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BackList: How much is staying power about talent and how much is about other factors like power, diversification, and industry politics?

TM: Talent may get you in the door, but how one navigates or negotiates the other things you mention in the question are what keep you in the room. Diversification is more complex; sometimes it pays to be laserlike in one's focus.

BackList: What's been your strategy for maintaining your entertainment career for so long?

TM: Calculated risk-taking. Making moves without being attached to outcomes and instead being committed to creating the extraordinary.

BackList: Longevity is also about maintaining sanity in sometimes harsh environments. How can creatives maintain their spiritual and emotional sanity while building their career and maneuvering their industry?

TM: Wow, great, necessary question. Creatives are masters of output and we drain easily even if it seems like we're tireless on the outside. People always ask me how I "do it", whatever that is...it's by God's grace first of course, but I make sure I take time for myself, to fill my love tank with family, friends, and spa/mani-pedi time. I also go heavy on the creative input from external sources, so I can enjoy the art, invention, and ideas other than my own. I consume exhibits, trips, films, concerts, plays, botanical gardens, what I call creative food.

BackList: What role does fear play? Does it get easier to conquer your fears as time goes on, or is fear always a part of the equation?

TM: What I've come to learn is that fear is one of the many signals that lets us know we're alive. It can't become the charge that energizes us. It is best when it motivates, not paralyzes. When I feel fear creeping in to do the latter, I thank it for sharing and confront it by doing something to neutralize it--or prove to myself that I am bigger than my fear. For example, when I was afraid of the future a few years back, I learned to fly on the trapeze. Nothing like flying in the air without a plane to quell fear or intimidation of people and situations.

BackList:  You know we've been thinking a lot about ownership lately. What role does ownership play in our ability to outlast industry waves? And how can ownership be promoted among creatives, who sometimes aren't as business savvy as we should be?

TM: Two things: ownership can backfire if you aren't growing what you own. Sometimes selling some of it helps grow it. Who wants to own 100% of zero? Smart co-ownership is something we should stay open to. With respect to intellectual property, I think we creatives need to trademark what we invent. If I hadn't worked for Gavin magazine when I coined the phrase 'Generation NeXt', I would have trademarked it--because Rap Pages, Rolling Stone, and Pepsi went on to use it. Having learned my lesson, I trademarked The Monthly Flow when I started the column of the same name for BLAZE. I'm sure it will come in handy soon.

BackList: Within the entertainment/media industries, who do you believe has mastered longevity and why?

TM: So, so many names come to mind, but I have to go with a brilliant actor and author with whom I share an editor: Pam Grier. Here's a woman who was unstoppable in becoming an iconic actor, and yet over 4 decades, has never succumbed to the fame monster; she has remained true to herself and her choices on projects, men, and causes, survived Hollywood, beaten cancer, and lives on a farm in Colorado. It doesn't get any better than that.  

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