Audition: "Yellowtown Monster"

I had an audition last Saturday afternoon for a short film called "The Yellowtown Monster".  The sides were hilarious and I assume the rest of the script is as well.  I went out for the main character, the Monster.  He is 5,000 years old and is good friends with Bigfoot and Loch Ness etc.  He sees how they are getting all of the fame and subsequent success in life and has become very jealous. He decides to take a stab at Hollywood from what I can tell. 

The audition felt really great.  There were a lot of people in the room and I got a lot of laughs from the people on the other side of the table - which is always nice.  I would say a line/monologue one way and I'd receive positive feedback and then receive an adjustment.  "Excellent Phillip!  Now for this next take, instead of saying it like that....try it like..."  And that's what I did. 

I heard about this audition from a friend that I had cast in a previous production I was in.  It's always good to have friends like that! 

I read on someones facebook wall the other day that when you stop focusing on getting auditions and start focusing on building relationships, that is when your career gets a lift.  I'd have to agree with that idea.  Instead of having a mindset of "what have you done for me lately?", it is a lot better for you/friends/the world if you think more along the lines of "I'm going to do this for you and not expect anything in return".  I suppose many of the world's great philosophers, religious icons and leaders of industry have been saying and thinking the same thing all along.  Act because you want to act.  Audition because you love to audition.  Create because you need to create in order to survive. 

Onion Callback with the director

Well, that was fun!  Just came back from the offices for The Onion.  This was call backs for the moviegoer role that I blogged about a few entries ago.  I also received a new pair of sides to work on.  The new ones were particularly hilarious.  The idea is that google, in a tremendous display of power has messed with gmail rendering is useless and toying with google calendar etc.  Just the thought of google shutting down paralyzes me with fear.  I am not joking. The role of office worker was a "man on the street" blurb.  It was quite funny. 

Sidenote: do you even know anyone who doesn't have a gmail account?  The only person I know who still uses an AOL account is my Dad, but in his defense it's tied to a business and he has had it since 1997 or so.  He also has the same username on gmail that he uses often so I suppose it doesn't really count. 

Just last week, a real estate client of mine gave me her email account for getting in touch during the day.  It was a hotmail account.  Gross.  Perhaps mindspring has some novelty to it....but hotmail?  That just seems cheap to me.

The call back went very well, I did each line twice and they gave me adjustments between each take, and I feel as if I took them well and nailed the takes.  You can never tell, of course...but they do seem to bring me back often.  So it's just a question of me matching what they need in a performance. 

Hotmail?  Ew.

Sore body and a clear head

Man. This whole insane workout schedule is really tough. I knew it would be, no surprise there. My triceps are hurting, my back is hurting, my ankles are stiff in the AM and my head hurts from 6 rounds of sparring last night. Backing down is not an option.

I'm going proverbially balls to the wall until I drop another 20 pounds. If I lose another 20 pounds I will be very healthy. My cholesterol has dropped dramatically in the last year, but I want it even lower.  I have a lot of muscle/bulk left over from years of competitive weight training, so the weight I plan on dropping will mostly be fat.

I should start eating more fish. I love fish. I prefer it to most meat actually. I even like sardines, mackerel and bluefish....all those less glamorous fish are wonderful in a spicy tomato sauce with some crusty bread. Yeah, that's what I'll do. I'll eat more fish and I will have a first course of vegetables. I love vegetables! I love steamed and braised greens!  If I like the stuff I should have it more...it only makes sense.

As you can probably tell, it's pretty quiet on the acting front this week.

Choices equal call backs.

They also equal going down in flames. RIP "Goose". Monday I had an audition for "Cannon", the camera company.  It was for a trade show at the Javits Center in town. This wasn't for a regular trade show, like the boat expos that are open to the public for general consumption needs.  The audience was to be people in the industry.  News crews, production companies looking to upgrade their cameras etc.  I was to play an on-site news reporter. 

OK.  So I am supposed to play an on-site news reporter whose big story is about new camera technology brought to you by Cannon.  Keep in mind that this ENTIRE room would be filled with people who either shot news reporters on video, or edited the video, or synced up the audio of reporters.  These people know reporters.  So I made the choice that it would be TERRIBLE to do my best impression of a news reporter.  Because no matter how well I could pretend to be a reporter, it would no doubt appear to be genuinely.......fake to the room.  It would be so hamboned, so heavy fisted, so bizarrely fake......It would look like this to their eyes.

So I made a choice, I took a gamble.  I just spoke to the people in the room like they were my best friends.  I took it slow and read the heavy technical jargon.  There was no camera in the room, so I looked directly at the two people and just spoke to them. 

Callbacks were today.  I was not invited.  "you gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run."