Break a Leg

Every year around this time, I usually have a spate of bookings. I mean real bookings, not just Yuri calling me up and having me shoot something for the second time in his kitchen while a guy who lives behind the empty cardboard boxes in the living room walks through our "set" to cook him up some ramen noodles.

No, I mean paid work. See, there are these people all over San Francisco that own cameras very similar to Justin and Dashiell's, and they have lights and stuff too, and they have creative ideas like Yuri's and the skill and dedication to pull it all off, just like all of Late Again Films. The only thing these mysterious Others have that Late Again doesn't is... money.

It doesn't make them better people or anything, they just have money to pay their actors. Well, all other things being equal (as we have already established), maybe having money does make them better people.

Anyway, I usually nab four or so jobs back to back during the year, and right now seems like I'm in the middle of one of those times. I just shot a gig for Sony PlayStation Home (shot using a Red camera; it was somehow awesome even though it made absolutely no difference to me whatsoever), just got paid for a voice-over gig I did a couple of months ago, and have probably just booked another thing for Nokia next week.

So today I'm picking up the check for the voice-over thing, and I'm at my agent's office shooting the breeze for a few minutes. We start talking about this and that, and eventually this woman who works at the agency (who primarily deals with all of the actors directly) drops that only about half of all of the actors she calls and emails ever get back to her.

Just so you know, she's not calling and emailing to check in with them, see how they're doing, invite them into a game of Scramble. She's calling them because she has scheduled an audition for them and needs to hear back that they are available.

It's not just that they're not available (a lot of them are not, that's another subset of the group), it's that they just never call back.

How do you do that? How do you call yourself an actor and not return phone calls for auditions? This is a person calling you, telling you that they have done all of the leg work involved in getting you an appointment to be seen by somebody who needs actors to do paid work. All you have to do is show up! At the very least all you have to do is call back and say you can't make it.

I used to think I was totally unmotivated. To do anything. At all. Because I am. Unmotivated. Remember when I used to blog here weekly? Yeah, me neither. I always feel like as an actor I do the bare minimum necessary to retain the exalted title: I have some headshots (somewhere around here, maybe not on me, where's my resume?), I show up to auditions (usually on time... sometimes), I'm professional and respectful, charming, attractive. I mean if you're an actor that's just your job! That's what you have to be able to maintain just to say "I'm an actor".

So I've decided this: I will now become a vigilante. Kind of like Batman, but I will kill people and they will not be committing any crimes that I am aware of. So exactly the opposite of Batman. More like one of Batman's arch enemies, but not one of the good ones like Scarecrow, more like Killer Croc but not a Crocodile. And still a killer. And with full pants instead of ripped cutoffs.

Huh? Oh yeah... I'll be a vigilante! One that kills actors who have no right to bear the name. They'll call me Improv(e), because I improvise my killings and I'm improving the acting gene-pool. That's what THEY will call me. I will simply call myself The Thoughtful Thespian, but I'll always want to change it because it sounds like "lesbian".