- I ended up getting a job at MTV and decided to drop out, never looked back. Stay in school everybody. I'm Dan Levy on set with Bustle and these are the moments that made me. I would give or take 93 to 95. I was 10 to 13. I would put on these productions. I would get my cousins involved, I would get my sister involved and we would put on either plays or skits. That's sort of when I
learned to micromanage. We did a great production of Cats. The year is 1999, I am a terrible high school student and instead of doing what I was asked, which was writing an essay on a book that I was reading in class, I instead wrote a short
story about my experience, writing this essay from
the voices within the book. I took a risk and my English teacher at
the time was handing out the papers graded to the class and stopped on mine, told the class that this was an example of thinking outside the box. And while it did not fulfill
the mandate of the essay, she gave it a 99%. And that was the first moment where I felt emboldened to write. So it was in and around 2001, I had a dramatic kind of
relationship situation going down I had a dramatic kind of
relationship situation going down and knew that I had to make
a big change in my life. I moved to London for
about five to six months, worked at a talent agency out there, which is something I very quickly realized I did not want to do long-term but what it did do was
pull me out of my shell. I had to answer phones, I had to be social in ways that I would normally
kind of be reclusive. I came out of that
experience far more confident than when I went into it and decided to audition for MTV, got the job. So you can connect the dots of your life through various moments and I wonder how many people's starts are connected by way of
failed relationships. In and around 2002, I was too nervous to
audition for theater school, instead went into film 'cause I thought at the very
least I could put myself into my own films. Had no idea how clicky the
film school experience would be and as a very sort of
socially anxious person, particularly at that time, I didn't ingratiate myself
in the way that you need to and so I ended up getting a job at MTV and decided to drop out, never looked back. Stay in school, everybody. This is, you don't... Stay in school. The year was, well, it
was eight years ago, 13, nope 12. Jesus I'm stupid. The year was 2012, I had just come out to Los Angeles to try and make something of myself and I brought this little idea to my dad, about a wealthy family
that lost their money and had to start over again. When we first pitched the show, everybody in America passed on it. So it wasn't until we went back to Canada that we found a network, the CBC, that bought the show and then Pop TV here in
America jumped on board and then it became a thing. In fact, one network
bought the show in the room and then passed because of the name. So this is where we're at, with TV. Our show won nine Emmys this year, which was an experience
that we did not see coming and yes, I was very fortunate
to win things myself but I was way more
excited about my co-stars and my fellow producers. You know how hard they work, you know how much energy was
put into making this show. What it was and I think
when you have a show that's this small, that has such a small
budget in the scope of TV and what we were up against, to think back-on on what we did, was pretty amazing. My two cents in terms of how to stay sane through the process of pursuing any kind of professional endeavor in an entertainment or creative arts field it's just to know that
nobody has power over you. 'Cause I think we can be kind
of funneled into believing that we are at the mercy of executives, when in reality those executives wouldn't be where they were, if it wasn't for the ideas
that were created by the people who walked into those offices. Go and do something, go and do something, way outside of your comfort zone. Do something crazy, responsibly crazy. Responsible, be responsible. Stay in school. (upbeat music)
