This week we bring you another Minisode in our Mantras series – but this one is a little unusual. If you’ve listened to our Matt Damon & Ben Affleck episode, I wonder if you clocked the mantra moment.
Tag Archives: Apple
Rejecting Matt Damon & Ben Affleck
The total box office earnings for Matt Damon and Ben Affleck round out to a cool $10B. They’re A-list actors, Oscar-winners, writers, directors, production company founders. But back in the mid-90s, the best friends were rejected – for movies, for television shows, for commercials. Then one day Matt Damon took a playwriting course at Harvard. What happened next, is a rejection story all of its own.
Rejecting The Beaches
The Beaches. A neighbourhood of Toronto. A band originating from that neighbourhood. The starting point on a long road of rejection, rebuilding, pivoting and triumph. It’s a homegrown story this week.
Short Stories: Rejecting films ‘The Wife’ & ‘The Favourite’
This week, the stories of two 2019 Oscar nominees – ‘The Wife’ and ‘The Favourite.’ Both written by women, both produced by women, both starring women, both rejected for a combined 34 years.
Rejecting George R.R. Martin (Game of Thrones)
George R.R. Martin is the architect behind the greatest fantasy series of all time. Game of Thrones has 59 Emmys, with 159 Emmy nominations – making it the most nominated dramatic television series of all time. Martin’s book series “A Song of Ice and Fire” has reportedly sold nearly 100 million copies. And yet, back in the 1970s, Martin was living at his parents’ house in New Jersey, covering local baseball part-time and getting rejected by sci-fi publications. Then he had a thought – should he abandon writing altogether and become a realtor?
Rejecting Joan Jett
Joan Jett carries two titles – the Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll and the Godmother of Punk. She’s also the first woman rocker to ever start her own record label. Jett is an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with a dozen albums to her name. But back when she enrolled in her first guitar lesson, the teen was told rock and roll was NOT for girls. And that was only the beginning. Jett faced sexism, violence and 23 label rejections.
Rejecting Willie O’Ree (The First Black Player in the NHL)
Willie O’Ree made history in 1958, when the Boston Bruin became the first Black player in the NHL. It is a heroic story of strength, courage and resilience.
Rejecting Vera Wang
Vera Wang is synonymous with bridal. The designer’s eponymous brand brings in a whopping $700M a year. But before launching her own company in 1990, Vera was rejected for editor-in-chief at Vogue. And before that, she didn’t make the cut for the U.S. Olympic figure skating team. Two major setbacks that left her thinking – now what? Then her dad proposed a crazy idea.
Rejecting Slow Horses
The novel Slow Horses by Mick Herron tells the story of a team of disgraced MI5 agents assigned to a bureaucratic dumping ground known as Slough House. They’re, by all accounts, failures – demoted from top tier intelligence to basement busy work. That is, until a kidnapping case lands squarely on their dusty desks – thrusting the slow horses into fast paced espionage.
The irony? That book was rejected. For seven years. Then it was pitched as a television series – and rejected by multiple networks.
To quote Slough House loser-in-chief Jackson Lamb: “They’re losers. But they’re my losers.”