Andy Wasif and Mikul Robins wrote the book for the questions you do not know to ask yet, and the distinction they draw in the opening is the one that makes it worth your time: this is not a book about moving to Los Angeles. It is a book about living there.
That difference is bigger than it sounds. Plenty of advice exists on the move itself, and most of it is logistics you could work out on your own given an afternoon. What nobody tells you is what the year after the move is like, and that is when most people who go out there quietly decide it is not for them.
Who wrote it
Wasif has spent two decades working in Los Angeles and trained at Upright Citizens Brigade and iO. He has done the job from most of the available angles: producer, actor, executive assistant, network page, comedy teacher, script consultant, jokewriter and screenwriter.
That range is the reason the book is useful rather than just entertaining. Somebody who has only ever acted knows one corridor of the building, and the parts of the industry that decide an actor's week are mostly in the other corridors.
The tone
It is funny, and deliberately so. If what you want is a sober professional handbook then the jokes will get in the way and you should buy something else. If you have already read four earnest guides to the industry and would like one written by somebody who finds the place as absurd as you do, the tone is the point rather than a decoration on it.
Where it will not help you
It is about Los Angeles specifically. If you are weighing New York, Atlanta, Chicago or London, much of it does not transfer, and the parts that do are the parts you would have guessed anyway.
It is also not a career book. It will not get you an agent, it has nothing to say about your reel, and it will not tell you whether you are ready. It tells you what the place is like to live in while you find that out, which is a different and less crowded subject.
Worth reading if
You are seriously considering the move, and you have been told by three people that it was the best decision they ever made and by three others that it ruined them. Both groups are describing the same city. This is a cheap way to work out which of them you would be, before you sign a lease.
Finished reading? Build yours next.
It takes about 76 seconds and it starts free, with your credits, headshots and reels already in it.
Build mine free→