Only make-believe

In which our Diva is resigned to a certain reality, but it still gets under her skin once in a while

In a conversation I had yesterday, I mentioned that the reason I was making up Office of Doom hours after 11 Sunday night was that I spent Saturday at Chicago Comic-Con and Sunday filming a short.

The response? "Oh, but that's fun stuff."

Um.

Walking around in a superhero costume, posing for pictures and meeting people whose work I like (including childhood heroines Nichelle Nichols and Margot Kidder)? Absolutely "fun stuff," albeit exhausting.

Filmmaking? It has its fun too. It also has spending a very long, very hot day outdoors. In makeup. Waiting, waiting, waiting, being ON!, waiting some more, being ON! Changing into a long-sleeved heavy satin wedding gown in my car (did I mention very hot day?).

I love acting. Love it beyond all reason. You have to in order to do it. Because you don't get to do just the fun parts. Gina Holden estimated in an interview I read recently that 2% of your working time as an actor is actually being in front of the camera acting. It sounds like an exaggeration. It's not. You spend the rest of your time waiting, studying, researching, marketing, handling business. All so you can get that little fraction of time -- the time that is seen by everyone else -- to inhabit the skin of the character whose story you're telling.

Because it's all they see, most people think it's all there is. Which is how they can say things like the comment above.

Like "Well, I want to stay home and read, but nobody's going to pay me for that."

Like "So you have a real job too?"

I commented not long ago, on a blog post by (sometimes curmudgeonly, always brilliant) TV writer Denis McGrath, that the problem for artists is that most people just can't wrap their heads around something they consume at their leisure not being produced at ours.

And the truth is, they're mostly never going to. I have yet to see a single solitary person on a film set for the first time, no matter how well-informed, not be abjectly shocked by the sheer amount of time and work, by the sheer number of people, it takes to produce just a few minutes of what will be seen on screen. It's nearly impossible to explain, unless you understand how the process works, that it's not because of disorganization or laziness or inefficiency or whatever. It's because that is the only way it can be made. You can't just have an idea and point a camera at it, and hey-presto, you have a film. Imagination is only the starting point.

I joke that my life's work is playing make-believe. At its purest, this-is-what-we're-here-for heart, that's true. That's how stories get told.

That, and a whole lot of people doing a whole lot of work.

Where's that "smite" key?

In which our Diva is unimpressed

As much as I hate it when talent scammers waste my valuable time, I just about sprained something laughing at the sloppy boilerplate email I got from one of them this morning.  They want me in their "roaster!"  Talk about truth in advertising...

It can never be said enough, because there will always be hopeful people who don't know: NEVER EVER EVER pay a penny upfront for representation!  The ones who get you in their office and hard-sell classes and photos and whatever are still around, but now you also have outfits like this Talent Watchers, where you can sign up for free, but then find out your profile isn't visible to casting people until you pay for it.  By, naturally, giving them your credit card info.  New technology, same old tricks.  (Though usually the brick-and-mortar ones can spell!)

A quick visit to Google gave me a new blog to follow, as she just posted about this same scam (under a different company name - more red flags!)  a couple days ago:

http://castingscoop.blogspot.com/2009/02/beware-of-acting-and-modeling-scams.html

She also has links to other great resources on the topic, including the FTC's advice on avoiding acting/modeling scams, and (in the comments) one to an older column of Bonnie Gillespie's on the same topic.

Roaster.  Man, if you wrote that in fiction, nobody would believe it.

Under Construction

In which our Diva is in Career Development Mode

I always feel a little antsy when I don't have any Exciting News!! or Crunchy Process Goodness to post about.  Which is a bit silly, since it seems unlikely that anyone outside of my immediate social circle reads this blog anyway.   But hey, maybe you're reading this at some future point when I am That Chick From Those Movies and you followed some links out of curiosity.  Or maybe you're a fellow dreamer-and-doer who's stumbled across my meanderings and found a kindred spirit.  (If so, hey, shout out!  Support networks are made of win!)  Or maybe nobody's reading it at all, and that's okay too.

