Performance of the Week: Leslie Mann

This week the performance that has been sticking with me is Leslie Mann in This is 40.  We finally caught it last weekend.  I really enjoyed the movie, and I think Apatow did a great job of blending personal stories with the sort of comedy you expect from his stuff.  He made a great showcase for his wife.  This is Mann's movie (though of course Paul Rudd is as excellent as ever).

I can't imagine too many actresses who'd be able to balance the sort of character comedy Apatow is known for with the familial turmoil and drama present in this script.  Obviously she's playing with a stacked deck, since she's performing her husband's script under her husband's direction alongside their own children.  But talent is talent, no matter who you're working with.  That connection could be a hindrance for some as well.  It can be easier to go to personal places in front of strangers, rather than those who have a good idea of what exactly you're working with.

There were a lot of laughing-through-tears moments in the film, where Mann had the task of juggling the timing and tone of comedy with the emotional content of the dramatic element.  It's not like they're completely alien to one another; both are rooted in honesty and commitment.  But she pulls it off extremely well every time (see also: the great doorman scene with Craig Robinson in Knocked Up).  Mann also physically bares herself in this movie, which always impresses me from both women and men.  Though, thanks to double-standards I think it's usually a lot more loaded for women.  Anyway, she gets a mammogram on camera and I have to assume that would be pretty hard to go through with.  And good lord does it look painful.  I also caught a great real-mom moment: Mann, Rudd, and the youngest daughter are in the kitchen watching the older daughter have a total meltdown.  At one point the younger daughter is fiddling with her plate, and Mann put her hand on her daughter's shoulder in a total "stop doing that and pay attention to your sister in this scene" gesture.  I'm really glad that got caught on camera.

There's something else I'd like to briefly touch on: why can't awards shows get comedy right?  This is a huge topic, but it feels funny to write about something like Leslie Mann in This is 40 during awards season, of which she has no part of course.  Why is comedy so much more subjective than drama?  Why do dramatic actors look at comedy as some sort of advanced, strange math intelligible only to those born with a rubber chicken in their hand and a fake arrow through their head?  There's an apocryphal quote, attributed to whichever dead dramatic actor the storyteller chooses: "Dying is easy; comedy is hard."  I first heard that in grad school, where my teachers (mostly Actors Studio members, and experts at the craft) couldn't begin to address how to perform a comedy.

Why are the Academy, the HFPA, and critics afraid to honor actual funny people doing actual funny things?  As it stands, the comedy categories generally include the funniest dramas or dramtic performances.  We just saw Silver Linings Playbook last night, and while it certainly has humor I'd hardly call it a comedy, or Cooper & Lawrence comedians, or their performances funny.  Yet there they are dominating nominations for comedy in film.  This seems particularly strained in a year when Apatow made his most personal comedy in which Leslie Mann gave one of the most dramatic funny performances I've seen.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's an actor and writer.

Review of 2012

Remember when this was a thing I did?  It is once again.  I'd quit posting to my own site since I was ostensibly a blogger for Backstage's "Unscripted" column, but first my acting career more or less fell by the wayside, then the column did as well after Backstage's redesign.  So here we are.

Every article I've read lately is a reflection on 2012, so here's my two cents.  I thought it might be interesting to look at my acting year through some cold, hard numbers:

24 auditions
2 callbacks (within five days of each other, in October)
0 Bookings
9 were for paying gigs
14 pre-merger

And for what it's worth, I had 35 auditions in 2011 with three callbacks and one booking.  The last time I auditioned for something and got cast was 10/18/11 (the webseries Shadow Free).

The merger only affected me in that I no longer audition for commercials, since the commercial agent with whom I freelanced for several years only does non-union gigs.  I'm not sure why that would be the case.  To my knowledge an agency being SAG-franchised means little to nothing, so if it's not that, why wouldn't you want your actors to pursue union work?  The money is much higher, especially in commercials.  Anyway, the film and TV agent with whom I freelance (read: hear from every six months) has always only sent me out for union gigs, so the merger didn't affect that.  I feel I should note that I was and am very pro-merger; I knew it would mean a decrease in opportunities.  It's worth the benefits.

