What are you working on?

Getting ready yesterday to meet an actor friend I hadn't seen in a while, I found myself running through the list of things I've accomplished or am trying to accomplish, so that I could answer that inevitable question: what are you working on? Like I was going to a job interview or something.

Do any other professions do this? When two accountants run into each other on the street, do they ask what the other has done recently at work? Probably not, because the answer is probably the same every time.

I think actors do this almost as a self-defense mechanism. First, you must understand that you ask the question simply so that you can answer it yourself when the other person is done. In a profession where work falls into your lap by byzantine Rube Goldberg methods, every little thing you do is a huge accomplishment. So we're happy to share these things with other actors.

There's also a predatorial starving-cheetah-on-the-savannah aspect to it. "You got what show? Who casts that? How did you find it? What are they looking for?" It stands to reason that if one of your peers landed something, you probably could too. In an industry with such heavily fortified walls around the good stuff, we're always looking for weak spots.

Wow, that all sounds pretty negative.

There are positives to this as well. In the very least, having to come up with an answer to "what are you working on" keeps you busy, on your toes. I don't want the only answer to that question to be "well I'm about 20 hours into Mass Effect 2, getting ready to go through the Omega 4 relay." While true, and awesome, it neither pays the bills nor satisfies me creatively.

And I guess, maybe, somewhere deep down, we enjoy it when our friends do well. We need a good support system behind us to get anywhere in this business. We're all pulling for each other, right?

Well, as long as we're not the same type.

Waiting

Honestly, that could be the title of any post ever related to acting. But in this case it applies to the period of time after a great audition for something you're really hoping to get. This time it was a sort of industrial/commercial hybrid (for those not in the business, industrial refers to internal-use stuff; at the lowest end of the spectrum, think training videos). The pay would have been pretty decent, but it would also have entailed a several-day trip to LA to film it.

At times like this, Amy is under orders not to call me. I've gotten pretty good at letting go after an audition and not dwelling on it, for good or bad, but sometimes I'm just too optimistic. I hate the feeling of my heart jumping when the phone rings and it's just my wife. I mean, I love talking to her, but, uh...

Love you Amy!

Anyway, after a couple days you can be pretty sure the call will never come. You can always be pleasantly surprised, but the reality of it is commercial casting moves pretty fast.

I had a couple of reasons to feel pretty good about this one, and not getting cast actually doesn't affect those reasons too much. I actually got the audition copy the night before, so I had time to get ready. Rare. So I actually knew what I was doing when I got in the room. When I got there, they were just finishing up the morning session before a quick lunch break. The guy before me came out in a full suit, way overdressed for the character and he didn't look like a suit guy in the first place. Then he started talking to the audition monitor. "Does she tell everyone 'nice job?' I mean, she said 'nice job,' but does she just say that, or does it mean I did a good job?" Whoa dude. Stop talking. "I don't know what happened. I mean I'm a naturally confident guy and I just didn't know how to get rid of that for the audition [the character is not confident]." Holy crap man, stop talking. I don't care if you threw down some Daniel Day Lewis stuff in there, you are talking yourself right out of this part now. Ah well. Everyone has to start getting out there some time. It just made me feel better that I've been doing it for a while.

And so, a few days out, I think it's safe for Amy to call my phone again. No worries. I have a beer commercial audition tomorrow, wherein I will once again have to pretend to like sports.

Obligatory Oscar Post

'Twas the season, and thank god it's over. That really might have been my last live Oscar viewing, at least until they invite me. You can shoot for young and hip all you want, you can even get Chloe Moretz and Elle Fanning to co-host, but until you hire an actual team of actually funny comedy writers, you will never succeed, Oscar producers.

Every year, in the months leading up to the Oscars the producers are all over the entertainment magazines talking about how they've figured out how to trim the fat and make the show relevant. And every year it looks almost exactly the same. You really think you can't cut this down to two hours? Cut out every bit that didn't work and you have a runtime of about 80 minutes, guys.

The only award that surprised me was Tom Hooper winning Best Director over David Fincher, but as I commented on Facebook, Christopher Nolan's absence in the category invalidates the whole thing. As if we need more evidence that these awards don't mean much other than a higher rate for the winner's next project.

