Hasta La Gadget!

The 16th Annual BET Awards aired on Sunday and it was lit for so many reasons.

The night was filled with special moments that reminded us how hilarious, magical and talented black artists are. Between the dope performances, reminders to stay woke and the ultimate ode to Prince, the event was one to remember. In case you didn’t see the show or just want to relive it, here are 14 moments that made the 2016 BET Awards truly unforgettable:

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In 1919 Helen Keller (second from right) joined a union picket line outside a New York theater showing “Deliverance,” a film about her life. In 1962, Patty Duke portrayed Keller in the film, “The Miracle Worker,” costarring Ann Bancroft.

Today is Helen Keller Day, which commemorates her birth on June 27, 1880. Keller remains one of the most well-known, beloved, but misunderstood public figures in American history.

Nothing better reflects this than the bronze statue of Keller that sits in the U.S. Capitol. It shows the blind Keller standing at a water pump. It depicts the moment in 1887 when her teacher, Anne Sullivan, spelled “W-A-T-E-R” into one of Keller’s hands while water streamed into the other hand of the seven-year-old girl. This was Keller’s awakening, when she made the connection between the word Sullivan spelled into her hand and the tangible substance splashing from the pump, whispering “wah-wah,”–her way of saying “water.”

This scene, made famous in the play and film “The Miracle Worker,” has long defined Keller in the public mind as a symbol of courage in the face of overwhelming odds.

“Some are still dismissed and cast aside for nothing more than being less than perfect,” said then Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the conservative Republican from Kentucky, at the unveiling ceremony for the statue in 2009. “The story of Helen Keller inspires us all.”

Senators Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi help unveil a statue of Keller in the U.S. Capitol in 2009.

When in 1980 President Jimmy Carter proclaimed June 27 as Helen Keller Day, he said: “Her incredible fight against, and eventual triumph over, the multiple handicaps of deafness and blindness made her a world-famous symbol of hope for all handicapped people.”

Like most Americans, McConnell and Carter clearly had no idea that Keller was a lifelong radical who embraced socialism, pacifism, and feminism. She participated in the great movements for social justice of her time. She was the founder of what today is called the disability rights movement. In her investigations into the causes of blindness, she discovered that poor people were more likely than the rich to be blind, and soon connected the mistreatment of the blind to the oppression of workers, women, and other groups. Like all radicals — in her own day and today — Keller believed in justice, not just charity.

She was angry at the way she was portrayed in the popular media of her day. In a 1924 letter to fellow radical Senator Robert La Follette, Keller wrote:

“So long as I confine my activities to social service and the blind, they compliment me extravagantly, calling me ‘arch priestess of the sightless,’ ‘wonder woman,’ and a “modern miracle.” But when it comes to a discussion of poverty, and I maintain that it is the result of wrong economics — that the industrial system under which we live is at the root of much of the physical deafness and blindness in the world — that is a different matter! It is laudable to give aid to the handicapped. Superficial charities make smooth the way of the prosperous; but to advocate that all human beings should have leisure and comfort, the decencies and refinements of life, is a Utopian dream, and one who seriously contemplates its realization indeed must be deaf, dumb, and blind.”

Keller was born on a plantation in Tuscumbia, Alabama, to Arthur Keller, a former Confederate officer and a conservative newspaper publisher, and Kate Keller, a descendant of John Adams. At nineteen months old, she lost her sight and hearing as a result of a fever. She became uncontrollable, prone to tantrums, kicking, biting, and smashing anything within reach. In that era, many blind and deaf people were consigned to an asylum. Some family members suggested that this was where Helen belonged.

Instead, her mother contacted the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, which recommended that a former student, the twenty-year-old Sullivan, become Helen’s private tutor. In 1887 Sullivan — the daughter of poor Irish immigrants and nearly blind herself — moved to the Kellers’ home. She helped calm Helen’s rages and helped channel her insatiable curiosity and exceptional intelligence. She patiently spelled out letters and words in Keller’s hand. With Sullivan’s support, Keller soon learned to read and write Braille, and by the age of ten she had begun to speak.

