Last week, I was feeling pretty good about my career in Hollywood. I had just gotten a lead in the first audition I had done for the Underground Theater Company, of which I had just become a member. I had taken a stand against a bullying acting teacher and dropped his course. And I had just had a wonderful first day with my new acting coach, Joseph Pearlman, who had called me a “very special” actress in our first session together.
What a difference a week makes.
Our first rehearsals for the play were to begin on Friday, February 19, at 6 p.m. I had spent the previous week in San Francisco, where I had worked as an extra on “Trauma,” auditioned for a student film, and auditioned for another commercial to run overseas – this one was for Australia. The casting director who called me in wrote, “Wow. Great eyes, great smile, great look.” I thought, how can I not get cast in this? The answer? By being late.
I have had a problem getting to places on time all my life. I don’t know why. My theory is that I have never gotten quite enough sleep. I’ve spent my life being tired, and I remember even as a little girl in elementary school lying in bed with aching arms and legs, experiencing the pains that were later diagnosed as fibromyalgia (or perhaps lupus-related). Because we didn’t know better at the time, Mom would give me a Coke with my bedtime snack, and then the caffeine would keep me awake for hours. I was late for home room almost every day in high school, but my teachers indulged me because I made straight As and was a good kid. I guess that gave me a sense of entitlement, in a way.
I did better in college, and on my first job, but once I got into sales at AT&T, being on time at work was not that big of a deal as long as you were a top performer, and I always was. It didn’t get to be a big deal again until I was working for a man in Nashville who was always waiting for me to screw up. Lateness was a top priority in his book, and I got in big trouble for not being at work at the crack of dawn – 8:00 a.m. to everybody else. I was going to Vanderbilt full-time by this time, and my health had gotten very bad, to the point that I could barely function every day. All I wanted to do was graduate and get away from the boss from hell who was fixated on my being on-time for work.
So I did get away, by moving to New Jersey six months after graduation. This move saved my life, maybe literally. My new boss was very understanding about my health problems (I was completely up-front about them), and he and I worked out an early form of “telecommuting” that was seen as pioneering (this was in 1993) and made me very popular with our customer, as our main office was 60 miles away and I was just nine miles down the road, living on the ocean. My health improved dramatically, and whenever I was late my boss would counsel me that I just tried to do too much in too little time. Wise words that I try to heed whenever I can, because everything really does take longer than you think it is going to.
When Keith and I moved out to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1996, I no longer was able to telecommute, and I had a 26-mile drive to get to my office. Plus, I was managing a global team which meant we had video conferences at least once a month that began at 7:00 a.m. and lasted for three hours, with me as the chair. Plus, the traffic in the Bay Area was nightmarish. It was a constant struggle to get to work on time for the next four years that I was able to work. And since I have been acting in LA, I never seem to estimate the travel times correctly. Every hour here is rush hour, every day of the week.
All of that is a very long-winded way of saying that I have a problem with being on-time. It’s not usually anything personal; it’s just that I don’t feel well enough to get out of bed, or something traffic-related – an accident for example. Several times I was involved in the accident! I used to get lost a lot, but since I got my GPS (global positioning system) in my Toyota Prius, that doesn’t happen nearly as often - which brings me to my commercial audition. I have come to depend on the GPS probably more than I should. I wrote down the address for the audition, and left my house only giving myself 45 minutes to go 25 miles – not nearly enough for San Francisco, but I was running late that morning because, well, I was tired. I made it to the city with 10 minutes to park, which I did, and then walked to the address, which was right smack in the middle of – Chinatown?
Now, Chinatown in San Francisco is a very densely populated area, with a rat’s maze of streets and a rabbit warren of small shops and apartment buildings filling the small area. Tourists love it, but casting agencies do not. They may film movies in Chinatown, but they don’t cast them there. I knew immediately I had made a mistake. Sure enough, when I took out the note from my purse, I realized I had left out a digit on the address, and the agency was ten blocks away!
I was already ten minutes late, and I had to walk (uphill) back to the parking garage, get my car, pay $2 for parking for only ten minutes, and then try to race ten blocks to the agency. I would have called them, but they hadn’t given the auditioners a number, which happens frequently (maybe it's a test). And being late is just the kiss of death for an audition. I don’t know that I have ever been cast in anything that I have arrived late for, even if I did call from the road. Anyway, I figured I might as well go, so I drove the rest of the way, nearly running over a group of Chinese residents in the process (I waved "sorry," but they yelled at me anyway). I got there nearly 30 minutes late. Fortunately, both the cameraman and the director were very nice, and no one else was there. They said it was fine, and told me to tell them what happened on-camera, which I did. They said I looked great and had a beautiful smile. I thanked them very much and apologized about 20 times, and although I did get a very nice e-mail saying they liked my work, they did not cast me. Of course. Because I was late.
Now, you would think that after an incident or twenty like this that I would learn my lesson, right? Well, maybe. I AM doing much better. You can never be late for background work – if you are, more than 15 minutes or so, the assistant director checking people in will call Central Casting, and if it happens more than once, you will “never work in this town again.” Literally. If you can’t get work with Central, you pretty much won’t get work with any of the other agencies either. So obviously, I CAN be on time when I know I have to be. But sometimes, for auditions and rehearsals and classes, I just don't seem to allow enough time for the problems that always come up, like no parking spaces, traffic jams, accidents, and etc. And that’s really the story for today.
On the night of the first play rehearsal, I made it to Hollywood from the Bay Area right at 6 p.m., but I was still ten miles from the director’s home where we were to meet. I called him and said I’d be there in about 20 minutes. And I swear, it took me an hour to go ten miles, get parked, and get to his house, because of the Friday night traffic! I was fit to be tied but there was nothing I could do. I apologized profusely but he said no worries, and we had a great read-through. The next rehearsal was the following day, at 1:00 p.m. I had an 11 a.m. rehearsal for my Sunday class with my scene partner, who lives about 12 miles from the director. We rehearsed until 12:30, and then it took me 45 minutes to get there and parked! This time, the problem was due to the fact that there is NO street parking allowed in West Hollywood on Saturdays, something the director had neglected to tell me. This time, I could tell he was pissed off, although I was not the last person to arrive, but we proceeded and again, the rehearsal went fine.