Those numbers don't reflect all my activity last year.  I did some things.  I co-directed & had a small role in a short film for the AV Club's Parameters film contest.  I participated in National Sketch Writing Month for the second time, this time managing to write all 30 sketches.  The sketch I submitted to the showcase was selected, and I performed in it with Joel Repman.  That was probably the highlight of the year.  I was also in a reading of my old classmate Jennie Berman Eng's ten minute play for a series based on the election, and it was a great script.  I've always enjoyed working on her stuff.  Then based on that reading, I did another one for a New School playwright, Aurin Squire.  Pretty much everything in this paragraph happened in the last three months.  Needless to say it was a looong year from that perspective.  This is of course not to say that good things didn't happen in 2012, but this is about acting.

Now, for 2013!  My amazing wife got me a great camera for Christmas so I'm looking forward to shooting more of my own work.  I have some ideas for a second season of Agoraphobes, and I'm starting to get excited about that.  Now I just need about $350 of audio equipment and a computer that can process and edit full HD video :)  And I'll be writing more.  I'm already here doing this, and I have an idea for a new comedy blog that I'm finally committing to.  I had two auditions this week, so at least I'm starting from somewhere.  Here's to making it an interesting year.

New entries at Backstage's Unscripted blog

I've just started writing at Backstage's Unscripted blog, where actors in various stages of the career talk about their experiences. As such, my posts here will probably come to a stop, unless there's something really juicy that isn't appropriate for my blog over there. That probably won't happen though.

But thank you for reading these, and by all means come over to my new site and start reading those!

Why I Love Acting #371

At a film audition today, the director had me read a second scene. He handed me the side and said “you’re floating in space and a big happy moon appears and starts talking to you.” Like you do.

Ridiculous Things Overheard While Being an Extra

You meet many...interesting people doing extra work in TV and film. I just did two long days, so I had a lot of time to eavesdrop. Choice gems:

1. We are currently at war both underground and in outer space with alien beings. This was said with no hint of irony or self-consciousness by a man playing a court officer. He said he has video of UFOs in Brooklyn.

2. "They say you use 10% of your brain but I think I use more because I'm a Christian and I have less to worry about."

3. One woman literally spent the entire two days complaining about our union and our treatment on set. I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but the absolute most important thing on any production is whether the extras get 15 minutes to eat free breakfast, and whether anyone cuts in front of you to eat the free dinner of which there is plenty, and which we will all have ample time to eat. But her most impressive maneuver came at the end of the second day, as we were being driven to Manhattan by a Teamster. She praised his union for sticking together like glue. "That's a union. I wish ours was like that, but it's all backstabbing and climbing over each other." Then, in a move that would give fatal whiplash to any sense of logic, she bragged about the time she and three other extras got golden time after calling to complain, and the rest of the suckers missed out because they didn't look out for themselves. Golden time is when you hit 16 hours and get your day's rate every hour after. I bit my tongue so hard it still hurts.

Rollercoaster of "Huh?": How to Say No

I went on quite the little acting rollercoaster last night. I got home from work around 6 and checked my sites. I had an email on Actor's Access in response to a submission I'd made for a short film. Turned out they had scheduling issues and wondered if I could make it to an 8 PM audition. Good thing we moved back into the city.

I confirmed and they sent me the sides. They were weird, and wordy, and gave little to no information about the piece as a whole. So I did what I do best: a facile surface read. That's no exaggeration, it really is what's gotten me this far. You'd be surprised.

Anyway, my slot was 8-8:05. I show up at 7:55 and there are three guys waiting outside the room, with no sign-in or anything. More people start showing up, and finally someone comes out and puts a sheet out, telling us that they'll go by sheet order (why oh why did you bother giving us time slots then?). For all I know there are still people waiting in line to read for that film.

