From blueprints to movie screens: Mastering career plot-twists

Once upon a time, an architect got tired of hitting the concrete salary ceiling, so he pivoted to his other passion—movies! How does one leap from floor plans to film reels? What's the connection between drawing skyscrapers and directing stars? The answer: Michael Selditch, the writer, producer, and director behind hits like the OG 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy' and the upcoming documentary Happy Clothes: A Film about Patricia Field.

In a plot twist worthy of Hollywood, Selditch reveals how he seamlessly transitioned from the world of architectural design to the bright lights of film and television. He also shares the secret sauce behind his success: the art and power of networking. Dive into the intriguing journey of Michael Selditch, where architectural blueprints met cinematic scripts, and learn how a little creativity—and a fictional boyfriend—can take you a long way in showbiz.

Hosts and husbands of Living Not So Fabulously, David & John Auten-Schneider, dive into real money stories with activists, allies, artists, tech-gurus, and trailblazers in the LGBTQ+ community to give you tangible takeaways to tackle your wallet woes.

For full episodes of Living Not So Fabulously, watch on our website or listen on your favorite podcast platform.

Yahoo Finance's Living Not So Fabulously is hosted by David & John Auten-Schneider, and created and produced by Rachael Lewis-Krisky.

Video transcript

Welcome to Living.

Not so fabulously, the podcast where we pull back the curtain on money stories from your favorite activists and allies, artists and tech gurus and trailblazing leaders in the LGBT Q plus community.

We are David and John Otton Schneider, your financial coaches and hosts, having experience firsthand, what it's like coming back from debt.

We wanna help you avoid our mistakes to build a life that you want.

So we all can live just a little bit more fabulously.

And now for the show, welcome to Living.

Not so fabulously today we're gonna interview Michael Sel.

Michael Sel is an Emmy Award nominated producer, writer and director, including documentaries and reality TV.

Shows such as the OG Queer Eye for the Straight Guy Plus the new upcoming documentary, Happy Clothes that showcases the life and career of costume designer, Patricia Field, who has designed clothes for a little known show called in the City, as well as a tiny little movie known as the Devil Wears product, right?

Sounds fabulous.

Well, not every part of his life has always been fabulous.

Actually, Michael has had to pivot several times in his career, especially recently when you look at things like changes in the TV landscape.

The writers strike and the global pandemic.

As a matter of fact, the global pandemic is so thing that really affected our community.

Did you know that 56% of LGBT folks, they themselves or somebody in their household had their hours cut were furloughed or even lost their jobs.

Which means that many of us have that experience of having to pivot in our careers.

Two things that can really help with this is not having a lot of high interest rate debt and having a little bit of a buffer in your finances with like an emergency savings account.

As a matter of fact, we have a little bit of experience with this, don't we, John?

Are we going there?

So here I had this great 11 year career working for this company, happy bunny going along about my day and doing pretty good.

And all of a sudden I started to work for this new boss and for whatever reason, I couldn't do anything right for her.

I I could not make her happy in any way, shape or form.

We were like oil and water together.

And what went from happiness became anxiety to all of a sudden became depression and I was spending my nights and weekends sleeping.

It was hard for you to pull me out of bed.

Exactly.

And you liberated us at some point and said, you know what we have no debt.

We have a solid emergency savings account.

Our finances are good.

We don't need to, you don't need to put up with this, but I was able to go in and give my two weeks notice and I'll never forget.

The best part of the story wasn't necessarily being able to leave that situation, but it was being on a team call the last week that I was working for this employer and my boss's boss said, well, what are you gonna do next, John, share it with the team?

So I think the logical thought process is that you'll go from one job to the next because not many people have the liberty of being able to take some time off.

And that's what I did.

I said um well, I don't know what I'm gonna do next.

I'm gonna take some time off and think about it and it was the best way to say, take this job and you know what?

Without actually saying it right.

All right.