Then, on Monday, all five cast members were to get together in the theater to do the first “blocking” rehearsal. Blocking is when the director places the actors on stage and tells us where he wants us to be at certain times during the play. It is the beginning of stage directions, and it’s a very important part of the theatrical directing process. I wanted to make sure I was there on time. The director had sent us an e-mail stating we only had the theater for an hour and a half, and I thought he said 5:45 to 7:15, when in fact it was 5:15 to 6:45. I know I sound really stupid, but my lupus has caused some memory problems and I do make mistakes like people much older than me do. It’s very embarrassing because I used to have a razor-sharp brain. I should have double-checked but I didn’t, and I thought I was right on time as I was driving to the theater at 5:30 when my cell phone rang. It was the director, livid. I said, “I’m on my way,” wondering why he was so upset. When I arrived five minutes later, I realized the other four cast members had been just sitting there, waiting for me, since 5:15. We started immediately, but I knew he was mad.
Then, the real bombshell dropped. I received a text message (from my extras’ calling service that books me for my background jobs) that I had been booked for four days of work on “The Office!” I was thrilled, for several reasons: I needed the money, because Keith expects me to make a certain amount every month and I was way short so far in February; I had never worked before on “The Office,” my favorite show and a great sitcom with terrific writing and acting; and getting that many days in a row might, just might, give me a chance to get a SAG voucher (you need three to be able to join the Screen Actors Guild, and I don’t have any) or get a Taft-Hartley upgrade (one speaking line in the show which would have immediately given me SAG-eligible status). I’m in AFTRA (the American Federation of Television and Radio Actors), but not SAG, and in order to even start getting considered for work on the types of shows I want to work on, I need to get into that union. But that is a discussion for another day. So I was thrilled, and I went to tell the director that I might have a problem with some of the earlier rehearsals that week (one started at 5 p.m.).
He looked at me like he wanted to strangle me, and said, “You have to be at every rehearsal. You can’t take that job.” I looked at him incredulously and told him very nicely that background work is the way I pay the bills, and that I couldn’t turn it down. I mean, I was surprised I got booked for ONE day, much less four – I’d submitted my availability to my service three times earlier in the month, and only gotten one day of work, and the most days in a row I’d ever gotten before, in eight years of doing background work, was two. I reminded him that background rarely goes longer than ten hours, and we were starting at 8 a.m. so that meant we should be out by 6 p.m., fine for 7 p.m. rehearsals, but he wasn’t buying it. I pointed out that he could use the early rehearsal to do the scenes I’m not in (there were two of them), and that seemed to really set him off. As I left, he was headed over to talk to the bullying acting teacher, who also happens to be the Artistic Director of the Underground Theater Company, the one who has a zero-tolerance policy on lateness. Uh-oh, I thought, I’m in deep doo-doo.
So I called the director, who is about 24 and has never directed a play before, about 15 minutes later. I told him I was not happy about what had happened, and that I was sorry about the background job but that I had to take it, for the reasons I stated earlier. I said it appeared obvious to me that he was going to replace me with someone else, and if that was the case, I wanted him to go ahead and do it. He said he would think about it and call me in about an hour. I proceeded to go to my workshop scheduled for that evening with the Casting Director for “The Office,” completely separate from the background job. I did a fun scene playing “Michelle” Scott in the scene where she talks with Oscar about his being gay. The CD said she enjoyed every minute of it and believed every word I said, which is hard to do because, if you watch “The Office,” you know that this character is a total idiot. And then, when I got to my car, I had a voice mail from the director, "releasing me" from the play, when I got out.
I called him back, and I got mad, unfortunately. Because I knew it wasn’t really about the background job. He told me he didn’t consider background work “real acting” (theater snob, I called him) and that he could see that I was “only in it for the money” (no one in their right mind is in acting for the money; I would starve if I were!) and then he basically got down to the real reason: that I had been late to all three rehearsals. Never mind that I had legitimate reasons, except for perhaps the Monday one were I just lost my mind and got the time wrong. In the world of the Underground Theater Company, apparently there are no excuses for being late.
I said some things that I probably shouldn’t have, but basically I told him that this play is free theatre, and background pays the bills; I want to get in SAG and working background gives me the possibility of getting vouchers (I didn’t get any, but again, another story); I want to work in sitcoms and "The Office" lets me work with the best in the business; and if I had known he was going to f-ing fire me for missing one rehearsal (which is all it turned out to have been) I wouldn’t have taken the lead in the first place. And when he said, piously, “I hope you can learn and grow from this experience,” I replied, “Well, in the interest of learning and growing, you could have started without me on Monday, rehearsing the scenes I wasn’t in.” He lost it at that point and said, “I find it highly offensive that you are trying to tell me how to run my rehearsals when YOU were the one who was late.” And at that point I realized that this conversation was over, and said so, but wishing him "all the best."
So, was I wrong to take the background work? Well, from his perspective, yes, although he could have handled it differently. End times on background days are notoriously unpredictable, and on Thursday I had to miss an important audition for Home Depot because we weren't finished, and I had expected to be done before 6:45, the time of the audition. But since the play was free theater anyway, meaning they were not paying any of us, he could have gotten an understudy for the week, in case I was not able to make it. As it turned out, Thursday’s 5-7 p.m. rehearsal was the only one I would have missed, and I couldn’t resist sending him an e-mail telling him so when we were done. But I also sent him a letter of apology, copying the directors of the theater company, as well as my agent, just to cover my butt.
