For the second time this year, I've done the ridiculous and booked two (or more) national commercials in a week, bringing the total to seven in 2008. I'm not sure what I have to say for myself. I will try harder. Seriously, I'm on pace to pass Barry Bonds in several categories. Let me just say right now that I am not now, nor have I ever been on the juice. Although I do occasionally take the Juice Plus vitamins.
And it couldn't have come at a better time. The funds have dwindled to $43 after my pension/health care payment went through automatically. Not enough to fill the tank any more. I've run up the balance on my credit card giving me only $80 or so for emergencies. I've talked to my agent's assistant about letting me know when I can come in to pick up any checks that arrive, as every day counts at the end of the month. This month's ass-saving check will be the $600 economic stimulus bribe, and it will be the only way I pay my $600 share of the rent. Thank goodness I have stocked up a lot of frozen foods, groceries will have to go on the back burner for the next week, at least. And there's another great benefit of booking: I will be fed well.
And like the sands through the hourglass, these are the days of the "middle class screen actor." An actor who has far surpassed his known parameters, lived within his means, and booked an enviable amount of work. And it took booking five commercials in the spring just to have enough to make it to this point at the end of June. I was, for the umpteenth time since moving to LA, at the end of the line, about to consider calling former employers who are still on speaking terms with me. Kidding. I wouldn't call the ones who aren't.
Here's a chart detailing average actor salaries broken down by years of experience. I'm fortunate enough to be on pace to be on the high end of this range. To be fair, none of my nationals have aired yet, but that can be expected. After you shoot a commercial, you could be waiting a few weeks, months, or more than a year before it airs. Crazy stuff happens. But these times in between those life-giving residuals are getting more and more difficult to cover.
And the AMPTP wants to roll the goal posts back into the stadium parking lot.
I've been keeping meticulous mileage wreckords for a few years now. Why, I don't know, because I've never once qualified for the mileage credit come tax time. But I have to satisfy the obsessive-compulsive demon within, so I can tell you down to the mile what I drove last year. (If you cared, and since the IRS doesn't...)
I've done enough OCD driving about town to know that my car gets roughly 23 miles per gallon. My closest audition is a twenty mile round trip. There's $4.00 right there. More often than that, however, are the two-gallon Santa Monica auditions. And at least half of those will be three-gallon trips during rush hour. So, for one audition on the west side from the Fred Dome in Glendale, I could be paying about $15.
I never bothered to calculate mileage expenses down to the mile, even in my time as a messenger. But the other day, I missed a street and before I knew it, took a five-minute, five mile detour. And there's another dollar.
Now figure in the proverbial they who always say booking one job for every 100 auditions is par for the course. If that's average, then the average professional actor is still waiting tables, personal assisting, house sitting...whatever it takes to scrape by in this city, and are lucky enough to duck out for an audition every once in a while. The primary focus on SAG's contract negotiations is restoring the strength of the middle-class actor.
I'm so grateful to be able to say that I've booked six jobs in my last fifty auditions. But I never would have expected that I would need every last penny to stay afloat for the last three months. Two of those bookings were national commercials in which I didn't make it off the cutting room floor. One job is (so far) internet only, which will net me a couple grand over the course of a year. One is on the shelf due to some mysterious circumstance, and I'm still waiting on Capital One to air. So even after going on a 6-for-51 tear, which included 4 national commercials, I'm down to my last $200, with a $900+ credit card balance. (Yes, it's a Capital One!)
This is the time of the month when I start looking ahead at what I will have in the bank come rent time. And I start gathering all the items I can find which might net me a few bucks on ebay. It's amazing how many times I've skirted by because of a surprise residual check, and I think I'm due for a holding fee before July. Sure do hope I am! But just living this "middle-class" actor life is an incredible leap of faith.
And coming soon...the story behind the Capital One gig.
A journalism think tank studying "The Daily Show" doesn't believe many people get their news from Jon Stewart - because otherwise they wouldn't get the jokes.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism also said it was surprised at how much the Comedy Central late-night program resembles "The O'Reilly Factor,""Hardball" and other cable news shows in content.
Yes, but The Daily Show is INTENDED to be a parody.