So let's dive into the first portion of our interview with Michael where he talks about the art of pivoting in my youth.

I was very frustrated by how slow it was.

And I think it's probably true today still that people don't trust an architect unless they're like 50 years old.

You know, and at that point, I was young in my career, I was just, you know, doing toilet partitions for weeks and weeks and weeks Um And the money as I was always told is not great in architecture.

And at that, you know, in the beginning, I didn't care because I loved it, but that started to become a little cumbersome, especially living in New York City.

Um So at one point I decided, I think I'm gonna change careers.

Um As much as I love architecture, I also loved film.

And so I thought about changing into film and television.

Um You know, I did it somewhat naively at that time.

Um But I was very passionate about it and, and so I went full force.

Um I started by doing um set design.

I thought, well, this is a good way.

I thought about going back to school.

And then I, I was in debt, you know, and I was like, how many masters do I need?

So there were a couple of years where I was still working as an architect as a, as a consultant and I was teaching.

Um and then from that point on was working nonstop for 20 years until COVID, it almost sounded like you, your dream was to be an architect, pursue my dreams to something else.

Well, I think I, I also had a dream about film and television.

I, I remember making short films when I was 10 years old.

So I still, I had, I, I loved both of these things, but I decided to go with architecture.

So when I was getting a little frustrated by, like, not being able to change my salary for so many years or by not doing satisfying work.

Then I thought, well, maybe that other thing that I love is what I should do.

So it wasn't, you know, for a while I thought, oh, maybe I can do both naively and then realized that would not work.

Well, it sounds like you did try to do both.

I did try to do both, but you can't really do one with full force and full passion unless you let go of this other thing you're doing.

So it did get to a point where I decided I really need to concentrate and focus on this if that's what I wanna do.

And then sort of let go of architecture.

I still love architecture.

I actually brought it into my work in television a lot.

I pitched a show in 2008 to Sundance Channel um called Architecture School where we followed students at Tulane University who were building houses for Katrina victims.

And so we followed them for a year.

So anyway, I pitched shows based on architecture.

So it sort of served me and it, it actually became a thing that people were fascinated by when I would interview for other shows that I had this previous career, an architect, it made me stand out a little bit about amongst all the other producers that were out there.

So, and, and I also do find that there's many similarities between making a building and making a film.

And I think I used that stuff that I learned as an architect um to my advantage, shifting careers isn't without its consequences, especially since you went to school and spent so much invested so much into going to architect school.

And one of the challenges that we see in the LGBT Q community is that uh when things just aren't going right in our career, things seem to be stalled.

So many of us do go back to college and acquire more degrees.

And we know folks who have three and four degrees and multiple masters even during, even despite the, the the the um the student loan debt crisis.

Well, if I did it the other way around, I would have had to go back to school.

You can't just decide to be an architect film.

Nobody cares.

Nobody's ever asked me in my 25 years in film.

What school, what film school did you go to?

No one has ever asked me.

And if they had, I would have said I didn't go to film school.

It's one of those weird professions where you can sort of walk into it if you, you know, meet the right people and have some sort of talent.

I mean, talent does count for something but knowing the right people counts for almost more.

You know, one of the things I I love that you mentioned here is this idea of understanding how skills that you had and were using in architecture could be applied to another career.

Absolutely.

I, I never felt like I wasted my time as an architect and I've often felt like if I had to do it all over again, I would have done the same route because there were things that I learned as an architect, you're dealing with a team of people that all have a similar goal to make this thing, whether it's a building or a or a TV show.

Um And as the leader of that and as a showrunner, I was the leader of a TV show.

You know, you need to make sure that everybody feels wanted and safe and that they're all working towards the same goal and working on the same project creatively.

And also the two big things, time and money are both so prevalent in both fields.

You gotta hit your schedule on time and you gotta keep within the budget.

And so I as a, as a showrunner, I was always really good about that because I was so used to doing that as an architect.