I also did something in hurt and anger that, looking back, was probably a bad idea. Normally I never send e-mails like that until 24 hours have passed – a very good rule that I violated this time. I have never been dropped from any kind of production before, and my ego had really taken a blow. So I sent a letter of resignation late that night to the Company Director, a woman who I don’t know well yet but like so far. Knowing that the bullying acting coach is the Artistic Director of the company, and also knowing that he had told the director unequivocally that he should have fired me after just one time of being late, I was sure that I would be dropped from the company. Given that my priorities are on serious acting study, now (a change from earlier this year!), in auditions, sitcoms, and improv, and hoping to work as much as possible doing comic films, sitcoms, and commercials, rather than theater, I decided to resign from the theater company before they could fire me.
She responded to my e-mail the next day expressing surprise and disappointment that I had resigned. Stating that “the company does not share [the bullying teacher’s] position on lateness; you would not have been dropped from the company,” she informed me that the play would have been treated as a director’s workshop only. Great – now she tells me! I wrote back that perhaps I had been too hasty, and that although paid jobs would always take top priority, I expected that there would be time for me to do workshops and plays, especially in the summer, and asked for re-instatement. But she has not replied, so I guess I screwed that up too. But I may be breaking my old boss' advice again, of trying to do too many things in too little time, so maybe this is all for the best.
So, what went well this week? I did have a great time on the set. I was featured twice in relatively long scenes which, if I am recognizable, will allow me to appeal to SAG for at least one voucher. I made several new contacts and got referrals to a new commercial casting agency and a new talent agency. I made friends with the first and second assistant directors (there are usually four assistants to the actual director, who usually does not interact with anyone but the principal cast), who allowed me to take a long lunch on Wednesday so I could audition for a lead in an independent film (another one about zombies). And the food was fantastic! All of these are part of the reasons why background work is so much fun. Oh, and I made pretty good money too, meeting my commitment to my husband. And I have to ask myself – which is more important? Having fun, and doing what I say I will do for my husband? Or always being on time to auditions? Because I don’t kid myself. He fired me for being late.
Til next time,
Jennie
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
On Acting Classes and "Brutal Honesty"
I haven't had much formal acting training in my life. When I was a child, I took dance lessons for eight years (ballet, tap, and jazz, dropping ballet when it was obvious that I was not going to have the body for it), and piano lessons for ten, showing real aptitude there (my teacher begged me to study music in college, and later, when I met my husband, who has a computer science major AND a music major, I realized that this could have been a possibility. C'est la vie.). But even though I loved to sing, my parents never sent me to voice lessons, although I did sing in youth choir for a couple of years in middle school. And we never even considered acting lessons, although I did act in three plays in high school as I've mentioned previously. But the drama department in high school was for weirdos at our school, and I was already very active in band, flag corps and in my senior year, dance team. I also was in two sororities and had a full-time boyfriend all four years, so I had a very active social life (my senior year I went to 14 formal dances!). Taking acting lessons never occurred to me.
But there were two episodes early in my life that indicated I might have more aptitude for the theatre then my family suspected. The first happened in the summer before fifth grade, when I staged a full-scale production of a Scholastic play, "Princess Pat Will be Wed in the Fall," starring most of my neighborhood friends. Curiously, I gave myself a very small part, and chose instead to direct, showing early evidence of my natural tendency to lead which would show up in my business career. The rush that this successful production gave me (about 40 neighbors attended) emboldened me to adapt the Thanksgiving story for Mrs. Killen's fifth grade class, in which again, I gave myself a very small part, proud to be the writer. But the acting bug had bitten me, and it was to surface again, many years later, and take hold of me for good.
But still, when I began to act, I was often told I was "a natural," and since I got work easily from my first audition, I didn't think too much about classes. When I first moved to the Bay Area, I had started an "Acting for Singers" class on weekends that was supposed to be for ten weeks, but I dropped out after two weeks because I thought the teacher was abusive and insulting (remember this!). I didn't study acting again until five years later, in 2001, when I took my first class in musical theatre, which prompted me to start auditioning at the encouragement of my non-abusive, nurturing teacher. But as I began to add credits to my resume, sometime in the second year of my acting career, directors at auditions began to ask me about what acting training I had. Since the aborted "acting for singers" class and one in musical theatre no longer seemed adequate when I was auditioning for dramatic films and commercials, I decided to give some of the short courses offered at local casting agencies a try.
My first on-camera training was Auditioning for Commercials at Beau Bonneau Casting. BBC is probably the premier agency in SF; they handle almost all of the extra work for any TV shows and movies that shoot in the area, and a fair amount of commercials. Like most casting agencies, they also offer on-going classes in Auditioning, Cold Reading, Scene Study, and On-Camera Acting, to name a few. My first experience was eye-opening for me. We were given a "side" (a page with the script on it) and were told to take it and memorize it, then come back in five minutes to read on camera. This was my first time being taped for review, and I was horrified at how much I needed to refer to the text. I looked like a bobblehead. The teacher wasn't unkind, but he didn't need to be. I learned a valuable lesson about keeping my head still just by watching the tape.
More classes and workshops followed, mostly in weekend or one-night form. My first class in LA was with Kirk Baltz, a well-known acting coach who teaches a weekend-long "Actors' Intensive" that focuses on getting actors to reach deeply into their memories and bring out painful emotions in order to be able to access them for scenes later (it's called the Meisner technique). It's a great method of acting, but unfortunately I was still pretty sick with Lupus and the intensity was just too much for me. I only lasted one day. But I still use the basics of this technique to access emotions, especially when I need to cry for a scene.
Recently I have been attending one Casting Director Workshop a month at a place called The Actors' Collective in Hollywood. There are several acting studios around LA that offer these with some of the top casting directors on a regular basis. It is a great way to get seen by the people who cast the types of shows you are looking to be on. For example, I want to be on "The Office" (like nearly every other actor in Hollywood). The Casting Director is Dorian Frankel. She makes the rounds at most of the studios, and I actually did a Scene Study with her back in 2006. So far this year I have met the CD for "Chuck," and "How I Met Your Mother," another who casts Lifetime movies, and another who is casting a new pilot with Alyssa Milano, "Romantically Challenged." One of them said he casts as much as 70% of his co-star and guest star roles from the people he meets from these workshops. I haven't been called yet, but I am hoping!