Her story became well known and she became a celebrity: Newspapers and magazines in Europe and America wrote glowing stories about the young Keller. She was sometimes called the “8th wonder of the world.”

Her family connections and fame opened up many opportunities for Keller, including private schools and an elite college education. Mark Twain, who admired Keller’s courage and youthful writings, introduced her to Standard Oil tycoon Henry Huttleston Rogers, who paid for her education. She later acknowledged, “I owed my success partly to the advantages of my birth and environment. I have learned that the power to rise is not within the reach of everyone.”

In 1894, at 14, Keller began formal schooling — initially at the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf in New York and then at the Cambridge School for Young Ladies. Sullivan accompanied her, spelling into her hand letter-by-letter, so she could read the books assigned in her classes. In 1900, at age twenty, Keller entered Radcliffe College, with Sullivan still at her side. At Radcliffe (from which she graduated magna cum laude in 1904), Keller was first exposed to the radical ideas that helped her draw connections among different forms of injustice. She began to write about herself and her growing understanding of the world.

Keller’s graduation photo from Radcliffe College in 1904. Keller with Eleanor Roosevelt.

In 1901, in an article entitled “I Must Speak” in the Ladies Home Journal, Keller wrote, “Once I believed that blindness, deafness, tuberculosis, and other causes of suffering were necessary, unpreventable. But gradually my reading extended, and I found that those evils are to be laid not at the door of Providence, but at the door of mankind; that they are, in large measure, due to ignorance, stupidity and sin.”

She visited slums and learned about the struggles of workers and immigrants to improve their working and living conditions. “I have visited sweatshops, factories, crowded slums,” she wrote, “If I could not see it, I could smell it.”

In 1908 Sullivan’s husband, John Macy, a socialist, encouraged Keller to read H. G. Wells’s New Worlds for Old, which influenced her views about radical change. She soon began to devour Macy’s extensive collection of political books, reading socialist publications (often in German Braille) and Marxist economists. In addition to giving inspirational lectures about blindness, Keller also talked, wrote, and agitated about radical social and political causes, making her class analysis explicit in such books as Social Causes of Blindness (1911), The Unemployed (1911), and The Underprivileged (1931). In 1915, after learning about the Ludlow Massacre — where John D. Rockefeller’s private army killed coal miners and their wives and children in a labor confrontation in Colorado — Keller denounced him as a “monster of capitalism.”

In 1909 Keller joined the Socialist Party, wrote articles in support of its ideas, campaigned for its candidates, and lent her name to help striking workers. Although she was universally praised for her courage in the face of her physical disabilities, she now found herself criticized for her political views. The editor of the Brooklyn Eagle attacked her radical ideas, attributing them to “mistakes sprung out of the manifest limitations of her development.” In her 1912 essay “How I Became a Socialist,” published in the Call, a socialist newspaper, Keller wrote, “At that time, the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error.”

Keller was part of wide circle of reformers and radicals who participated in a variety of overlapping causes. She was a strong advocate for women’s rights and women’s suffrage, writing in 1916: “Women have discovered that they cannot rely on men’s chivalry to give them justice.” She supported birth control and praised its leading advocate, Margaret Sanger, with whom she had many mutual friends. Keller argued that capitalists wanted workers to have large families to supply cheap labor to factories but forced poor children to live in miserable conditions. “Only by taking the responsibility of birth control into their own hands,” Keller said, “can [women] roll back the awful tide of misery that is sweeping over them and their children.”

She donated money to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) — then a young and controversial civil rights organization that focused on opposition to lynching and job and housing discrimination against African Americans — and wrote for its magazine. At an antiwar rally in January 1916, sponsored by the Women’s Peace Party at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Keller said,

“Congress is not preparing to defend the people of the United States. It is planning to protect the capital of American speculators and investors. Incidentally this preparation will benefit the manufacturers of munitions and war machines. Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought! Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder! Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings! Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction!”

