by Larry Brody
Back in the late 1960’s, when I was starting out in TV, a very successful mentor named Jack Chertok, who had brought shows like The Lone Ranger (the original version) My Favorite Martian, and My Living Doll to the medium gave me the following advice:
Always burn your bridges. If you can’t go back you’ll have no choice but to keep moving forward in your career.
I took that advice, but I’ve never given it to anyone else because, like so much else in life, sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.
In the late 1960’s and throughout the 1970’s, rebellion was trendy and regularly practiced in many fields. Burning bridges exemplified that trend, and Jack’s advice worked like a charm for me.
But after that it was a different story. Getalong Guys became the big winners, and for better or worse, they still are.
Knowing what I know now, I believe that if I were still young and hungry, I’d probably still play with matches, but even if I was as confident as I was back then, the fires I set would be smaller and relatively easy to extinguish before they got out of control.
You know, just in case.