What made me decide to start studying in earnest was two things: One, I noticed that my booking percentage rate (the number of jobs I get) from auditions is less than those I book straight from my head shots without auditions. This tells me that I am doing something wrong in my auditions, either with look, etiquette, or technique. And two, I was invited to become a member of the Hollywood Underground Theatre Company, and classes in On-Camera Acting, which focus on audition technique, were offered at only $25 a class, are a benefit of membership. So as of February 1,
I signed up for the first month with enthusiasm.
I was a little wary about the instructor when I received the confirmation and the writer said, "Don't be afraid of him - he's not mean, just honest!" She also told me that if I did not arrive before 7:30, when the class began, I would be locked out, and not to bother to try to come in. Okay, I thought, he must be really good. There were seven of us in the class, three of whom were ongoing students, and four of us who were new, all company members. The newbies seemed nervous, the old ones seemed submissive. My wariness intensified.
The instructor began class with a lengthy discourse about his methods which included the admonishment about being late. He then warned us, ominously, "I am not a nurturer. I am brutally honest. I will tell you the truth, and if you can't take it, you don't belong in this class."
I always wonder about people who use the term "brutally honest." I am all for honesty. I am a proponent of truth and open communications. But I don't believe honesty has to be brutal. I don't believe the truth has to hurt. I have found that, almost 100% of the time, people who use this phrase generally do so in order to have an excuse to act like jerks and to say whatever insulting comment that comes to mind in the name of "the truth." It's like Christians who criticize others at church and then say "I'm just saying this out of love." No, they're not. They are saying it to hurt you, most of the time.
So the class proceeded. The students who had chosen to continue with the [abuser] instructor read their scene first, then were evaluated. He told one young man that his new hair cut made his head look like he had a condom on it. He told a woman having problems memorizing her lines that she sounded less like a moron than she had last week. Then, with no direction or guidance, he had the four new students (including me) do our scenes, all shot in tight close up. After we finished, he smirked and said, "Well, I can see I have my work cut out for me." He asked if any of us had ever gone out on any auditions. When we tried to answer, he cut us off and said things like "I'm not talking about the crap that they post on-line, I'm talking about the real stuff, you know, that's on the alphabet, ABC, NBC....Any monkey can do commercials, don't tell me about commercials....Student films don't count. Theatre doesn't count....I wouldn't send any of the four of you out on auditions right now, and I would advise your agents not to send you out."
See what I mean? "Brutal honesty" as a license to act like a jerk, or as one of my friends who has a delightful way of getting to the point put it, "a monkey's nut sack." Another problem with these guys is that they can dish it out, but they can't or won't take it. Whenever any of us tried to respond to a criticism with anything other than an agreement, he would cut us off with another insult. He told one new student that he "mugged" for the camera; the student said "I know," and the instructor, appearing to be furious, said "I never want to hear that phrase again in this class. Because if you 'know' you do something that is wrong, then why are you still doing it?" He told me that I moved around too much on camera and asked if I was just nervous. I said no, thinking "why would I be nervous for this class?" In truth I had busted my butt to get to LA on time, and I was shaky from exhaustion but I wasn't going to get defensive with him, so I just agreed with everything he said.
I left the class feeling as though I had been in a boxing match and I had been TKO'd.
I felt demoralized for the next three days, and then I had a great audition after which the director told me my work was "lovely" (I later got the part, a lead in a play). That helped somewhat. And the next day, after a Casting Director workshop, I was offered the last spot in an Audition Technique workshop taught by Joseph Pearlman, the in-house acting coach at Creative Artists' Agency (CAA), the most prestigious agency in LA. Although this class was $50 per session, I jumped at the chance to study with the acting coach of such notable young actresses as Amy Adams and Zoe Deschanel. (By the way, I had researched the career of the brutally honest instructor; he has never cast anything but documentary shorts and has no teaching credits listed on his website.)
We started the class with Joseph on Sunday morning. He too began his class with a short introduction about his technique. He was warm and friendly, pointing out that he wanted all of us to succeed, and that it was his job to give us tips and technique to do so. He said that it was his style to "nurture actors," and to "help us learn in a nurturing environment." Hallelujah! This could not have been more different from the previous class. None of us were taped, but he had all 20 of us read the same monologue, then he asked us how it felt. Then he would help us work through whatever difficulties he observed. In my case, he said I seemed "tentative, a little stiff, a little fearful." I said yes, I was fearful, because of last week's acting class, when the teacher said that I moved around too much! He said, "Did that feel right to you?" And I said, "NO! No one has ever told me that before." He replied, "So then, throw it out. Just take what works and leave the rest." And then he said these magic words: "You have something very special, Jennie Floyd, and I can help you get to where you need to be." Music to my ears, balm to my wounded soul.
So I dropped the brutally honest instructor's class. Because I can't work with an instructor who treats their students that way. I can't learn that way. And the lesson I've learned is that I don't have to take that kind of crap from anyone. There are plenty of teachers out there who will treat their students with respect and get great results. And I found one when I wasn't even looking. "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."
Til next time,
Jennie
But there were two episodes early in my life that indicated I might have more aptitude for the theatre then my family suspected. The first happened in the summer before fifth grade, when I staged a full-scale production of a Scholastic play, "Princess Pat Will be Wed in the Fall," starring most of my neighborhood friends. Curiously, I gave myself a very small part, and chose instead to direct, showing early evidence of my natural tendency to lead which would show up in my business career. The rush that this successful production gave me (about 40 neighbors attended) emboldened me to adapt the Thanksgiving story for Mrs. Killen's fifth grade class, in which again, I gave myself a very small part, proud to be the writer. But the acting bug had bitten me, and it was to surface again, many years later, and take hold of me for good.