In 1918 she helped found the American Civil Liberties Union, which was initially organized to challenge the U.S. government’s attempts to jail or deport radicals who opposed World War I, including Socialists and members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and to suppress their ideas.

The following year she wrote a letter, addressed to “Dear Comrade,” to Eugene Debs, the Socialist labor leader and presidential candidate who was in jail for advocating draft resistance during World War I. She wrote, “I want you to know that I should be proud if the Supreme Court convicted me of abhorring war, and doing all in my power to oppose it.”

In 1919 Keller played herself in a silent film about her life, Deliverance. On August 18 that year, the actors at the New York theater where the film was being shown went on strike, and Keller joined the Actors Equity union’s picket line and spoke at their strike meetings. In an article for the Call, Keller wrote that she would “rather have the film fail than aid the managers in their contest with the players.”

In 1924, while campaigning for Senator La Follette, the Wisconsin radical and anti-war stalwart who was running for president on the Progressive Party ticket, Keller wrote him a note: “I am for you because you stand for liberal and progressive government. I am for you because you believe the people should rule. I am for you because you believe that labor should participate in public life.”

After 1924 Keller devoted most of her time and energy to speaking and fund-raising for the American Foundation for the Blind. But she still supported radical causes. Even as feminism began to ebb, she continued to agitate for women’s rights. In 1932 she wrote an article for Home magazine, “Great American Women,” praising the early suffragists Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and she penned a humorous article for the Atlantic Monthly, “Put Your Husband in the Kitchen.”

Between 1946 and 1957 she visited 35 countries on five continents. In 1948 Keller visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cities destroyed by American atomic bombs at the end of World War II, and spoke out against nuclear war.

In 1955 at the height of the Cold War, she wrote a public birthday greeting and letter of support to Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a leading Communist activist, then in jail on charges of violating the Smith Act. In response, some supporters of the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), for which Keller was the national face, threatened to withdraw their support. The AFB’s executive director wrote to one of his trustees, “Helen Keller’s habit of playing around with communists and near communists has long been a source of embarrassment to her conservative friends.”

The FBI kept Keller under surveillance for most of her adult life for her radical views.

But Keller, who died in 1968, never saw a contradiction between her crusade to address the causes of blindness and her efforts to promote peace, economic equality, and social justice.

Keller is well known for being blind, but she also deserves to be heralded for her progressive social vision.

Peter Dreier is the E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. His most recent book is The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame (Nation Books)

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

This Post originally appeared on the blog ScreenCraft. ScreenCraft is dedicated to helping screenwriters and filmmakers succeed through educational events, screenwriting competitions and the annual ScreenCraft Screenwriting Fellowship program, connecting screenwriters with agents, managers and Hollywood producers. Follow ScreenCraft on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Whether it be through screenwriting books, panels, seminars, Youtube videos, or blogs like ScreenCraft’s very own here, screenwriters are often bombarded by words of wisdom, declarations about the film and television industry, and stories about this or that successful screenwriter and how they got to where they are today.

Information is power and screenwriters should be seeking it out, but sometimes you need a more personal touch. You need to hear beyond the general declarations and rhetoric and get some personal insight to create a context that you can relate to. You need to not only hear the success stories, but the failures as well.

So that’s what I’ll be doing here in this post. Many of these truths you’ve heard or read many times, but here I’m offering the personal experiences — successes and failures — to back them up in hopes of helping help you, the screenwriter, adapt the lessons learned to your own situation.

My Story

For context purposes, here is the breakdown of my Hollywood journey thus far.

I’ve worked in the film industry since 1999, starting in the trenches as a movie extra — just to get on set. I then worked briefly for the National Research Group, handing out studio test screening tickets to annoyed citizens and tourists. I eventually interned with Grease director Randal Kleiser, learning the ins and outs of script coverage.

After moving across the street from Sony Studios, I would jog around the perimeter, peeking into the gates. I’d watch Sony employees and crew members coming in and out of the studio with their Sony badges. I longed for one. I applied for assistant positions through their job website to no avail. One day, fed up, I walked up to a Sony Security Guard and asked, “How do I get a job here?”

