{"id":908,"date":"2025-03-30T18:59:34","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T00:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/janajm.com?p=908"},"modified":"2026-07-30T03:44:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T09:44:14","slug":"duplass-self-advocacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/duplass-self-advocacy\/","title":{"rendered":"The cavalry isn\u2019t coming."},"content":{"rendered":"

Writer, director, and actor Mark Duplass gave a 2015 keynote<\/a> at SXSW where he debunked the concept of what he calls \u2018the cavalry.\u2019 The cavalry is any person, group, or company that you think will miraculously happen to notice your tremendous ability, your amazing work, your untapped potential \u2014 and, from there, pluck you out of obscurity into success.<\/p>\n

As he explains it,<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve all heard these amazing tales of how that 21-year-old kid had a script, and his cousin worked in the mail room at Warner Brothers, and he gave it to him, and the script got up to the head of Warner Brothers. They loved it, and they bought it for a million dollars, and got it made.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s an exciting story, but a super dangerous one, because I don\u2019t know anyone that\u2019s happened to.<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

Every single project I have made I\u2019ve had to self-generate. The truth is, still, when you are at this place \u2014 when I am at this place that I am at \u2014 the cavalry is not coming. You are the cavalry.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think more and more in terms of his concept of the cavalry these days, as \u2014 through both failure and success \u2014 I\u2019ve come to recognize just how right he was about it. You don\u2019t have to do it all<\/em> yourself, but you will almost certainly have to be the one who at least gets the ball rolling by putting yourself forward for consideration in some way.<\/p>\n

His keynote includes some specific pieces of advice on how to be the cavalry within the context of the industry he works in, so it\u2019s worth a watch if that industry is also your industry. I talk a bit about ways I\u2019ve practiced that kind of self-advocacy here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

This post is 1 of 3 posts included in the March instalment of my \u201cAs [month] ends, I\u2019m thinking about\u2026\u201d series. You can read the main post here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Jana M. Perkins, PhD, M.Sc., M.A.<\/strong>, is an award-winning scholar and the director of Women of Letters<\/em>. Her research has garnered over a quarter of a million dollars in funding from leading institutions across North America and the UK, including the University of Cambridge and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). As an academically trained data scientist with a background in classical literary scholarship, her expertise extends across disciplines to yield the unique analytical frameworks which characterize her approach. Her forthcoming first book<\/a>, co-authored with Miranda Brun Hickman, will be published by Routledge.<\/p>\n

Visit her online at janajm.com<\/a> or @janajm<\/a> on Instagram.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writer, director, and actor Mark Duplass gave a 2015 keynote at SXSW where he debunked the concept of what he calls \u2018the cavalry.\u2019 The cavalry is any person, group, or company that you think will miraculously happen to notice your tremendous ability, your amazing work, your untapped potential \u2014 and, from there, pluck you out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t