But still, when I began to act, I was often told I was "a natural," and since I got work easily from my first audition, I didn't think too much about classes. When I first moved to the Bay Area, I had started an "Acting for Singers" class on weekends that was supposed to be for ten weeks, but I dropped out after two weeks because I thought the teacher was abusive and insulting (remember this!). I didn't study acting again until five years later, in 2001, when I took my first class in musical theatre, which prompted me to start auditioning at the encouragement of my non-abusive, nurturing teacher. But as I began to add credits to my resume, sometime in the second year of my acting career, directors at auditions began to ask me about what acting training I had. Since the aborted "acting for singers" class and one in musical theatre no longer seemed adequate when I was auditioning for dramatic films and commercials, I decided to give some of the short courses offered at local casting agencies a try.
My first on-camera training was Auditioning for Commercials at Beau Bonneau Casting. BBC is probably the premier agency in SF; they handle almost all of the extra work for any TV shows and movies that shoot in the area, and a fair amount of commercials. Like most casting agencies, they also offer on-going classes in Auditioning, Cold Reading, Scene Study, and On-Camera Acting, to name a few. My first experience was eye-opening for me. We were given a "side" (a page with the script on it) and were told to take it and memorize it, then come back in five minutes to read on camera. This was my first time being taped for review, and I was horrified at how much I needed to refer to the text. I looked like a bobblehead. The teacher wasn't unkind, but he didn't need to be. I learned a valuable lesson about keeping my head still just by watching the tape.
More classes and workshops followed, mostly in weekend or one-night form. My first class in LA was with Kirk Baltz, a well-known acting coach who teaches a weekend-long "Actors' Intensive" that focuses on getting actors to reach deeply into their memories and bring out painful emotions in order to be able to access them for scenes later (it's called the Meisner technique). It's a great method of acting, but unfortunately I was still pretty sick with Lupus and the intensity was just too much for me. I only lasted one day. But I still use the basics of this technique to access emotions, especially when I need to cry for a scene.
Recently I have been attending one Casting Director Workshop a month at a place called The Actors' Collective in Hollywood. There are several acting studios around LA that offer these with some of the top casting directors on a regular basis. It is a great way to get seen by the people who cast the types of shows you are looking to be on. For example, I want to be on "The Office" (like nearly every other actor in Hollywood). The Casting Director is Dorian Frankel. She makes the rounds at most of the studios, and I actually did a Scene Study with her back in 2006. So far this year I have met the CD for "Chuck," and "How I Met Your Mother," another who casts Lifetime movies, and another who is casting a new pilot with Alyssa Milano, "Romantically Challenged." One of them said he casts as much as 70% of his co-star and guest star roles from the people he meets from these workshops. I haven't been called yet, but I am hoping!
What made me decide to start studying in earnest was two things: One, I noticed that my booking percentage rate (the number of jobs I get) from auditions is less than those I book straight from my head shots without auditions. This tells me that I am doing something wrong in my auditions, either with look, etiquette, or technique. And two, I was invited to become a member of the Hollywood Underground Theatre Company, and classes in On-Camera Acting, which focus on audition technique, were offered at only $25 a class, are a benefit of membership. So as of February 1,
I signed up for the first month with enthusiasm.
I was a little wary about the instructor when I received the confirmation and the writer said, "Don't be afraid of him - he's not mean, just honest!" She also told me that if I did not arrive before 7:30, when the class began, I would be locked out, and not to bother to try to come in. Okay, I thought, he must be really good. There were seven of us in the class, three of whom were ongoing students, and four of us who were new, all company members. The newbies seemed nervous, the old ones seemed submissive. My wariness intensified.
The instructor began class with a lengthy discourse about his methods which included the admonishment about being late. He then warned us, ominously, "I am not a nurturer. I am brutally honest. I will tell you the truth, and if you can't take it, you don't belong in this class."
I always wonder about people who use the term "brutally honest." I am all for honesty. I am a proponent of truth and open communications. But I don't believe honesty has to be brutal. I don't believe the truth has to hurt. I have found that, almost 100% of the time, people who use this phrase generally do so in order to have an excuse to act like jerks and to say whatever insulting comment that comes to mind in the name of "the truth." It's like Christians who criticize others at church and then say "I'm just saying this out of love." No, they're not. They are saying it to hurt you, most of the time.
So the class proceeded. The students who had chosen to continue with the [abuser] instructor read their scene first, then were evaluated. He told one young man that his new hair cut made his head look like he had a condom on it. He told a woman having problems memorizing her lines that she sounded less like a moron than she had last week. Then, with no direction or guidance, he had the four new students (including me) do our scenes, all shot in tight close up. After we finished, he smirked and said, "Well, I can see I have my work cut out for me." He asked if any of us had ever gone out on any auditions. When we tried to answer, he cut us off and said things like "I'm not talking about the crap that they post on-line, I'm talking about the real stuff, you know, that's on the alphabet, ABC, NBC....Any monkey can do commercials, don't tell me about commercials....Student films don't count. Theatre doesn't count....I wouldn't send any of the four of you out on auditions right now, and I would advise your agents not to send you out."
See what I mean? "Brutal honesty" as a license to act like a jerk, or as one of my friends who has a delightful way of getting to the point put it, "a monkey's nut sack." Another problem with these guys is that they can dish it out, but they can't or won't take it. Whenever any of us tried to respond to a criticism with anything other than an agreement, he would cut us off with another insult. He told one new student that he "mugged" for the camera; the student said "I know," and the instructor, appearing to be furious, said "I never want to hear that phrase again in this class. Because if you 'know' you do something that is wrong, then why are you still doing it?" He told me that I moved around too much on camera and asked if I was just nervous. I said no, thinking "why would I be nervous for this class?" In truth I had busted my butt to get to LA on time, and I was shaky from exhaustion but I wasn't going to get defensive with him, so I just agreed with everything he said.
I left the class feeling as though I had been in a boxing match and I had been TKO'd.
I felt demoralized for the next three days, and then I had a great audition after which the director told me my work was "lovely" (I later got the part, a lead in a play). That helped somewhat. And the next day, after a Casting Director workshop, I was offered the last spot in an Audition Technique workshop taught by Joseph Pearlman, the in-house acting coach at Creative Artists' Agency (CAA), the most prestigious agency in LA. Although this class was $50 per session, I jumped at the chance to study with the acting coach of such notable young actresses as Amy Adams and Zoe Deschanel. (By the way, I had researched the career of the brutally honest instructor; he has never cast anything but documentary shorts and has no teaching credits listed on his website.)