When you think about that kind of discussion in your brain about how do I apply skills from this career to maybe something else?

What kind of advice would you give to folks who are listening or watching?

Well, I mean, first of all, you really have to be passionate about it.

You know, you don't wanna change careers, Willy nilly.

Um So you have to be really passionate about it and you have to be really confident that this is what you wanna do and this is that you'll be good at it, you know.

So I think you really need to think it through like that and then you have to go full force.

You can't just tiptoe in, you gotta like really throw yourself into it.

Um, with abandon and, and, and not like, maybe I'll try that, you know, it helped that.

I, I think sometimes that because I was so young when I did it, I was a bit naive, you know, and people will ask me still, why would you ever switch care?

And I think to myself, yeah, this career I switched into was way harder and way more difficult to make money than the one I left.

So I don't know what I was thinking, but it has been more satisfying and it has been turned out to be more lucrative.

So I guess in retrospect I did make the right decision.

Um, but I don't know, somehow, I guess in my youth it didn't seem as scary as it would seem to me.

Now, do you think some of that has to do with kind of the lifestyle that you have now compared to, you have done things that you are quote unquote financially responsible for, made it a little bit easier that your life was maybe a little bit, I don't wanna say simpler.

Sim.

Yeah, simpler might be a good word.

Um, I don't know.

I mean, you know, as, as gay individuals, sometimes we don't have the burden of, you know, a family and other people that you need to support.

So, in that sense, you know, I was always on my own and that autonomy made it a little bit easier.

But, um, I don't know, you know, some of it could have just been the right place at the right time also.

So that was the first part of our interview with Michael.

And to be honest, II, I absolutely love the fact that he talked about so in such a great way about how he pivoted in his career.

Yeah, exactly.

It sounds like Michael was pretty solid with his finances throughout most of his career.

But I, what I thought was brilliant that he said was that you definitely wanna have passion to what you're pivoting towards.

You wanna make sure that that passion is there.

You have to have that motivation.

But I think it was also smart of him to say, what is it that I'm doing in my current career in architecture.

That is a dotted line to what it is.

I wanna do in the entertainment industry.

And I think a lot of us need to sort of think about that.

What is the through line for us?

So with that, we'll be back after this break.

Welcome back.

So before we dive into the second half of our interview with Michael, where he's gonna share with us a little bit more around networking that can help with pivoting.

It kind of reminds me of a personal story when I transitioned from one company to another.

Back in 2007, I took the job as a way to get my foot in the door to this company with the goal of having another position pretty soon.

But unfortunately, 2008, we know what happened, the market crashed.

And uh I kind of felt like I was stuck in the job that I had.

So one of the things that I did was I started to actually have conversations, kind of those water cooler conversations with people on the teams that were around me on the same floor that I was working and they had nothing to do with my current job.

But one of the things that was really great about that is I was starting to talk with people who actually were doing the things that I wanted to do.

And that really set me up with this idea of understanding more about the skills that I was using right then and how I could use those to transition to this other position.

The other thing it reminded me of is the fact that networking doesn't need to be.

I'm networking with you right now kind of thing.

Networking can actually be casual conversations that we have with pretty much anyone we work with or people we engage with outside of work.

So with that, why don't we let Michael share his story in the second part of our interview.

A couple years later, um I got a job on, well, I got an agent and then I got a job um directing Queer Eye, the first Queer Eye in um somewhere in the middle of season one.

I think at that time, I was the first openly gay director, which was Queer Queer Eye in the beginning.

I mean, there, I think there were only two or three other directors in the very beginning.

Um That might have helped.

In fact, I remember that was the first time that I thought to myself, I'm gonna somehow slip into the interview that I'm gay.

Whereas before that, I never would do that even as an architect.

Um because I thought maybe this will help me.

I don't know if that was one of the reasons, but at that point, I had done a lot of really good work in those four years.

I had been nominated for an Emmy before that.

