New Reps!

I am very happy to announce that I have signed with Avalon Artists Group as my Commercial agency! I will be working with Stephany Burns, the head of the commercial division, and she's wonderful.  It has taken me some time to get used to L.A. and build up a head of steam, but the time has arrived for Spartacus to take his place in the arena and accept the mantle of Gladiator.*

I am Spartacus!  Champion!  Bringer of Rain!

I met with founder and head agent Craig Holzberg at a workshop at The Actors Group in Burbank, and I was deeply moved by what he had to say about his commitment to his clients, Avalon's business ethos, and his simpatico with creative people.  He referred me to Stephany, I went in for a meeting, and here we are.  It's like a dream.  Like the man said, "Get them to sign on the line which is dotted."  Done and done.

So now it's on to new headshots, a commercial technique class, wardrobe investment, getting deeper into my Spanish skillset. . .

Yo soy Espartacus! Campeon! Portador de la lluvia!

The nice thing about commercial work is that you are rewarded for being a well-rounded person and how many other things you can do.  The list of all human skills is itemized on the internet actor directories to help Casting know if you know have experience they can work into a spot, but the list is so insane.

Can you ride a horse?
Can you juggle more than three balls?
Can you skydive?
Can you Tango?
Are you also a registered nurse?
Can you sail?

You never know what is going to be asked of you, and that's what makes commercials so magical and exciting.

If it please the court: Exhibit A.

I am going to work on being proficient in as many of these as I can, safely, to better my odds.

Some I won't, because even Espartacus has limits to what he will do for the roar of the crowd.**

On to the next horizon!

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* My sister and her boyfriend got me hooked on Spartacus: Blood and Sand, and with the help of some moral gymnastics, I was able to really enjoy it.  There is nothing like watching a whole season of that to get you pumped for meeting a new agent.

** "Rodeo: Bull Riding"?  Oh HELL no.

A New Year

It's not good when you fall behind on posting on your own blog.  Here is what happened today:

The sun rose on Day 3 of the L.A. Superflu-infected Paco Tolson.
I made myself a seltzer and aloe juice drink and took some advil.
I made a list of things to work on including emailing colleagues and friends I'd lost touch with since the holidays.
I did most of it, including meditating, so there's that.
I did some editing on my comedy reel, too, most prominently featuring the Doritos Crash The Superbowl commercial I shot at the end of December.
Theraflu, tea, coffee, water, airborne...

For late lunch I made trader joe's vegetable dumplings which Kate and I call "little babies".

Last year's immensity cannot yet be handled gracefully on these pages, so for now we'll just plow ahead.

Update 2012

Some seriously awesome new-year stuff to report!

In reverse order:

RODRIGO GARCIA WORKSHOP
On Thursday of this week I will be performing in a workshop at CalArts with Rodrigo Garcia, famed director of the Glenn Close vehicle Albert Nobbs.  He is doing a guest artist lecture for the Film Directing Program that includes scene study work with myself (and others) on material he's written. It's an amazing opportunity to work one-on-one with a director I really admire.  I thought Albert Nobbs was an exceptionally smart film filled with fully dimensional performances from everyone in it.  (Glenn Close and Janet McTeer, of course, in contention for Oscars.)

That's not Janet McTeer.

MASTER CLASS
Last week I took an incredibly informative Master Class with commercial casting director Chris Game.  I am still figuring out how to maximize my performance within a frame on film, and I was able to get some exciting tips from him that have already changed my approach for the better.  He was fast, smart, energetic, and gave it to us straight, which I appreciated.  It's always good to hear what life is like on the other side of the table in auditions; he pulled the curtain back on that mystique a lot.

ACTORS KEY
This dovetailed nicely with another commercial workshop I took with Stuart Stone at Actors Key in Burbank.  Super nice, very informative and right on with the re-direct.

THESIS IN FEBRUARY
After the holidays I met with CalArts film director Will Orellana who cast me as the lead in his (untitled) thesis film.  Will is someone who's work I've been watching develop for three years and I'm excited by his vision.  Getting to work with Kate's peers has been invaluable.  Shooting begins in Mid-February, but a lot of background research on my part has begun already.