We started the class with Joseph on Sunday morning. He too began his class with a short introduction about his technique. He was warm and friendly, pointing out that he wanted all of us to succeed, and that it was his job to give us tips and technique to do so. He said that it was his style to "nurture actors," and to "help us learn in a nurturing environment." Hallelujah! This could not have been more different from the previous class. None of us were taped, but he had all 20 of us read the same monologue, then he asked us how it felt. Then he would help us work through whatever difficulties he observed. In my case, he said I seemed "tentative, a little stiff, a little fearful." I said yes, I was fearful, because of last week's acting class, when the teacher said that I moved around too much! He said, "Did that feel right to you?" And I said, "NO! No one has ever told me that before." He replied, "So then, throw it out. Just take what works and leave the rest." And then he said these magic words: "You have something very special, Jennie Floyd, and I can help you get to where you need to be." Music to my ears, balm to my wounded soul.
So I dropped the brutally honest instructor's class. Because I can't work with an instructor who treats their students that way. I can't learn that way. And the lesson I've learned is that I don't have to take that kind of crap from anyone. There are plenty of teachers out there who will treat their students with respect and get great results. And I found one when I wasn't even looking. "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."
Til next time,
Jennie
Thursday, February 4, 2010
The Long and Not-So-Winding Road
Since my last, disastrous audition on January 18th, I did not hang up my tap shoes and stop acting. What happened that next day was something that happens more often than it should in Hollywood. I had booked a commercial for January 20th for a product called "Instant Lift," for well-endowed women like me who need a little extra boost. It is a British product, and the spot was to run only in Great Britain, but the producer said they were fine with having a few Americans give their testimonials. But as of around 4 p.m. on January 19th, I still hadn't gotten any word on where and when to go for the shoot, and I was starting to get worried.
About that time my phone rang. It was Beau Bonneau Casting, calling from San Francisco, wanting to know if I could work as an extra on "Trauma" the next day. This is the only network show still filming in the Bay Area as of right now, and I have worked on it one other time. I don't like to say no when they call me. So I said, "Let me check to see if I am still booked for tomorrow, and if not I'll call you right back." Sure enough, when I reached the producer, he stammered that he thought he had e-mailed me that the Brits had decided not to use any Americans on the spot. "Great - thanks for letting me know," I told him sarcastically. It was a good thing I had gotten another job, at the higher $139 AFTRA day rate, or I would have just been out $120. This happens about once a month to me right now, and there's no payment if the job just gets canceled. This part of being an actor sucks.
So I called Beau Bonneau Casting (BBC as we will call them) right back and got booked on "Trauma," with a call time of 11:30 a.m. It was now around 4:30 p.m. and I had a six-hour drive ahead of me. I had not planned on leaving until Thursday, and I was not ready to go, so I went into overdrive, packing as fast as I could. One advantage of having an apartment in Hollywood is that I can leave a lot of wardrobe here. I have a set of toiletries here, my laptop stays here, acting books are here, my (fake) Oscar is here (for motivation)...you get the idea. So packing is usually not too much of a chore, except that this time I had a lot of dirty laundry, and I was going on vacation right after I got home. So I just crammed that into two big shopping bags like a college student going home to Mom, grabbed the wardrobe items that travel with me because I use them the most (lab coat, karate kid, judge, and waitress), and was on the road by 5:15. Along with everybody else getting off of work in LA County.
Ah, driving in LA. The drive to and from my apartment in this city is the single most difficult aspect of this entire experiment. It is 364 miles from my home in Foster City to my apartment in East Hollywood (Little Armenia, to be exact). When the traffic is lightest, which is usually at night, I can make it in five and a half hours, driving about eight miles over the speed limit most of the way. When traffic is heavy, it can take seven hours or more. And gone are the days of driving eighty miles an hour or faster once you hit the wide, flat expanse of I-5. With California verging on bankruptcy, traffic cops and CHIP officers are stopping as many violators as they can, and they never just give a warning. It's not personal - the state just needs the money. I have been ticketed only once since I started making this drive regularly in 2005, but I was driving 90 mph in a 65 mile an hour zone, AND talking on my cell phone (before it was illegal), so I was lucky to get away with just a speeding ticket for $270. Now I set my car on cruise, eight miles over whatever the limit is (usually that means 78 miles an hour), and go.
When I first started making this drive, it was early spring, and most of the rain had stopped. For those of you who are unfamiliar with California seasons, and we do have them, here is the scoop: it usually starts raining in November and stops in February. It can run longer in the north and shorter in the south, but that's basically the rainy season. And the rest of the year, it doesn't rain, and we have that glorious California sunshine that our state is so beloved for. Eight months of sunshine is pretty great. But when it rains, it really pours, like a monsoon, sometimes for up to two weeks in a row (again, this is mostly in the north, and mostly in January), and in the Bay Area, where it is not as arid as the LA desert is, it can feel very damp and cold in the winter (and the summer, when SF is covered with fog most of the time). But one advantage of all the rain is that the mountains that bookend my trip are lush and green, whereas the rest of the year they are golden brown because they are dry. And after a long dry summer, they frequently begin to burn. Twice I have driven close enough to watch retardant being dropped on raging fires near LA, and at night the fires looked like they were coming from Hell itself.
Spring and fall are definitely the best times to make the drive. After I make it through the mountains to I-5, I enter the great Inland Empire, known as "the salad bowl to the world." All kinds of fruits, vegetables, and nuts are grown in the great Central Valley that stretches for about 250 miles between the Santa Cruz Mountains along the coast and the Sierra to the east. On clear days, you can see both ranges, but when it is hazy, you can't make out either. The land stretches out flat and empty for miles in all directions and looks just like Nebraska. The population and politics aren't that different from Nebraska, either, except for the ethnicity; most of the inhabitants are Latino migrant workers and farmers who are deeply religious and deeply conservative. Politically, California may be blue along the edges and in the cities, but it is deep red in the center.