Back in January, after a frustrating run of Avails* to no avail, I gave myself an absolutely ridiculous goal. I even told my agent, whether he remembers it or not. "I want to book 5 commercials before my birthday." When I told him that was April 23, he kind of laughed it off, as he should have. Never booked more than 3 in a year before, and five in a year would be a very, very good year for just about anyone.
So how did I spend my birthday?
Shooting my fifth commercial of 2008.
I love this game!
(* = Avail is an industry term, referring to the production checking on the actor's availability. The production will put their top choices "on avail" so that at least one of them may experience the ol' "Haha! PSYYYYCH! You lose, jackass," moment later on. See also: "released")
Well, if you watched the Final Four, you know that my VW commercial with Bobby Knight debuted. Without me. Thanks, Coach.
If we did 25 takes, 23 of them were the far superior version with me. But Coach Knight just HAD to improv. Geez, Bob, you're not gonna see me marching out onto a court or into the ESPN studio and doing YOUR job. Taking ten, fifteen grand outta your pocket?
Well, these things happen all the time. I was actually prepared for this possibility, and had already accepted that I would walk off that set with not a single souvenir, not a photo and certainly not a finished commercial. Good thing I found a book for him to sign, otherwise it may have all been a figment of my imagination. Truth is, I would never have been cut out if Bob wasn't any good at what he was doing. The ad's final product was the last take of the day, and he gave himself only one chance to get it right. Never has watching a scene be completely nailed been so heartbreaking.
What I WASN'T prepared for was that Kansas-UNC game, and the Heels saving their worst basketball of the season for the Final Four.
Bob, I do appreciate your analysis on the ESPN, it's nice to be brought more in depth than the other talking heads can do. It's also great to see your reactions (mirroring mine) when Dick Vitale goes off screaming out empty platitudes and retarded acronyms in place of actual game analysis. Please Bob, smack him around for me, will ya? You owe me one.
But hands off my residuals, dang it! I gotta rebudget...
This past weekend, I had the opportunity to call a friend of mine and recall one of his fondest baseball memories. He was at Fenway Park and saw a record that will likely never be broken. "Weren't you there at a game in which two triple plays were pulled off?" I asked.
"Yup."
"Cool. ...I just booked two national commercials in one day."
That was how the week ended. Let me back up and dish the details of how it began. With that other booking.
It happened as fast as any commercial I've been a part of: about three days from audition to wrap, and one of them was a Sunday. Auditioned on Friday for a VW ad with All-Time NCAA Men's Basketball wins leader, Bobby Knight, and casting asked that we familiarize ourselves with this clip:
As if I hadn't seen it a hundred times already. But really, not every actor cares about college basketball, so I did have a leg up on some of the competition. I probably knew who he was when I was 12. I feel no guilt for perfectly fine afternoons spent watching ACC games, or for buying a mini-TV to put in the car while messengering during the early rounds of March Madness last year. It's not the first time my sports geekdom has gotten me work. (See the ESPN clip in the sidebar, if you're killing time.) It is, however, the first time my deeply-hidden secret short fuse got me a job. (But not the last, I'm totally gonna play John McCain one day!)
So for a guy who grew up in college basketball's Mecca, Chapel Hill, I couldn't have been more stoked booking it the next day. Without a callback. It was shooting Monday, I clearly knew how to throw chair with anyone and be a dork without trying, so who needs the hassle of a Sunday callback? Head-spinning had begun.
Monday morning, I'm on set at 8am. I met Coach Knight and his wife in their trailer, and he talked with the agency folks about the spot. A few minutes later, we walked on set wearing in matching blue V-neck sweaters and brown slacks. 'Holy crap, I'm Bob Knight's doppleganger.' I could see the crew chuckling already.
I don't want to give too much of it away, because however it turns out, it's going to be a damn funny spot. It's exactly the joke you'd want to hear after Coach Knight's retirement if you're familiar with his career. But the "Are you dadgum kiddin' me, is this really happening" moment came after the first rehearsal. My task? Throw chair. And Bob Knight turns and looks down to me and starts coaching me on proper chair-throwing mechanics. A handful of crew guys get this goofy look on their faces that must have mirrored the one I was wearing. He started talking about some golf coach who uses the chair-throwing clip as an example of a good golf stroke. "Get both of your hands back, and as you're following through, you transfer your weight from the back foot to the front," he said as he demonstrated with the chair.