WEB PRESENCE
Before that I created a personal YouTube Channel where I can consolidate clips of my work that have been floating the internet.  You can check it out at the link above; it includes Jon Hoche's Rehearsal Journals for the Vampire Cowboys shows we did together, some class projects Kate did with me for Film School as well as drafts of my acting reel.

HONEY BADGER COMMERCIAL
Also on the YouTube Channel is the commercial I did with director Harold Hyde for internet voiceover sensation Randall and his new Honey Badger App for the iPhone.  "Randall" is the genius comic entrepreneur who's made serious dividends from his viral video and the tag line, "Honey Badger don't give a shit."  An absolute blast to shoot and the app itself is a lot of fun, too.



The biggest news for last:

In January, right at the top of the new year, I shot my first national commercial!

That's actually all I can say about it until it airs, but it's been one of the best, most agonizing secrets to keep.  I can now join SAG and start setting the world on fire like a pro.  I will be a made man.

Acting Reel 2

New clips came in!  Here's some of what I've been up to last year in the West.

Acting Reel

Here is some footage from film and TV work I did back in New York.  Clips from my tenure in L.A. will be added as soon as I get my hands on it!  

Another Day at Work

In L.A., cars are king.  Obvious.  Okay.  So the normal outgrowth of that truism is that businesses are located off the highway.  So is mine:  “Pho Citi”, a Vietnamese noodle and soup place.  Trash is constantly swirling around in little tornadoes of cigarette wrappers, ancient plastic bags, and pigeon feathers.  Each passing car blows the detritus away and back, around and around, right in front of our door. 

Yesterday, a deliveryman left the door open to wheel in his handtruck of rice stick noodles and suddenly a fat, greasy road-pigeon was wreaking havoc inside the restaurant, launching itself into the low-hanging Ikea ceiling lamps and shitting on the tables.

Customers were screaming with surprise, fear, and disgust.  Every time the bewildered pigeon tried to escape it would fly head-first into the plate-glass windows that face the highway.  A sickening smack could be heard each time, feathers drifting down lazily behind it.

Some customers were yelling.  Some were trying to scare it in the direction of the open door.  Some used their hands to protect their bowls of steaming Vietnamese soup.  Nearly everyone had left their seats and stood in postures of readiness.

The pigeon was now seriously out of it.  Walking in circles, then hovering in the air, hitting the window, flapping its wings, molting all over.  A customer from a table in the corner began trying to chase it out from behind while someone from another table tried to chase it out from the front, resulting in the bird shooting straight up in the air and hitting a ceiling lamp.  Our ceiling lamps resemble the kind you might imagine would be in a police interrogation room and they were almost all swinging back and forth on their long cords in a sinister way. 

This had been going on for five minutes of pure adrenaline.  An ad-hoc peanut gallery began to form and shout orders at the intrepid pigeon-catchers.  The cook, Daniel, an 80-pound Chinese man from Vietnam, watched from behind his kitchen window with a bemused smile on his face.

It’s hard to describe how complicated my emotions were as this was going on.  On the one hand, this was the most exciting thing to happen in three months.  There was a truly pathetic comedy of errors unfolding and I was just as mesmerized by the goings on as everyone else.  On the other hand, I was the only staff on site besides Daniel. It was obvious he was not going to join the fray. He works seven days a week and has not had a day off in months.  Since I was the face of the restaurant for the time being, a part of me felt duty-bound to save the dignity of the Pho Citi brand and resolve the matter swiftly and without further embarrassment. 

But then I began to think of all the mistreatment I and the other staff had suffered under the mismanagement of the owner, Sandra. I would get a certain measure of revenge on her when reading about this encounter on customer review websites like Yelp and MenuPages.com.   This job had nearly crushed my soul, why should I do more than the minimum to save face for someone who clearly had no regard for me?  I wrestled with this silently for a time as the commotion continued.