So I was on a roll.

Um And I think all of that mixed together, I think I remember I was trying to think, how am I gonna say casually that I'm gay?

So I came up with the way I said, whatever, whatever they're asking me, I'll tell a story about, like my boyfriend and I didn't even have a boyfriend at that time.

Well, my boyfriend had so and so, and I thought that's how I'm gonna slip it in.

So they know was your boyfriend's name?

Snuffy.

Exactly.

Um, so, anyway, uh, that was an amazing experience.

I was on that show for several seasons as a recurring director.

Um, it was super fun.

Everybody on that show was amazing to work with the showrunner of that show became a real mentor of mine Lynn Sadofsky who um went on to do network stuff and I'd always, you know, II I often in my career, I'd say what would Lynn Sadowsky do in this situation?

Um She was wonderful.

Um a great showrunner and really wonderful to me and the five guys were great.

I'm still talk to three of them.

That show is so profound because I, when, when my, my dad told me he was watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

I was like, what the heck?

It was a crossover moment for many people where straight people were watching the show and it wasn't an issue.

Um I do remember in the beginning of that show though, it was very hard season one for um product placement, like no one wanted to touch it.

And then when the show got huge and it won an Emmy right before I got there, it won an Emmy.

Um Then everybody target, everybody wants to be on it.

But that first season, it was really hard for them to get companies to, they're like, what's it called?

When, what is the show?

They're like?

No, it's not for us.

So it was tough.

But um you know, now it's very different.

So what have been since that, that you're, you're a full fledged filmmaker, producer, what have been some of your favorite projects over the years?

Well, that definitely was one of them.

Um The one I mentioned before that I did for Sundance Channel Architecture School was a really exciting project, partly because I pitched the idea and, and then ran it through my own company.

So I, you know, hired a lot of people over that course of that year and that show went on to win an ID A award which is the um international uh documentary Association.

And um we got a lot of great press from that.

In fact, on the cover of Time magazine in 2008, we were in the list issue as one of the top 10 TV shows.

It was like breaking bad Mad Men, all these amazing shows and then Architecture school.

And I was like, I could not believe that.

So that was definitely a wonderful experience all the way around to do that.

Um I also did a season of Catfish as the showrunner, which was a really fun and very interesting experience.

Um That was um a couple years after that, I think I did that in 2014.

Um Again, networking had helped because the guy that was running that show David Metzler um was on Queer Eye.

So he called me and he's like, I really need somebody to do this season with me and just called me to do it, you know, so, you know, the relationships that you make in this industry and I think it goes for any industry, the relationships that you make along the way.

If you prove yourself to be a good person to work with and good at your job and able to, you know, hit your marks of time and money, you'll get, you know, repeat business and people will call you to do other things.

I think that's a really good point that whether we're in a toxic work environment or we're in a completely thriving work environment, there are connections with people that we make, right?

And sometimes when we're in the toxic work environment, that's where we make some of the really strong connections with people that are our allies are supportive system while we're there and maintaining those relationships, not burning the bridges.

Is that opportunity to move forward?

And I've certainly been in some of those toxic, you know, workplaces also.

What is, what is your best advice for, for, for authentically staying connected and networking with people so that when the opportunity arises, you, you, you're a viable candidate, I think you got it even when you're not working, which has been a lot in the last four years.

Um, you still go out to events, you go out to, um, I, you know, I have a project coming up a film that I'm gonna make, um, that we're going into pre-production in November, a scripted thing that I, that I wrote and um the two producers that I've been working with on this for the last two years I met at a party at a film festival.

So, you know, going out to those events, going to a film festival, I went because a friend of mine had a film in the festival.

I went to all the parties that were involved in that festival, chatted with these two women who were like, oh, what are you working on?

And they wanted to read this script that I was telling them about and now they're my producers and they've gotten this project off the ground that we're gonna make in November.