He offered up a lot of suggestions, clearly concerned with his image in reality remaining consistent in the script, sometimes offering his own improvisations. He was pretty good, honestly. You gave him a mark, he hit it. In the scene, he's being interviewed on a talk show. The host makes a comment that earns him the death stare from Coach Knight. When he asked if he could react in a way that was more natural for him, the director (some Coppola fella) asked what'd he normally say.
"Well, fuck you!" After the laughter subsided, it was suggested that while that was certainly his most earnest and effective response, it probably wouldn't fly with the client. Woulda been a fun take, though!
We did about 25 takes with me, and two without, the latter being nowhere nearly as funny as the first 25. :) It was all over in a couple of hours, and afterwards Coach Knight signed his biography for me, "Thanks for letting me work with you!" he wrote. I finally found a copy of the call sheet which was a surreal extension of the day. In the talent section, the list went "**** (the top secret voice of the VW), Bobby Knight, me, Heidi Klum, Rick Searfoss." (Searfoss is an astronaut. And no, I didn't meet Heidi. Somehow, she will deal with that missed opportunity.) Bob Knight's ESPN gig starts tonight, and I will wait in eager anticipation for our ad during March Madness.
And at least three more! Sprint and Capital One, which both booked Friday, will shoot in the next week. Advil sponsors NCAA bball, too! Yes, it has been a career month. Despite a strike, January and February were both my busiest months ever. If that's not enough to be thankful for, the jobs I'm getting are as rewarding and funny as any I could have imagined when I got into this business.
And now, I'll actually write about acting in this so-called acting blog!
There are some hard-core flu germs floating across LA these days. No six degrees of Kevin Bacon with this one, everyone knows someone or half a crew who's currently sitting on the bench. I was spared to a certain degree...101.1 degrees, to be precise, if I am to trust the Spongebob Squarepants thermometer my mom bought for me as a joke. Worse than that, it starts beeping the Spongebob theme song when it's done, so in my delirious state of mind that's the last thing I heard before going to bed. I had dreams that inspired me to to take SCUBA lessons and buy a pineapple.
But that was about it for me, I was fortunate. Also very thankful that it waited until after I'd shot an Advil commercial last week! Great set, great experience, and a holding room with a view from the 33rd floor of the US Bank building downtown. And hey, now I'll be able to buy a digital camera so next time, I can take a picture of it!
It occurred to me, speed-walking down a narrow office hallway and timing a near-collision with another actor who was not visible to me, that I trained for this role in no-budget USC film school productions shortly after I moved here. (Not the one below.) Sure, you can do fifty takes to get the timing and blocking down, but in the student films, they're limited in the number of feet of film they can shoot on a given project. In the Advil spot, they're shooting 120 frames per second, so we rarely did more than ten or twelve takes on any angle. Them feets adds up! Precision helps.
Some great physical comedy in this thing, and a cast full of great facial expressions. Once again, those USC productions were lessons in visual storytelling, as there was almost no dialogue. In the Advil spot, there's just one thing to know: "Doughnuts!"
And now, I could really use some Advil. Anyways, here's a shout-out to the USC boys who I owe a drink (and yeah, another shameless plug):
I've had this idea to post the signs around LA that stand out for one reason or another. I'm not sure exactly where this will be seen, but I'm on the side of a bus (in a good way) for the first time.
If you've never watched Bus Pirates, five of the six episodes are available for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!
There is a vast right-wing conspiracy at work against anyone a few miles of out town limits who wants the high-speed intertubes connected to their house. Geez, you'd think the companies that control the information might want more people to have access to that information.
I need my Christmas in NC just to fill my annual biscuit quota. Good biscuits is hard to find in LA. Once again, I forgot to ask Santa for some country ham to fill that particular need, but that's okay. There's a water shortage anyway.
The futon must go. And with it, the color scheme in my room that I chose when I was four years old. I must have ingested some small toy from China the day my parents asked what colors I wanted.
We are all so thankful for the day that the cats and their litter boxes are forever banished from the dining room. I was introduced to those great igloo-shaped litter boxes which, in a normal household, would revolutionize the air quality. In our house, the cats would sniff around it, peek into the little tunnel and say, "Hell naw, somebody else can go in there. I'm pissin' on the hardwood floors right next to it. And then I'll go fight somebody."
