Across-the-Line: The Invisible Labor and Cultural Mechanics of Hollywood’s Entry-Level Workforce
Kiah Bennett / Muhlenberg College

Figure 1. “I wish I was born an industry plant 🪴😔”

In my last Flow essay, “Parallel Hierarchies,” I introduced the concept of “across-the-line” production culture. In it, I defined “across-the-line” as “a designation to identify those workers who strive to get across the line, and their positions and production culture as an industrial ‘training grounds’ wherein Hollywood’s above-the-line cultural expectations are shored up.” In this essay, I aim to clarify how across-the-line functions as a distinct production culture, contextualizing its place in industry, while focusing more on how these workers self-constitute as their own group within the various networks that they connect to.

Providing explicit visibility and language to talk about this indistinct, yet coordinated group serves two main purposes. First, within scholarship, defining this production culture meets Caldwell’s call regarding researching “production’s messier connective behaviors” in Specworld (2023, ix): “since unexceptional complexity in large systems frustrates attempts at systematic research, finding ways to meaningfully delimit the evidence we analyze is necessary.” Indeed, I share Caldwell’s unease of crafting “bounded, self-evident categories” within media industry studies, and his skepticism about the possibility to productively add to these categories. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to in an effort to “make cinema and media studies more inhabited, more dimensional” (2023, x). [1] With this effort, I am trying to define a production culture that evades clear definition; therefore, I enthusiastically welcome feedback to support me in this effort. Second, naming this group also provides a clearer understanding of the practices and cultural mechanisms “across-the-line” production culture serves as the invisible hand that keeps Hollywood running. This essay demonstrates this second point by demonstrating how support staffers actively cultivate “across-the-line” production culture.

Cutting across traditional labor divides, across-the-line not only unifies our understanding of early-career workers through shared conditions and experiences but also reflects how these workers self-define their organizational identities. Many of us are already familiar with various ways these workers have self-constituted “across-the-line” identity and experiences in films and TV shows like The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Entourage (TV series: 2004-2011, Film: 2015), or Hacks (2021- ). All of these texts were created, written, adapted, and/or produced by former across-the-line assistants, interns, coordinators, staff writers and support staffers. They function as self-referential commentary and, as many of my interviewees noted, accurate depictions of across-the-line expectations, production cultures, and workplace experiences. Similarly, across-the-liners also use memes, like Figure 1 from the Instagram page Assistants vs. Agents, to (trauma) bond over and depict their (sometimes absolutely absurd, as is the case in Figure 2) experiences. Recognizing across-the-line as its own production culture, with its own shared experiences, practices, and self-referential texts, provides a critical vantage point for analyzing Hollywood’s labor hierarchies, particularly the ideological and discursive expectations imposed on entry-level workers through the enduring mythology of “paying dues.” [2]

In short, across-the-line production culture is made up of precariously employed early-career support staff for Hollywood creatives, executives, and agencies. Notably, these workers are purposefully invisible to the broader public because their job responsibilities center on the process of how “the sausage is made.” I assert that across-the-line constitutes a distinct production culture: an unofficial, decentralized mutual aid coalition that functions as a discursive training ground and probationary apprenticeship for above-the-line aspirants. Rather than a structured mentorship, these workers undergo a sink-or-swim “social apprenticeship,” learning Hollywood’s cultural expectations and the social mechanics required to produce a film or TV show while sharing resources to navigate the industry.

Figure 2. “And you thought you had a bad boss”

Across-the-line produces labor, economic, information, and legacy value to the broader industry. In addition to the day-to-day job requirements of keeping their supervisors’ projects, schedules, communications, and—at times—lives organized, these workers function as their own self-contained group of open source information and knowledge sharing that broader industrial discourses rely on. These groups support each other as the Hollywood “underlings” by providing knowledge and guidance to one another when guidance from their superiors tends to be more scant. For example, Izzy, a showrunner’s assistant whom I interviewed in 2021, describes this kind of support as follows:

Generally yes, I do feel supported by other assistants. I see that in the way that we network online on Awesome Assistants and some of the listservs that we’re on, being able to provide scripts for each other when we need it or contact information or just being able to vent to each other online. There is also a lot of resource sharing with our own little private craigslist situation because we all know we’re working from the same lack of economic resources. We tend to go to each other when we need a room, when we need a piece of furniture, when we need whatever or when we have those things to offer each other. That feels supportive. And then on the work front, I would say I felt mostly supported by the people who I have replaced at my various jobs.