So the answer to your question is just go out there even if you're not working, go to any event that you can talk to people and you know, be charming and try to make, you know, try to make connections.

But the other advice I would give about my industry is make stuff.

I mean, I've taught in, in my industry a lot and, and um I've taught producing a lot and I always tell people, you know, nowadays with a phone and a laptop, you can make a movie, you know, it's not like in the nineties, even where you really needed some serious money.

I mean, yes, to do it with big stars and all that, you need some money but anybody can make anything with, with their phone and, you know, and some so well, I mean, it, it might not be great but you could do it.

But I say to people, you know, make stuff, make as much stuff as you can put it out there, put it on the internet, apply to film festivals.

Great things have happened to me at film festivals.

I've made, this is my third film, my first two films, I sold them at film festivals.

So festivals are great.

Anybody can make something and submit it to festivals and especially if it's a short and the shorter, the short, the better.

If you make an amazing one minute short, you will get programmed a lot because it's only one minute and they can put it in front of a future.

If you make a 25 minutes short, you're probably not gonna get programmed at many festivals.

I'm gonna go back to something you just mentioned this idea of of you're not, you don't always have to be working and to have the conversations or meet the people that actually can help your career.

One of the things that John and I talk about is having a power tribe and basically we all have kind of two groups of people, we have the people that we work with and then we have our friends group and where that group, where those two groups overlap are the people where you have fun with and you're working with.

And that's the power people that can really help you your career thrive.

And I think all of us need to, to take those kinds of opportunities.

I think that's why it's good to be a part of associations or go to events that are related to your career, even if it's not something that you're doing right now in your career.

Yeah, absolutely.

Or getting on committees.

I mean, I'm, I'm uh, I'm not on the committee but there's an LGBT Q committee for the DG A, the Directors Guild and I go to all their meetings.

Um And I've met a lot of amazing directors uh uh at that, at those meetings.

Um And I'm also then a little more, you know, in the, know about what is happening in my profession with regards to being LGBT Q, Michael.

Any quick plug.

Yeah, I hope everybody will tune into happy clothes.

A film about Patricia field who is the costume designer of like sex and the City, Emily in Paris Devil wears Prada on September 20th, on Apple and Amazon.

We worked on that project.

We shot for about a year, we edit it for like seven months and I managed to stretch out my salary over this long period of time, we premiered at Tribeca in 23.

And so we've been doing a whole year of festivals and now we sold the film.

Uh It's a Greenwich entertainment.

I absolutely love that second part of the interview with Michael.

I think he might have inspired boyfriend in a box.

Maybe, you know, one of the things that he really kind of highlighted there was this whole idea of that no matter what industry we're in, we are all in the people, industry, right?

We're constantly having conversations with other people and it's really those people are the ones that can actually help us pivot from one career to another.

Yeah, I think when you suggest to a lot of LGBT Q plus people to network that creates a lot of anxiety in votes, right?

I don't wanna do that.

Exactly.

But we all have, there are a lot of resources for us to leverage that are maybe just easier environments to be in many larger and even some smaller organizations have affinity groups, employee resource or business resource groups designed for the LGBT Q plus community.

And I think when we were working in corporate America, it was only because we were part of an affinity group that we were able to connect with, who at the time was the highest ranking L LGBT Q plus person in corporate America.

We assumed him as a mentor and that's still a relationship we fostered with him today, 12 years later, we would have never had that opportunity.

Were it not being a part of that affinity group?

And then if you're not a part of a co company or you don't have an affinity group, there are other organizations that outside of corporate America that people can work with.

Yeah.

I think of things like lesbians who tech out in finance, those kinds of associations are a great way to introduce yourself to individuals who might be working in a career path that you want to take yourself.

Yeah, another organization is reaching out NBA for those who have an MB A or want to get their MB A.

So there's a lot of opportunities out there.

Thank you for joining us.

Until next time.

Stay fabulous.

This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services.