Favorite Quotes Vol. XXII: Fair is fair.

I was fortunate enough to be tapped to produce this year’s NYU Tisch School of the Arts Gala honoring Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, Sheila Nevins, Marcia Gay Harden and Diana King (I was even more fortunate to actually go to Tisch, where thanks to one of my professors, I was introduced to a guy who would kick start my career).

We had a kick-off party in LA at the beginning of the summer, and one of NYU’s benefactors, Steve Tisch (who knows quite a few things about kick-offs, since he’s a co-owner of the NY Giants), offered this piece of advice for folks beginning their careers:

Remove the word fair from your vocabulary.

Things happen all the time in this world (and so often in this industry) that just don’t make sense, that don’t seem fair, and sometimes, that just aren’t right.

Don’t try and figure it out.  You never will.

Scream it out for ten seconds, then suck it up, and soldier on.

It sounds like Steve does something like this.

And if you read that Wikipedia entry, it looks like it’s working for him, so it’s gotta be a good idea for the rest of us.

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