Anyway. Spent pretty much the whole broadcast obsessively checking my email to see if I got cast in an NYU film I was called back for this past week. Interesting idea, well-written from the sides I had the chance to read, nice director/writer. He said he would let people know by the end of the weekend. Since I haven't gotten that email as of this writing, looks like I missed it. Which is especially interesting in light of an NYU director winning Best Live Short last night. At least that makes the NYU credits already on my resume a little shinier.

It's easy to fall into a downward spiral every time you don't get cast. It's like everything you've done before is gone, and the trajectory of your career depends on this one casting. Of course that's silly. I've gotten paid to do this, and I've been on TV as an actual real actor (and will be again soon, if Golden Corral will get off their butts and air that commercial). But in lieu of dropping $350 on a class, I like to just work to stay sharp. That's the reasoning behind my latest round of student film submissions; if I haven't done anything in a little while I get restless.

And I'm getting very restless.

This Melissa Leo Thing

Deadline Hollywood has a good writeup of these Melissa Leo self-funded "for your consideration" ads. I'm trying to figure out what I think about this. There's more of a history to this sort of thing than I initially thought, with varying degrees of success and/or ridicule (for the latter, check out the link and read about Chill Wills' and Margaret Avery's insane campaigns--Leo could have done much worse).

Her studio isn't doing its own ad campaign for her, and she claims she's not getting the media attention a younger, more attractive woman might get, so she wanted to take matters into her own hands. I find this strange, since she and co-star Christian Bale are two of the surest bets at the Academy Awards this year. I imagine it's hard to think that when you're one of the bets, but that's what "your people" are there for.

If it wasn't for her melodramatic acceptance speeches I'd have an easier time brushing this off, but I can't. Something about her has been striking me as false. This is to say nothing ill of her fantastic performance in The Fighter, which stands on its own excellent legs and as such, should require no campaign. But, that's the nature of the industry these days. She's also claiming the ageism rampant in Hollywood is a major factor in taking out these ads for herself, because she can't get on the cover of a magazine. What, so you can stand next to the likes of Snooki and Kim Kardashian in the checkout lane?

I agree that ageism is a problem in Hollywood and our society in general, but I question the degree to which an actor can complain about it. Do your best to overcome it and change people's opinions, of course, but it's not like you didn't know this was a problem when you got into acting. That's like me trying to be a rapper and complaining it's a tough black guy's game. How do I overcome that? Be so good they don't care I'm white & nerdy. What has Melissa Leo done? Put out a performance so good she's sweeping the awards season. That translates to work. She could easily land a cable-series lead in the current TV environment, if not network (I say cable first because come on, their shows are way better).

So what exactly is the problem? And why is this rubbing me the wrong way? I think it's all ringing false because if she truly wanted to overcome the ageism/sexism barrier, why would she play the publicity game in the first place? And in playing it, why would she try to glam herself up and look so much like the thing she's fighting? Does she want to be known for an Elle cover or for her performance? Why is she so scared she won't get work after a solid round of nominations for Frozen River and a round of wins for The Fighter? Why would any sane person choose this career path?

The Awesome Audition I Just Had; Or...

...how not to audition and why non-union commercials are sometimes the devil.

This audition was for a corporate web video with a fairly amusing premise, as far as these things go. And my agent actually sent me the copy beforehand! Which never happens. They're looking for actors who can improvise. Great, got it.

Snag 1: By "improvise," they mean "come up with the rest of the video based on the one premise we set up." The scene had two people. The script said

#1: Do you know about (anonymous thing I probably shouldn't say here)?

And then literally

#2 [Improvisation]
#1 [Improvisation]

SAG has rules against making actors improvise during auditions (which are skirted sometimes by never using the word "improvise;" a casting director might instead say "if you think of something else you'd like to say, feel free"). This is so actors aren't burdened/ripped off by making your spot great by basically writing it for you for free, without credit. Paul F. Tompkins told a story on the Nerdist podcast about auditioning for a commercial, in which they had him come up with a lot of funny stuff (which he's kinda good at). He didn't get the spot, but when he saw it they used the things he came up with at the audition. So. Boo. Non-union: we pay a fraction of the SAG rate for three times the effort!

Having done a few improv auditions like this before, I knew better than to rely on coming up with brilliance on the spot. I thought of some different reactions to the initial question, but kept it all loose enough to be able to work with the other actor and not steamroll them.