At first I tried to contain the situation by grabbing an empty cardboard box from the stockroom and throwing it on top of the creature.  This was a disaster, and anyway the box was too small.  It had previously contained to-go soy sauce packets.  Scaring it out was clearly not working, covering it with a box was unsuccessful…I reasoned then that it would only leave if it wanted to.  I looked around for something like bird food that I could use to coax it out with.

The best I could do was a bright green slice of lime.

Hoping against hope with my back to the door, I crouched to the ground and made clicking noises in the back of my mouth with my tongue the way you would get a horse to eat a carrot or an apple: kick-kick-kick-kick. Kick-kick-kick-kick.  Kick-kick-kick-kick.

A purple eye turned towards me.  Then the whole head.  Suddenly, a hopping bird was advancing on me.  Maybe to see what horse I was talking to. I backed further and further away until I could feel the breeze from the road.  And then the pigeon was gone.  It spread its wings and flapped into the daylight, around the corner and out of sight.  I turned back into the restaurant, lime in hand.

People had already begun to sit down.  I looked around to see if any of the customers had been a reporter and if we would make the news.  No one was taking any damning notes and no one looked horrified anymore.  No one asked for my name or the name of the owner.  The deliveryman continued to bring in boxes of noodles.  One table had just finished eating when the pigeon had come in and now were ready to pay. Daniel rang his cook’s bell: another bowl of soup was ready to go out.

Things almost instantly returned to normal and my attention was returned to the work of running the place on my own. 

I never saw that pigeon again.

Access and Inspiration

It is becoming more and more clear to me that on-camera work centers on the idea of access.  The camera's proximity provides unprecedented access to the inner workings of your mind, and the most minute thoughts play out on your face (without you having to put them there as a bit of "business" the way you would in theater).  A teacher once told me, "Emotion is the sweat produced by the work of pursuing your objective."  If you put attention on creating an emotion, you're not trying to get something from your scene partner, you're trying to get something from yourself and it takes you out of the game.

Take your breathing.  It happens naturally as part of the autonomic system of your body.  As soon as you put attention onto breathing it becomes a chore, and all you can think about is making yourself take a breath at the right time.  Putting attention on breathing disrupts the ease with which it comes out.  Emotions are autonomic, too.  Without working at all, the gears can be seen to be turning when someone looks into your eyes.  The face can be read with more clarity because the eyes are blown up to four feet across on a screen, and the eyes are what tell us everything.

This is something I need to hammer into my new consciousness because a great deal of who I am as a person is going to play out onscreen autonomically, without my permission, and who I am needs to be something more vulnerable and less guarded if I'm to have success in this field.

My natural inclination is towards humility, self-deprecation, and "letting the work speak for itself", but these things are all keeping me from engaging the camera (and thus, the viewer) with intimacy.  If you're up close but can't get inside, the whole enterprise is frustrated and the work becomes good, but not great.

Something else I've been thinking about is how to take ownership of myself and my career without being obnoxious or entitled; how to go after what I want and believe I deserve it; how to create an atmosphere around me that says, "I am in control, you can relax," rather than, "Do you like me?"

This is particularly hard in an industry town where everyone you meet seems to be in the same market as you and the prevailing attitude is that actors are a dime a dozen.  How can you hold your head up high and feel pride?

I think you need to hold on to the things that inspire you personally.  To believe in love and family and artistic passion and strive to make yourself better, to improve in such a way that you can say to yourself, "I am better than I was before; things are moving forward even if other areas of my life have stalled or are not on fire yet."  If your passion is acting, keep acting and taking classes and digging into what mystery is right outside your grasp.  If it's writing, keep churning out those drafts.  Keep taking inspiration from the outside world to find the characters that speak through you.

I am having a wonderful week because I just got more involved with the artistic side of my time here as opposed to the staying afloat side which took precedence for two months.  It's like a breath of fresh air to keep striving at what I want to be doing.  I'm fortunate that I have this time, and I'm going to spend it very wisely.