Dealing With Stars

Most of the employees of your studios are going to be good worker bees. You won't have to worry about the moods or temperaments of janitors or scriptwriters, for instance. You will, however, have to coddle and take care of your stars and directors, or they'll become unhappy and give poor performances in films. Here are a few tips on taking care of your high-maintenance stars and getting the most out of them.

Pre-selection

This is precisely the kind of star that you want to avoid.

When someone lines up at your Stage School for a job as an actor or director, you'll have the opportunity to check them out (by right-clicking on them) and see some basic personality variables, such as their calmness, resistance to stress and boredom, and tolerance for food and alcohol. You can also check out their looks and physique, which determine their overall ability to attract audiences, but analyzing their personalities is arguably more important, because it will help you know which prospective talent will be easy-going and hardworking, and which will be almost unusable due to their high-strung neediness. Although there are plenty of variables to look at here, most of the time you'll spot rankings in the three or four categories you need to worry about. (If a variable doesn't appear in their little bubble, then you can presumably assume that they're of average tolerance in that category.)

Stress: Bar none, the most important category to look for in a prospective star or director is the capacity for stress. Making movies is a stressful job, after job, especially when you put your stars through the Hollywood ringer. We'll deal with stress-management tips elsewhere in this chapter, but for now, now that stars with attributes like "Doesn't Stress Easily" are going to be easier to live with than those that get stressed out quickly. Stress can be dealt with, but it's difficult to do so.

Boredom: We never found boredom to be much of a game-breaker in itself, but it can be difficult to manage a star that has a problem with both boredom and stress, since those factors often counterbalance each other. Stars with low tolerance for boredom need to be kept busy, either in rehearsals, filming movies, or practicing on a set. If you leave them to their own devices, they'll get bored easily and will thus be unhappy. Again, we'll talk about dealing with boredom elsewhere in this chapter.

Kristen, however, is going to be easy to work with, even if she does have a name that reminds you of cheese.

Food Addiction: Food is a good antidote to stress for your stars, so you'll want to try and pick people that "Eat To Live" instead of "Live To Eat." Otherwise, you won't be able to feed them as much to relieve stress. If you overfeed a star that has a low tolerance for food, they're liable to become addicted, which isn't a good thing, since you'll have to cart them off to rehab.

Drink Addiction: If a star loves to drink, then they're likely to become addicted to drinking when you plop them down at a bar for some stress relief. Drinking is one of the most efficient ways to relieve stress, so if at all possible, you'll want to ensure that a star that tends to get stressed out has a good tolerance for alcohol.

If a prospective star is easily stressed, then you can counteract that with drink or food, so that alone isn't worth passing them over. (You will likely have to stop production on longer films in the middle of shooting to de-stress them, though.) If, however, you're forced to hire someone that's easily stressed, easily bored, and has a low tolerance for food and drink, then you'll probably either want to hire them and fire them immediately to attract new talent, or just hire them as an extra. Extras won't need to be mollycoddled like stars are, so you'll be able to get away with paying them less and working them into the ground if you wish.