At this point I'm a little concerned. I have zero information about these people. There was nothing on the breakdown, other than the title of the film and the name of the casting director (who was a woman, and obviously not one of the two guys in the room). Is it associated with a school? Is it a production company that has other work? What the heck is it about? When is it shooting?

Well, I had clues to the latter on the information sheet, where they asked if I was available the next three weekends (including today, Friday). I guess?

I go in and do my thing and the person who I assume is the director makes it sort of evident that he's going to cast me and tells me to look for an email tonight. When I get one, it's from the casting director to "undisclosed recipients" telling us congratulations, and what to wear for the party scene Saturday, and to look for a second email telling each of us who we'll play. At this point I start to see what's going on, but I want to wait for that second email.

When it comes I finally have a script and production company. I do some research. I figure out what the movie's actually about. It's pretty strange. And I have one line. There are a couple of things that are preventing me from wanting to continue on this project. First, based on the hastily put-together breakdown and initial side, I'm led to believe that maybe Saturday wouldn't be the most organized day. Second, I had a really bad experience with something similar a few years ago. And finally, I've done this before. I don't need to do one line in some short film for free again. I have enough of that for my reel, and the experience doesn't have a lot more to teach me. So after much angsty deliberation I wrote back and said thank you, but no.

A word on that experience a few years ago: I auditioned for a group who wanted to do something in the 48-hour Asian American Film Festival. You get a cast together, get the idea from the organization at the same time everyone else does, then have 48 hours to shoot and edit a film. I had a good, lengthy audition in front of an Asian director and his white friend who seemed to actually be the director. It felt pretty good. Then we rehearsed as a group on Saturday morning, trying to build an ensemble and seeing where everyone fit in. Then we all sat in front of a store for six hours while that white guy filmed his vanity project with his buddy, and turned us into glorified extras. Never again.

So here are the points I'm trying to get across. My saying no is not a statement on the quality of this piece or what I think the finished product might look like. I don't think those guys are beneath me. What I saw on their site was very professional, and they're shooting with a nice camera. But people in my position are forced to be beggars for far too long, and it's degrading. How often have you gotten cast in something only to find out later the thing you're doing is batshit crazy? Why does it feel so presumptuous for an unknown actor to say something like "hey, before we get into all this, can I see a script and decide if this is right for me?" How long do I need to catch table scraps from other people's tables? I've done the one-line thing. I have a reel. If I'm going to do it any more, I'm going to do it for money. Sorry. I have to protect myself.

And future filmmakers, please realize how important your breakdown is. It's the first contact you have with the people who will eventually be in your movie. You literally cannot put too much information in it. It will help you get the actors who are right for your project.

So there it is. From pre-audition to cast to no-thank-you in four short hours. Now I'm going to go audition for this 13-year old. This should be good.

Amazing breakdowns today

I've been getting the itch lately to be more active, acting-wise. It's been a while since I was in someone else's project and I'm getting rusty. So, after coming out from under the rock that was my move into Hell's Kitchen, I hit the breakdowns online today to see what I could do.

My god.

How about this? An improv-heavy feature film (read: write our movie for us!) that will shoot in Cape Town, South Africa. Yes, I'd love to travel to another continent to shoot something with no planned dialogue. Ironically, it's about someone who falls for a South African internet scam. Interesting.

Or this: a non-union feature film with a pretty small flat pay (but travel and per diem!) that's going to shoot in Prague and the Ukraine. "The project will be hard work, in often basic living conditions. It will also be fun, interesting and involve a lot of road tripping." At least they have a script. Honestly, this one sounds somewhat interesting, but I'm too old for this shit. I can't backpack across Europe making a movie with half my closet on my shoulders. What, you didn't think they were going to dress their actors, did you?

Finally, a guy's looking for people to be in his online comedy show. That sounds like it's up my alley. After a little research, I found that he does not own the domain name of the show (which is also the actual name of the show--it's like ten bucks man, stay on that shit) and what few videos I found on YouTube are things I could easily just do on my own, with better results. Also, HE REALLY LIKES ALL CAPS.

Well that was depressing. Better get writing.