Snag 2: The other actor. At this point, I just prefer a completely flat reading from the casting director's assistant than to have to work with another actor in an audition. Am I this bad? I'm no Daniel Day Lewis but I think I at least have the basics of listening and responding truthfully, but also keeping it interesting. My scene partner, a lovely lady who had sketch and improv experience and thereby (I assumed) would know how to listen and escalate a scene with me, decided her reaction to my initial question should be to brush me off and keep going. Because...what? Things are always interesting when someone gets ignored? She had zero interest in getting cast? She hated my face?

They had paired us up beforehand and told us to work on it, making it 30 seconds with a definite ending. Ours was currently ten seconds with no ending, since endings require beginnings. I told her "maybe it should be a little longer," meaning "hey, maybe you should stop and have a scene with me." This isn't an acting exercise. I know in real life you'd brush me off and keep going, but you don't need to make me stop you. Listen. See what happens. So we fleshed it out a little bit. I came up with a couple of decent lines. We did it twice for the guy. Meh.

So the moral of the story? Listen to your partner. Work together. Join SAG. Get into commercial copywriting, because apparently any drunk idiot can crap out a one-line script and get paid for it.

Auditions!

My god, three auditions over four days! What will I do with myself? Probably the usual.

Had the first one today, for a student film at NYU. I submitted for it on Actor's Access and they got back to me on there pretty quickly. I told them what time I'd like to be there, and that was the end of it. A couple days ago I commented to Amy that I thought it was strange I didn't have any sides or anything. Granted, the role is called Technician 2, but still. I get there today, and my name wasn't on the list. NYU desk guards are hardcore, so I had to call the casting guy to let him know I was downstairs. Turns out I fell through the cracks, and they didn't even know if I was coming in, but could "probably squeeze me in." Which made me feel just awesome about myself. The guy was nice but very awkward which didn't help me in an already awkward situation. Someone else auditioning told me in the green room that they'd sent out sides via email already, so I had to get a copy from someone. The director was nice, also awkward though less so than casting man. I felt pretty good about my reading. It was a super-short side, so there was only so much I could do. I feel like they'll go with someone nerdier. If someone nerdier showed up, anyway.

The audition tomorrow is actually through the agent that I thought I was done freelancing with, but she's called me twice in like three weeks now, after a break of a few months. It's for a non-union ESPN commercial. I expect it to be improvised and awkward. Probably cheering for a team I'm watching or something.

Then I have another student film audition I got through Actor's Access (which by the way is a website that shows breakdowns, and you fill in a profile and resume and upload a picture so you can submit for the parts electronically), this time at Columbia. So I have to head way up to the Upper West Side Sunday. I got the side for this one, and it's actually pretty good. Very dry absurd humor, very wordy, intellectual. I'm reading for a graduate TA. This is good, because I feel like my type has matured from college student to college TA (and in five years or so college professor). I'm mostly off-book already, and am working on what exactly is going on emotionally. I've actually auditioned for this same director before. Wonder if he remembers.

Anyway, I'll post breakdowns of the two auditions early next week. Here's hoping.

PS I'm focusing on these student films because I want more material for a reel. The question arises: when I have all the material I want, what next? I cut together a reel, then what? Audition for Spielberg? Not sure what the next step would be.

An Opportunity

I'm actually getting a little money back from the government in 8-15 days, which most importantly puts a little cushion between me and the street, but also provides me with a chance to invest a little money in myself.

I'm on the fence here.

I could stand to get new headshots. I don't desperately need them, but the time is soon approaching. I think it would probably be ridiculous to use the current shot, say, next year. Of course, new headshots don't necessarily open any doors, but I'd love to have a shot with a more neutral expression and more of my torso, so you can see my body type in my headshot.

I could also use the money to take classes with agents/casting directors. Which is essentially paying money to make sure these people know who you are. I would love it if there was an easy way to see industry folk without paying any money, but I'm at the end of my rope trying to figure one out.

I could also use it to take another improv class, or a stand-up bootcamp.

All of this has made me realize how actors always seem to be chasing that one thing they think is keeping them from getting auditions/callbacks/bookings/agents. "If I had a new headshot..." "If I had a better resume..." "If I wore glasses..." You can drive yourself crazy trying to figure this out, and completely empty your checkbook. Checkbook? Who the hell uses a checkbook any more?

You get the point. Acting's hard.