opportunities and excitement, we decided to take the plunge, literally.
Jumping out of a plane at 13,000 feet is a good way to die if you don't know what you're doing. But if you strap yourself to the Captain of the Leapfrogs, the chances of death diminish considerably. We were able to experience the thrill of flight without the usual risk that attends such a feat. It's not that we didn't take a risk—every skydive is a risk regardless of skill and experience—but we mitigated the chances of failure by seeking counsel and guidance from an expert who could lead the way. But having Kaminski did not remove the fear and excitement that occurs when the door is raised and the entire side of the plane is open to Earth far below. Nor did being strapped to him take away the extreme rush of rocking back and forth three times before launching myself into a backflip, then leveling out and free-falling for over a minute. For a leap to be considered a leap, it must contain the possibility of flight as well as the possibility of plummeting to the earth.
“Sacrifice hurts to the bone.”
—Dr. Christopher J. Burns, MD, FACS, Trauma Surgeon, former US Navy SEAL
Plummeting to the earth is something that I faced in a different way upon returning to New York City at the end of April 2003. The daydreams I'd had of my Sopranos stint leading to me sitting on Letterman's couch to discuss my latest blockbuster film came crashing down into the reality of unemployment. The Buzz of my success was gone. The only thing left was the decision to remove my ego and find a way to start putting food on the table again. I placed myself back behind the three feet of mahogany where I'd slung so many drinks for years. Though there was no way to know it at the time, I'd be bartending for another two years before I could put it behind me for good.
But still, there was a silver lining. Though it may not have paid off for another fifteen years, this was the period when, despite the fact that I'd met my wife while working the bar and had many a laugh behind many a bar, I wanted out of bartending for good. I went back to Backstage magazine. Only this time, I wasn't looking for posts about gigs, I was posting an ad. I began to teach an acting class and coach young actors. While it didn't make me much money, it inspired me. And with the benefit of hindsight, I can now see that the joy I got from teaching turned out to be the seed that eventually grew into the 10,000 NOs podcast in 2017 and now, into this book that you're reading.