So in the spring, with all the flowering trees like apples and oranges and almonds and pistachios, the vast orchards are beautiful with their pink and white blooms. And in the fall, when the grape harvest comes in (there are a few vineyards in the valley, not like Napa, but enough to make it picturesque), you can see clusters of grapes on the vines before the pickers go to work. After they are done, the leaves of the grapevines turn a beautiful orange and red, almost like the maples back East. There are even a few cotton fields along I-5, which always make me nostalgic for "dem ole cotton fields back home" in the South, from my childhood. I don't think there are any in Huntsville, Alabama, where I grew up, now, but we have them in California. Thank goodness, they use machines to pick it, because it is back-breaking work. But the fields always look a little like snow to me after they have finished, because they don't get it all, and the leftover cotton looks like a melting snowfield.
Speaking of snow, we do get it in the mountains on the drive. Twice I have barely made it over the nearly 4200-foot Tejon Pass coming out of LA, "up around Grapevine" as everyone calls it down here, before the State Highway Department closed I-5 due to heavy snow. And I mean heavy, like two feet! I was surprised it would be that much, but it gets really cold up there. Once I left LA when it was 80 degrees during the day, and by the time I made it over the pass the temperature had dropped to 45 degrees (it is less than 50 miles). Because LA is built on a desert, such dramatic swings are common from day to night, and then add to that the change from sea level to over 4000 feet, and you can get some big changes in weather. I always have a jacket with me.
I used to enjoy the drive, just looking at the scenery and listening to CDs in my car. Then my CD player broke, and I haven't gotten it fixed. I use my iPod, but frequently I forget to charge it (I'm sensing a little irresponsible theme here), and then I have to resort to the radio. And boy, I-5 in the Central Valley is not a happening radio place to be unless you like Mexican polkas or gospel music. They do have "Love Songs with Delilah" on at night, but I can only get that from about the halfway point to LA on, and once I hit the Tejon Pass I can't get any reception at all. It's the same way with the cell phone - I try to talk to Keith or my mom (on Bluetooth, legally) but the reception is spotty and once I get out in no man's land, near towns with names like Lost Hills and Buttonwillow, I might as well give up. So I have lots of time to think, and that leads to boredom, and often that makes me sleepy.
The drive can get really dangerous. Because most of I-5 is a long, straight road with very little to look at, it is hypnotic. I used to get up very early sometimes to avoid an extra night away from home. The last time I did that was the first time I dozed off and ran into the back of another car as I was exiting to get some Diet Coke to wake me up. It was a pretty bad accident that nearly totaled my Acura, but fortunately no one was hurt. I have had one more incident since then, when I ran off the highway into the median and nearly lost control of the car. The cops stopped me for suspicion of DUI, but I was just sleepy! After that, I quit getting up early. Now, if I have to be down here early I just come down the day before. I'm not going to risk my life doing this.
Anyway, on January 19th, I made it home fine, in exactly six hours, beating the two-foot snowstorm that fell that night by two hours. I was in bed with both of my sweethearts, Keith and my pug, by midnight, and I slept until 9:00 a.m. and still made my 11:30 call. We had an easy day on the set of "Trauma," playing diners in an Italian restaurant in North Beach. One of the stars, Jamey Sheridan, was playing drunk, and stumbled into a girl at my table, and we all glared at him, so we will probably be seen in the scene. I think the show has been canceled, so it will be one of the last three episodes that airs. But for a canceled show, they still served an awfully good craft service lunch!
After my nine-day vacation with my mother in Orlando, I am back in LA now, having made "the drive" once more only one day after I got home. This time, I had to be down here on Tuesday, February 2, for an On-Camera Acting class. This will be taught by the Artistic Director of the Hollywood Underground Theater Company, which I was invited to join last month, effective February 1. So I am about to learn first-hand whether I need to be taking acting classes or not, and what happens when I do. And that, my dear readers, is a story for my next post.
Til then,
Jennie
About that time my phone rang. It was Beau Bonneau Casting, calling from San Francisco, wanting to know if I could work as an extra on "Trauma" the next day. This is the only network show still filming in the Bay Area as of right now, and I have worked on it one other time. I don't like to say no when they call me. So I said, "Let me check to see if I am still booked for tomorrow, and if not I'll call you right back." Sure enough, when I reached the producer, he stammered that he thought he had e-mailed me that the Brits had decided not to use any Americans on the spot. "Great - thanks for letting me know," I told him sarcastically. It was a good thing I had gotten another job, at the higher $139 AFTRA day rate, or I would have just been out $120. This happens about once a month to me right now, and there's no payment if the job just gets canceled. This part of being an actor sucks.
So I called Beau Bonneau Casting (BBC as we will call them) right back and got booked on "Trauma," with a call time of 11:30 a.m. It was now around 4:30 p.m. and I had a six-hour drive ahead of me. I had not planned on leaving until Thursday, and I was not ready to go, so I went into overdrive, packing as fast as I could. One advantage of having an apartment in Hollywood is that I can leave a lot of wardrobe here. I have a set of toiletries here, my laptop stays here, acting books are here, my (fake) Oscar is here (for motivation)...you get the idea. So packing is usually not too much of a chore, except that this time I had a lot of dirty laundry, and I was going on vacation right after I got home. So I just crammed that into two big shopping bags like a college student going home to Mom, grabbed the wardrobe items that travel with me because I use them the most (lab coat, karate kid, judge, and waitress), and was on the road by 5:15. Along with everybody else getting off of work in LA County.