The lack of Crunchy Process Goodness makes me antsier than the lack of Exciting News!!, because I'm very much a believer in the notion that an actor should always be doing some kind of acting, be it performance-oriented or training or whatever.  I've done several film auditions lately, but that's pretty much it -- on the craft side.

What I've mostly been doing instead (around the mortgage-and-groceries-driven reality of Office of Doom)  is That Other Stuff most of us hate.

I knew long before I started reading casting director Bonnie Gillespie's fantastic weekly Column "The Actor's Voice" that the self-promotion portion of an actor's job never stops.  But man, it's  nice to have that weekly kick in the pants of "So do it already!!"  To that end, I made a commitment at the turn of 2009: No auditioning for theatre until I have my website and representation ducks in a row.  The goal was to get the site up and submissions out to two or three agents before the end of January, and then maybe think about committing to three or four months of rehearsals and performances.  Because, whatever my intentions at the outset, That Other Stuff just never ever gets done during a show process.  Ever.

The funny thing is, once I got going, I've actually had a great time, and might even make that goal.   It helps that I have a rather broad DIY streak anyway, but darned if it hasn't also just been fun.  I finally swallowed my "only hand-coded HTML will do!" geek-girl pride, accepted that I'm not going to get around to learning to build CSS from scratch in the foreseeable future, and went down the dark path of canned Joomla! templates.  And the results aren't half bad, if I do say so myself.  There's plenty more to do, of course, but for starters, it made me finally write a proper PR bio (have I mentioned I hate writing bios?), with the side effect of having said bio punching up my IMDb page too.

I still have lots of theatre photos to scan in, but for now there's a sampling of the fabulous ones Ken Beach took at the final dress for Dracula.  Probably most time-consuming was going through many hundreds of shots from three photo shoots for the "Publicity" folder.  Which is arguably the most frivolous area of the site.  But y'know, when you're not a big star or model material, and you have a documentedly problematic relationship with still photos of yourself?  It's a nice shot of confidence to not only have, but have put together yourself, a decently professional, polished presentation of some really cool ones!  Shoutouts to photographers Todd Jackson, David Grelck, and Mike Smith, with thanks for making that possible by actually asking me to pose for them!  (Also glad that, unlike my outdated HTML, my Photoshop skills have stayed in good form.  Never underestimate the importance of cropping and color correction in the digital age.) 

Still on the agenda: Editing reel material and authoring a suitably professional DVD, so it's ready to send out to agents and casting agents when they ask for it.  (Which requires me to get resumes and cover letters out to them first, which is happening THIS WEEK.  You saw it here first -- don't be afraid to hold me to it, even if we've never met!)  This is helped by the prompt receipt of my copy of a recent student film by Devan McGrath, who gets a thumbs-up shoutout for professional communication, a fun but efficient set, and did I mention actually sending copies to actors, all in refreshing defiance of every horror story you've ever heard about working in student films.  :: blows kisses to Mal Corazon compadres ::  Watch for clips from that and The Cancer Jean on my website, my Actors Access profile, and assorted other places I should have had video up ages ago.

Dreaming-and-doing actors?  We don't have the money.  We gotta MAKE the time.  Do it.  You will not be sorry.

Um... No, thanks.

Dude. I dunno if it's just a seasonal cycle thing or what, but the preponderance of reality shows on the casting breakdowns the last couple weeks is downright creepy.

:: vibrates in place ::

I'm having one of those GET ME OUTTA HERE kinda days. The demands of Office of Doom are actually more manageable right this moment than they have been for most of the past three or four months, but that doesn't help.

I want to be somewhere that is NOT HERE, doing work I actually CARE about. I don't want to not work, I don't want to play all the time. I want to WORK. Work that is not this work, because I Do Not Care about this work, no matter how hard I try.

Knowing that I'm pursuing all available avenues to do something about that helps only slightly when I'm in this mood. Probably makes me even more restless, in fact. In the starting blocks, waiting for the damn pistol to fire already.

*deep breath* End of lunch hour. Focus. Other people do care about this stuff, and deserve to have it done promptly and well.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have no ambition. I know enough to know I wouldn't want it, but I'm still curious what it's actually like.