Two weeks later I was a Sony Security Guard.

I talked my way into working the VIP gate where I was face-to-face with Hollywood’s A-list on a daily basis. From there, I talked my way into an office position and eventually became a studio liaison for Sony Studios, working directly with incoming film and television productions, as well as incoming studio executives and term deals (talent like Adam Sandler and Sam Raimi that had production offices on lot).

Now I was working on the studio end of major productions like the Spider-Man franchise, Men in Black II, Charlie’s Angels, Bad Boys II, S.W.A.T., Something’s Gotta Give, 50 First Dates, Zathura, and The Da Vinci Code, to name a few. I was playing basketball with Adam Sandler and his Happy Madison Productions crew. I had my own studio golf cart where I’d often escape into the magic of Hollywood, driving around the studio and seeing Steven Spielberg drive past as giraffes and other exotic animals were herded to a stage near cranes that were transporting space ships to an adjacent stage. Only in Hollywood.

I then became a script reader and story analyst for Sony Pictures, reading, analyzing, and writing studio coverage for hundreds of screenplays and novels from both established and up-and-coming screenwriters and authors.

I left the studio after my first son was born to stay at home with him as I focused on my own writing. Once I started to gain some momentum, I had representation and many studio meetings under my belt. After relocating back to my home state of Wisconsin so my wife and I could raise our son (now sons) closer to family, I managed to sign my very first paid writing deal with Lionsgate. Two writing assignments with Larry Levinson Productions followed, including the produced miniseries Blackout, starring Anne Heche, Sean Patrick Flanery, Billy Zane, James Brolin, Haylie Duff, Brian Bloom, Eric La Salle, and Bruce Boxleitner. In 2014, I was named as the grand prize winner of ScreenCraft’s Action & Thriller Contest for my spec script The Enemy Within.

Now, as I’m hot off of a recent trip to Los Angeles with some successful meetings under my belt and an amazing meet up with an iconic screenwriter — Jim Uhls (Fight Club), perhaps the most genuine Hollywood figure I’ve met — allow me to reflect on what I’ve learned after all of these years… the hard way.

1. It’s Not WHAT You Know, It’s WHO You Know

My first representation came from a referral via an alumni to a Wisconsin college that I didn’t even graduate from. I sent them a script, they worked at Paramount, put it through their system, it tracked well, and that person gave the script to the guy who would eventually become my manager. That manager took the script out wide, leading to meetings at Sony, Warner Brothers, Dreamworks, Universal, and Disney.

My studio assignment that was produced with a name cast (Blackout – Sonar Entertainment) came to me from a fellow Wisconsinite that was now a successful producer and executive. We connected based solely on our Wisconsin connection. He read my spec scripts, loved the writing, and offered me the job.

Two young college students — both named Molly ironically enough — attained dream internships at Sony after they connected with me as a fellow Wisconsinite.

I had the dream opportunity of pitching a sequel to the Rambo franchise and actually having the rights holders like it enough to consider the eventual script. That opportunity started with someone I knew from Quora, where I’ve been a top writer for the last four years.

Friends, I’d love to tell you that in the end, it all depends on the quality of your writing. I’d love to say that your talents will shine through any trials and tribulations that come your way. I would love to, but it’s just not so.

In the film industry, it is who you know to a large degree.

But don’t worry, if you don’t know anyone you can make such connections. You have to look into your life and the people around you and find some connection within the film industry. Even if it stems from people you may not have directly met. Perhaps you find an alumni from your high school or college working in the film industry. Perhaps you have a friend of a friend of a friend within the walls of a movie studio. Whatever it may be, you need to seek those people out — and exploit that connection to sometimes pride-swallowing degrees.

2. Who You Know Doesn’t Always Matter

All of that said above, despite the contacts I had made during my time as a Sony studio liaison working with incoming film and television production, executives, and talent, none of my varied success came from any of them.