Ah, driving in LA. The drive to and from my apartment in this city is the single most difficult aspect of this entire experiment. It is 364 miles from my home in Foster City to my apartment in East Hollywood (Little Armenia, to be exact). When the traffic is lightest, which is usually at night, I can make it in five and a half hours, driving about eight miles over the speed limit most of the way. When traffic is heavy, it can take seven hours or more. And gone are the days of driving eighty miles an hour or faster once you hit the wide, flat expanse of I-5. With California verging on bankruptcy, traffic cops and CHIP officers are stopping as many violators as they can, and they never just give a warning. It's not personal - the state just needs the money. I have been ticketed only once since I started making this drive regularly in 2005, but I was driving 90 mph in a 65 mile an hour zone, AND talking on my cell phone (before it was illegal), so I was lucky to get away with just a speeding ticket for $270. Now I set my car on cruise, eight miles over whatever the limit is (usually that means 78 miles an hour), and go.
When I first started making this drive, it was early spring, and most of the rain had stopped. For those of you who are unfamiliar with California seasons, and we do have them, here is the scoop: it usually starts raining in November and stops in February. It can run longer in the north and shorter in the south, but that's basically the rainy season. And the rest of the year, it doesn't rain, and we have that glorious California sunshine that our state is so beloved for. Eight months of sunshine is pretty great. But when it rains, it really pours, like a monsoon, sometimes for up to two weeks in a row (again, this is mostly in the north, and mostly in January), and in the Bay Area, where it is not as arid as the LA desert is, it can feel very damp and cold in the winter (and the summer, when SF is covered with fog most of the time). But one advantage of all the rain is that the mountains that bookend my trip are lush and green, whereas the rest of the year they are golden brown because they are dry. And after a long dry summer, they frequently begin to burn. Twice I have driven close enough to watch retardant being dropped on raging fires near LA, and at night the fires looked like they were coming from Hell itself.
Spring and fall are definitely the best times to make the drive. After I make it through the mountains to I-5, I enter the great Inland Empire, known as "the salad bowl to the world." All kinds of fruits, vegetables, and nuts are grown in the great Central Valley that stretches for about 250 miles between the Santa Cruz Mountains along the coast and the Sierra to the east. On clear days, you can see both ranges, but when it is hazy, you can't make out either. The land stretches out flat and empty for miles in all directions and looks just like Nebraska. The population and politics aren't that different from Nebraska, either, except for the ethnicity; most of the inhabitants are Latino migrant workers and farmers who are deeply religious and deeply conservative. Politically, California may be blue along the edges and in the cities, but it is deep red in the center.
So in the spring, with all the flowering trees like apples and oranges and almonds and pistachios, the vast orchards are beautiful with their pink and white blooms. And in the fall, when the grape harvest comes in (there are a few vineyards in the valley, not like Napa, but enough to make it picturesque), you can see clusters of grapes on the vines before the pickers go to work. After they are done, the leaves of the grapevines turn a beautiful orange and red, almost like the maples back East. There are even a few cotton fields along I-5, which always make me nostalgic for "dem ole cotton fields back home" in the South, from my childhood. I don't think there are any in Huntsville, Alabama, where I grew up, now, but we have them in California. Thank goodness, they use machines to pick it, because it is back-breaking work. But the fields always look a little like snow to me after they have finished, because they don't get it all, and the leftover cotton looks like a melting snowfield.
Speaking of snow, we do get it in the mountains on the drive. Twice I have barely made it over the nearly 4200-foot Tejon Pass coming out of LA, "up around Grapevine" as everyone calls it down here, before the State Highway Department closed I-5 due to heavy snow. And I mean heavy, like two feet! I was surprised it would be that much, but it gets really cold up there. Once I left LA when it was 80 degrees during the day, and by the time I made it over the pass the temperature had dropped to 45 degrees (it is less than 50 miles). Because LA is built on a desert, such dramatic swings are common from day to night, and then add to that the change from sea level to over 4000 feet, and you can get some big changes in weather. I always have a jacket with me.
I used to enjoy the drive, just looking at the scenery and listening to CDs in my car. Then my CD player broke, and I haven't gotten it fixed. I use my iPod, but frequently I forget to charge it (I'm sensing a little irresponsible theme here), and then I have to resort to the radio. And boy, I-5 in the Central Valley is not a happening radio place to be unless you like Mexican polkas or gospel music. They do have "Love Songs with Delilah" on at night, but I can only get that from about the halfway point to LA on, and once I hit the Tejon Pass I can't get any reception at all. It's the same way with the cell phone - I try to talk to Keith or my mom (on Bluetooth, legally) but the reception is spotty and once I get out in no man's land, near towns with names like Lost Hills and Buttonwillow, I might as well give up. So I have lots of time to think, and that leads to boredom, and often that makes me sleepy.
The drive can get really dangerous. Because most of I-5 is a long, straight road with very little to look at, it is hypnotic. I used to get up very early sometimes to avoid an extra night away from home. The last time I did that was the first time I dozed off and ran into the back of another car as I was exiting to get some Diet Coke to wake me up. It was a pretty bad accident that nearly totaled my Acura, but fortunately no one was hurt. I have had one more incident since then, when I ran off the highway into the median and nearly lost control of the car. The cops stopped me for suspicion of DUI, but I was just sleepy! After that, I quit getting up early. Now, if I have to be down here early I just come down the day before. I'm not going to risk my life doing this.
Anyway, on January 19th, I made it home fine, in exactly six hours, beating the two-foot snowstorm that fell that night by two hours. I was in bed with both of my sweethearts, Keith and my pug, by midnight, and I slept until 9:00 a.m. and still made my 11:30 call. We had an easy day on the set of "Trauma," playing diners in an Italian restaurant in North Beach. One of the stars, Jamey Sheridan, was playing drunk, and stumbled into a girl at my table, and we all glared at him, so we will probably be seen in the scene. I think the show has been canceled, so it will be one of the last three episodes that airs. But for a canceled show, they still served an awfully good craft service lunch!
After my nine-day vacation with my mother in Orlando, I am back in LA now, having made "the drive" once more only one day after I got home. This time, I had to be down here on Tuesday, February 2, for an On-Camera Acting class. This will be taught by the Artistic Director of the Hollywood Underground Theater Company, which I was invited to join last month, effective February 1. So I am about to learn first-hand whether I need to be taking acting classes or not, and what happens when I do. And that, my dear readers, is a story for my next post.
Til then,
Jennie
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