Hollywood Midwest

Just as I've been doing a lot more auditioning for film than for theatre lately, the current issue of PerformInk has a front-page feature on, you guessed it, auditioning for independent film.

This observation in particular struck me:

“What I always think is kind of interesting is that there are these different communities in Chicago,” says Rachael Patterson, director of Acting Studio Chicago and a longtime auditions and on-camera acting instructor (as well as a former casting director). “There’s the improv community, which doesn’t really cross over all that much with the theatre community, except for on-camera auditions where you’ll see both improv actors and theatre actors. And then the independent film community is very separate from both the improv and theatre community. Actors very much want to cross over to work with independent filmmakers. And filmmakers often don’t know where to go to find actors.”

So there you have it, folks. They don't know where to find us. We gotta go find them.

Mostly I'm coming away from this with the realization that I need to start going to Midwest Independent Film Festival nights. Sounds kinda like a (hopefully) bigger version of the late lamented Columbus Film Consortium, which (a) was just fun to go to, and (b) led to half the film work I did there.

This would bring me the greatest of glee

In which our Diva demonstrates that she is pink and girly and squeeful and fond of kicking ass and blowing shit up

Having lots of fun with the Great Big Ball of Operatic Fluff, but I will definitely be ready for a change of pace when it's done. Ideally one (or more) of three things: Weird and artsy. Plenty of snark. Kicking of ass. In that last category, blowing shit up would not be unwelcome.

Which is why I'm going to schlep it up to Milwaukee next Saturday to audition for this flick. I've heard good things about these guys through the grapevine, and fully expect their stuff to start showing up as SciFi "original movies" any day now. As much as we mock those from the living room, I am totally down with that notion.

I'm also filled with glee at the mental image of survivors mounting a resistance from the top floors of the Sears Tower. And a bit of glee at the women's audition side (it's not uncommon to use other people's movies as audition pieces) being Fry from Pitch Black, because it bodes well for the kind of roles they're looking to fill. Fry was seventeen flavors of awesome, in the best Ripley tradition of ordinary grunt forced into heroism.

And I love that it's that scene -- when she's been insisting "I'm not the captain!" every five minutes since the beginning of the movie, and all of a sudden, bam, "I am the captain of this ship and I am not leaving anyone behind!" Now to memorize it and not be intimidated influenced by Radha Mitchell's home run...

If this puppy has characters even remotely like that? How wide a patch of broken glass do I have to crawl across?

Falling In Love Again

Bobbing up briefly from the Tech Week Abyss...

The never-say-die voice had the right idea, even though I didn't get the gig. The audition was fun, I got to play with some neat movement stuff and meet some very cool people, and I didn't even have any trouble getting downtown. (Yay, Chicago snow removal procedures!)

And, as happens over and over, I read through the script and thought, This is the coolest thing I've seen in ages! I wanna do this!

So, of course, I don't get to. And now I'm a bit bummed about something I hadn't even heard of a week ago. This isn't a plea for sympathy or support (not today, anyway), though, just an observation of fact.

Because there's really no other way to go about it. If I don't think any project I put myself out there for is the coolest thing I've seen in ages, and want it down to my toenails, what's the point?

This is, incidentally, the primary reason Gina Holden's blog is linked over to the side there. Not so much just because I'm possibly the biggest Coreen fangirl this side of legal drinking age (but jeez, who wrote that character summary? O.o), and am keen to see where she goes from there. Or even that I'm hellaciously envious of all of it. It's the way she's going for it, with full-bore enthusiasm for every single gig and what's just so giddyingly cool about each one. You want an antidote to actors who moan and groan about the soul-sucking schlock they're forced to lower themselves to (and I'm acquainted with my share!), this lady is it.

And it's a good thing to remember right now, as the Great Big Ball of Operatic Fluff chugs along through tech, with all the inevitable headaches and late nights and "why in the name of all that's holy are we doing this, again?"

I know why. Because there are things about it that are really, really cool. Those things get my head and my heart for all I'm worth, because in a few more days they'll be gone. And the hunt for the next coolest thing I've seen in ages, the next fight for the chance to be a part of it, will be on.