Despite the contacts I had made as a script reader for Sony Pictures, no deals came about.

Despite Adam Sandler snapping my ACL in two while I was covering him in a basketball game. Despite him fetching me water, helping me off of the basketball court, and despite one-on-one conversations with him before and after, no big screenwriting opportunities materialized.

Who you know doesn’t always grant you the opportunity you need. And when that realization comes into focus within your mind, you have to shift gears, keep all cynicism at bay, and find another path.

3. It’s Not About BACK WHEN, It’s About RIGHT NOW

My back when memories are pretty stellar.

I worked for major productions through my studio liaison position at Sony. I mingled with A-List talent, producers, directors, and executives on the studio lot.

I worked at Sony as a script reader under the late Hollywood legend John Calley. I learned how to spot a great script. I learned the guidelines and expectations — what they loved and what they hated. And I used all of that in my own writing.

In turn, I then had some great momentum early on in my screenwriting career. Courted by major studio executives. Sitting in their big offices. I eventually made some money with that Lionsgate deal and some studio assignments. I even had something produced with a name cast. In short, I’ve been blessed with what thousands would kill for (metaphorically speaking).

But, that was back when, and this is right now.

None of the back when means anything. At the very most, such history garners me an extra foot in the door.

But overall, it’s never about what you’ve done prior. It’s what you’re doing now.

Don’t dwell on the past. It doesn’t matter if a year ago, X producer said that your script was brilliant, or you placed in the top ten percent of the Nicholl Fellowship, or you won that big contest.

Let that go. It’s worth mentioning in your queries. It gives you validity, sure. But inside your body, mind, and soul, you can’t cling onto the past. It’ll drive you crazy when no one is calling. It’ll break your heart when no one is getting back to you. “But so and so loved it, why can’t you?”

Focus on the now, not the back when…

4. Nobody Knows Anything

William Goldman said this. And there is no truer statement about the film and television industry.

I’ve had scripts that have impressed others enough to hire me for paid gigs only to see those very same scripts outright rejected by other producers and development executives.

I’ve been told countless times that relocating back to my home state of Wisconsin was a mistake and that my screenwriting goals would never happen two thousand miles away from Hollywood. One Lionsgate deal, two assignments, and a produced miniseries with a name cast proved otherwise.

No one knows anything. Use this as both a cautionary phrase and as one that gives you hope.

The industry insider that has told you that your script is brilliant and it will surely sell, sell, sell? He doesn’t know anything. Thus, don’t put all of your eggs in that one basket.

And when another says your script has no market and will surely NOT sell? She doesn’t know anything. Don’t throw the script away. Understand and listen to the general guidelines and expectations of the industry, yes, but don’t let these people force you to make any rash decisions.

5. Stack Your Deck

One script is not enough. It’s not. You WILL NOT sell your first script. So just get that out of your head right now.

I speak from experience. When my first marque spec script Doomsday Order went out and I got all of those meetings at major studios, I was cursed from the get go. It happened too fast. I didn’t have a follow-up script to offer.

The most common question you will get in a studio meeting after discussing the script that got you into the door is, “What else do you have?”

“Um, I-I’m working on some stuff… developing…” Done. You’ve lost them. You’re not a screenwriter yet in their eyes. You, at best, have potential. And potential doesn’t get a deal offered or a contract signed.

You need more to bring to the table so that when they do ask that question, you can have those additional scripts in hand. You can show them that you’re not some one-trick pony, one-hit wonder, or weekend warrior.

So when you finish that first script, don’t even market it. Don’t even try to get representation. Don’t even send it out to anyone. I implore you. No matter how good it may be. Stop. Write some more. Get at least three great scripts in your deck. Then take them all out.

If it is all about luck — and it really is much of the time — you can’t sacrifice those lucky moments by not having more to show them when they ask. Those lucky moments may never return. So stop, take a step back, and make sure you have a stacked deck before you put your cards into play.