Here, Izzy notes how this open source information sharing is built on the understanding that economic precarity requires across-the-line workers to band together to be knowledge-wealthy in order to survive in industry. Across-the-line workers increasingly have to rely on each other, as figure 3 illustrates from a survey of over 5000 workers in industry conducted by Assistants vs. Agents. Additionally, as executive assistants Leon and Rob share in their 2019 interviews, individuals in this group use the knowledge they obtain as a means to advance within industry, in selectively sharing it with their supervisors.

And while that might be said for many different positions and roles in contemporary Hollywood, across-the-line workers are rather exclusive in their access to their production culture and the information they freely share within it. As Izzy mentions above, many of these workers are or become a part of an extremely exclusive Facebook group “Awesome Assistants.” In order to access this Facebook group, which contains helpful advice, contact information, job opportunities, affordable housing, and other important pieces of insider information, an applicant must be invited to the group, as it is not searchable on Facebook. Then, once invited, the applicant must fill out a series of questions that illustrate a person’s profession, portfolio, past work within industry, and that they are not too “low” on the hierarchy (e.g. one of my students who intends to pursue a career in above-the-line work and is just starting an internship), disconnected from industry (e.g. me, I have tried multiple times to get access to this group as a researcher; alas, I am in Facebook group purgatory), or someone who is too high on the Hollywood hierarchy (their rule is that you cannot be in the group if you are at a level where you could have an assistant assisting you).

Figure 3. Compared to 10 years ago, workers in the TV/Film industry feel they are: 10% – Better off, 12% – About the same, 78% – Worse off

This group is so exclusive because it is deemed an extremely precious resource containing information needed for the across-the-line production culture to meet job demands, and for workers to survive and sometimes promote because of its contents, including unpublicized ongoings in various studios, production companies, executive offices, and agencies. This knowledge is shared in solidarity with each other to aid in navigating across-the-line collective precarity. But in the wrong hands, access to “Awesome Assistants” has resulted in script leaks to the public.

In short, understanding the knowledge-sharing functions of across-the-line supports production culture and media industry scholars . Through this research, we more clearly understand the interconnected networks of industry, industrial gatekeeping practices, and how the varying demands put on these support staffers indicate the goals and weaknesses of industry practices at any given moment. Moreover, this group becomes the “legacy” for industry, made up of workers who will be promoted into positions with more organizational power. Therefore, researching across-the-line also gives us insight into “generational” affinities—similar to those we have in academia (like, your grad school peers turned co-editor or -contributors)—as well as evolutionary shifts in industry practices. Studying this production culture and its conditions gives researchers insight into how industry adapts through a series of “unprecedented times,” and the discursive genealogies that extend from these times.

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Image Credits:

1. Figure 1. Assistants vs. Agents, [@assistantsvsagents]. “I wish I was born an industry plant 🪴😔” Instagram, 27 Oct. 2024. https://www.instagram.com/p/DBo44KISUDl/?img_index=3 (Screenshot by Author)
2. Figure 2. Assistants vs. Agents, [@assistantsvsagents]. “And you thought you had a bad boss” Instagram, 7 Jan. 2025. https://www.instagram.com/p/DE8gNkzysmS/?img_index=7 (Screenshot by Author)
3. Figure 3. Assistants vs. Agents, [@assistantsvsagents]. “We asked over 5,000 people working in Entertainment about the current state of the TV/Film industry. The results are below:Compared to 10 years ago, the TV/Film industry is: 10% – Better off 12% – About the same 78% – Worse off” Instagram, 20 Nov. 2024. https://www.instagram.com/p/DE8gNkzysmS/?img_index=7 (Screenshot by Author)

References:

1. Caldwell, John Thornton. Specworld : Folds, Faults, and Fractures in Embedded Creator Industries. University of California Press, 2023, https://public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/PublicFullRecord.aspx?p=30159250. [↩]
2. Hill, Erin. Never Done: A History of Women’s Work in Media Production. Rutgers University Press, 2016. [↩]