On your marks, get set...

Schedule Tetris

In which our Diva wishes desperately for a teleporter, and exercises firm denial against the suspicion that she is Getting Too Old For This Shit

The line between "challenge to be overcome" and "the Universe is trying to tell me something" is really, really fuzzy sometimes.

Case in point: Over the past several days, I've been exchanging emails with the director of a student film that sounds immensely cool. And I hasten to say the guy has been about as accommodating as anyone could reasonably expect. But on the ramp into tech week for Elisir, it's all too easy for audition times to run into rehearsals I can't afford to miss. Which they have, twice -- the original date, which he rescheduled independently of my conflict, and the rescheduled date tomorrow. When I emailed him asking if I could possibly make any other arrangements due to my conflict tomorrow, he replied that he had an additional session scheduled for this evening.

Which I could, technically, by the edges of my fingernails, maybe make.

If I drive off with the only functional car in the household, leaving the hubby to his own devices to get to our social commitment tonight (from which I would, of course, be playing hooky).

If I log in to Office of Doom tomorrow morning to finish making up the hours from an appointment I had on Tuesday. (And I say that with much kowtowing to the gods of telecommuting, because making up hours is a helluva lot easier when I can do it from my attic.)

And if the obscene quantity of snow between here and the Art Institute is sufficiently off the roads by the time I head out.

Balanced against the fact that the director is a bit overwhelmed by the response he actually got to his audition posting, which is why he's having an additional session in the first place, and, well.

So, um. Challenge? Universe? Which one am I trying to talk myself into? Not quite sure.

The never-say-die voice is saying "Haul your ass into the city by hook or by crook, and deal with the tired and the crazy."

The grownup-with-responsibilities voice is saying "Let it go, there'll be other times, and you have Things You Need To Do. Plus, where do you get off inconveniencing hubby and hosts of social commitment?"

Neither voice is all that appealing at the moment. Which is kind of annoying, considering how often these situations come up.

As long as the voice saying "Screw it, run a hot bubblebath and HIDE!" doesn't win, I think I'm okay. But boy, does it get loud sometimes...

Life is good

(repost from my LJ, 6/22/05)

It truly is. I love my hubby and my family and my friends and my home.

That said, however, every once in a while you have to let the insecurities out to play, or they're gonna wreck the carpet.

I love all those things above. I hate the nagging sense that crops up now and again, that I've played it too safe.

I watch college classmates play Buffy baddies or log seventeen zillion performances as Christine Daaé. I watch the college and just-out-of-college kids in J&H throwing themselves all-or-nothing into building their careers. And I can't help wondering what would have happened if I'd done things differently.

Maybe I'd be an actual working actor.

Maybe I'd be living in a cardboard box (as my floormates voted me most likely to do).

Maybe I'd still be cranking out legal gobbledygook 40 hours a week, leaving the house at 7:15 and getting home after 11 in order to do what I love and still pay the mortgage.

I know there's no way to know, and it didn't happen, so there's no point in dwelling on it. And I don't dwell. But every now and then, it bugs me. Every now and then, I kick myself for wasting those few years circumstances gifted me with, when I could have taken so many more risks and didn't. I wonder why the heck I didn't come to Chicago sooner.

I know I'm either what they want or I'm not. And in all honesty, I've always been mostly not, the girl nobody knows what to do with. (Just in case anyone's still wondering why I've latched onto Elphaba so hard as THE dream role these days...) As the butt gets bigger and the joints get stiffer, that's only going to get truer. But I should have gotten myself in front of way more of "them" by this time, to increase the chances of finding the ones for whom I am what they want.

I let the brick wall I hit in New York paralyze me for way too long. Now I'm scrambling to catch up. It's certainly not impossible that I still can. But it gets less likely every day.

Sometimes I envy my many friends whose hearts are in writing. Not that getting published is any easier than getting paid to perform. But the actual writing can be done anywhere, any time (assuming there is time, of course). Actors are the most insecure creatures on the planet -- even the healthiest of us! -- because we constantly have to beg others to let us do what we love, let alone get paid for it.