6. Don’t Trust the Buzz and the Kudos

I’ve had amazing Hollywood meetings that I’ve walked out punch drunk with the kudos that were thrown my way. I’ve had producers and development executives rave about my scripts and writing. Such experiences will intoxicate you.

Don’t trust it.

You can revel in the moment for awhile, but you must quickly bring yourself down from the clouds and know that just because they seem to love you, doesn’t mean it’s a done deal. Just because you had a great conversation with someone, doesn’t mean they’re going to sign you. Just because they love your script, doesn’t mean it’s going to be optioned, purchased, or produced.

It’s wonderful when meetings and emails go so well. Screenwriters need that boost amidst the constant rejection. But for survival, you have to learn to see past the buzz and the kudos.

I have one major motto when it comes to dealing with any positive lead — It’s nothing until I’m signing on the dotted line.

7. Everyone in Hollywood Knows Each Other

It’s very tempting in your communication with development executives, producers, agents, and managers to fluff your resume a bit. You may be writing a query email and feel the temptation to do so or misrepresent a contact, relationship, or “interested parties.” Perhaps you’re merely telling a half truth and you think that there’s no harm in doing so.

Everyone in Hollywood seems to know each other because that approach will always come back to bite you in the ass.

My younger self sent plenty of exaggerated truths in hopes of impressing contacts enough to consider my work, only to learn that those contacts knew the people and companies I had mentioned. It’s embarrassing and can burn bridges.

Furthermore, if you’ve showcased a bad attitude or any form of negative qualities, it’s funny how word spreads so fast in Hollywood.

Keep it real. Don’t over-exaggerate the relationships with industry people you may or may not have met. Don’t over-exaggerate the “buzz” that your script has had. Don’t over-exaggerate the “kudos” you’ve received.

Example: If your college friend is an intern at Dreamworks, has read your script and likes it, you shouldn’t go email hoards of managers and agents saying that Dreamworks is interested in your script.

8. There’s Always Another Goal You Will Struggle to Attain

The struggle never stops.

Too many screenwriters think that once they win that contest, everything will fall into place. Then they think that once they attain representation, the deals will come rolling in. When they get that first paid writing gig, they believe that more will soon come. Surely when they get a script finally produced with a name cast and their name in the opening credits, studios will come calling.

I’ve personally reached all of these pinnacles and I can attest to the fact that the grind of being a screenwriter never goes away for most of us. When you reach one level of success (contest win, representation, paid gig, produced credit, etc.) another desired and seemingly unattainable level quickly appears.

You just have to keep pushing forward and never get comfortable.

9. Always Take the Bottle of Water Offered to You

When you do manage to get your work noticed and nab a manager, you’ll go on what the industry insiders call the water bottle tour. This consists of many general meetings that your manager will set up with various development executives and producers.

They’ve read your script (or their assistant gave it rave reviews in coverage) and have seen some potential. Now they want to meet you and get a feel for what and who you are.

When you go into each meeting you’ll be offered a bottle of water.

Now, pride might temp you to say, “No thanks.” Good manners might tempt you to do the same.

Disregard either and take that bottle of water.

I learned the hard way. I was at a meeting at Joel Silver Pictures on the Warner Brothers lot years ago during my own water bottle tour after Doomsday Order attracted lots of attention.

The development executive welcomed me in and introduced me to two or three other executives. It was a casual group and they weren’t intimidating by any means. I was, of course, offered a bottle of water and I declined politely. As the meeting went on, things were going great. They loved the script. We had an amazing report.

Then I was asked to pitch my follow-up script.

My throat seized. I couldn’t get a word out. My mouth dried up. So here I am, with these four development executives staring at me, and every time I try to speak, it leads to coughing and silence.

“Do you want some water?”

Again, out of pride or naive politeness, I declined. More silence ensued until I could finally — barely — talk again. The meeting was over five minutes later.

What started out so well, ended so embarrassingly.

Always take the water bottle.

More from ScreenCraft:

• A Screenwriter’s Experience of Visiting Pixar Animation Studios
• 3 Most Common Conceptual Mistakes Screenwriters Make

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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