bloggie blog

In the latest issue of Screen Actor magazine, there’s a lot of talk about the union merger from our leaders. A lot. To the point of obscuring other important topics, which is one of my main concerns with the merger. I’m generally in favor of all performer unions merging, but I worry that too many people are concentrating on it as the only problem and/or as the only solution.

There are six leadership positions that always write letters for Screen Actor. Consider the six letters in this edition. What do they talk about besides merger?

Ken Howard: zip.
Amy Aquino: processing small residuals checks.
David White: the new Production Center and digital theft.
Ned Vaughn: zip.
Mike Hodge: zip.
David Hartley-Margolin: vote.

I think the non-merger topics above are important, so I’m glad to hear about them. But there are a ton of other important problems that we need to be working on, too. So a plea to all: don’t spend all your energy on merger. It might fail, and even if it goes through it cannot be a panacea to solve everything, and we do have other problems here and now.

My car was filthy. Dangerously dirty when you consider the summer driving phenomenon in LA that involves lots of evening sun hitting your windshield. As is my wont, I washed my car today to celebrate an acting victory from last week, and as I was washing, got the phone call for an acting victory for next week. My car is clean again!

Method acting? That noise you hear is the sound of me shuddering. But let me share a chuckle I got over at Ken Levine’s blog entry on the topic from the point of view of a director.

I once wrote a one-act play with David Isaacs about a Malibu condo that was leaking during a rainstorm. The play was a farce — characters frantically running in and out with buckets, that sort of thing. At one point a character goes off stage to mop up a leak. The actor wanted to know where the leak was. I said, “Off stage. Wherever.” That wasn’t good enough. He needed to know exactly where. So I shrugged, walked backstage with him, pointed to a spot on the floor and said, “Right there…no, wait. There!” He thanked me and throughout the run of the show he went to that spot, got on his hands and knees, and went to work mopping up. Meanwhile, other actors are tripping all over him coming on and off the stage. The real farce was unseen by the audience.

Funny stuff! If I were that guy’s castmate, I’d want to kill him. Read the whole entry — and the comments! — for juicier stories. (The comments also contain very serious discussions and support of The Method. Yawn.)

Paul Feig, director of Bridesmaids, discussing casting and working with lesser-known actors on The Treatment on KCRW:

There’s plenty of stars I want to work with but to me it’s just more exciting to have that discovery. Like, “Who are they?!” Let an audience have that discovery that we have. There’s nothing more exciting than in an audition, somebody comes in who you don’t know and they blow you away in the room. Then you’re like, “Wow, okay, this is great, I’m having the discovery that now an audience will have when this person comes on the screen and surprises them.” I struggled for so long as an actor, there is something exciting about giving somebody their shot. That sounds far more charity-based, because it’s not. We’re not going to put anybody in something that doesn’t just kill, you know, that isn’t great. But when you find that person that’s great, and if it somehow came down to you can have this star who’s really good, or you can have this unknown who’s just going to kill, it’s like, “Give me the unknown who’s just going to kill it.”

Dear Casting Networks aka LA Casting,

Let me get right to it: Please include all dates in notification emails that go out from you to actors. Currently, dates for callback auditions and shoot dates are not included in emails that actors get via their commercial agencies, yet this information is known to you and can be viewed manually by the agencies.

If you do not include callback and shoot dates in notification emails because of some business decision, that is, if you are doing this by choice, reconsider that choice! You are doing an immense disservice to the acting community, to the thousands of actors that you rely on to make a profit. That alone should be reason to change.

If it’s for technical reasons, please hire me to fix it. Are you currently understaffed? Is it some other reason? I don’t know, but I do know this: I could fix it easily and quickly, so easily and so quickly that I would be willing to do it for free. You do not have to pay me to fall off a log, is what I’m saying.

Thanks for listening, and I look forward to a change very soon, or at least an explanation. The acting community deserves one or the other right away.

Respectfully,

Kevin Ashworth
http://www.lacasting.com/kevinashworth

P.S. In case you’re wondering, yes, I took a very big hit last week because of this issue.

P.P.S. If you don’t receive these notices and are curious to see what they look like, I’ve uploaded a few sample screenshots of emails I’ve received over the last year in this addendum.

A visual addendum to my open letter: a gallery of 4 emails I’ve received via my commercial agency. I’ve removed my info, their info and the casting folks’ info, but you can still see the basic trend.

Upper left. A year ago, callback and shoot dates were included.

Upper right. They briefly switched to a notification system where the subject line gave you all the info you were going to get except by going to their site. On their site currently, “alerts” are prominently featured in red and they are archived … and they have no callback dates or shoot dates listed.

Lower right and lower left. There are 2 iterations of the current version where you get no future dates, just audition dates.

The oldest email (upper left) looks a little clunky and doesn’t have the Casting Networks logo, but it’s clearly got the most complete information. Bring back the information!

I voted in the SAG Awards today. As I mentioned before, I didn’t intend to vote for actors working on AFTRA projects because I’m a literalist. I kept to that promise. Also, I didn’t vote for any project I hadn’t seen, and in fact I left about 3 or 4 categories blank. Skipping over my TV votes and without detailing my entire ballot, I will say that I voted for The King’s Speech whenever it was an option. There were many fine performances to choose from, of course, but that film moved me so much more than the others.

I look forward to the ceremony Sunday night! (More accurate: I look forward to reading about it on Monday morning!)

UPDATE: My vote went to the award recipient only 3 of 12 times. There were lots of good choices!

This morning, the SAG Award nominees were announced. I’ve pasted the actors nominated in episodic television below. There are awesome performances in amazing scripts here, that’s for sure. What I’m not sure about is who I will vote for.

I can say, however, that as a literalist, I will not vote for any work on an AFTRA show. Why? Because these are the friggin’ SAG Awards! With the exception of the Female-Comedy category, the majority of the nominees are working on SAG shows (shown in bold). AFTRA shows (shown in italics) will not get my vote, even if that has very little to do with the quality of the work.

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series
Steve Buscemi — Boardwalk Empire (HBO)
Bryan Cranston — Breaking Bad (AMC)
Michael C. Hall — Dexter (Showtime)
Jon Hamm — Mad Men (AMC)
Hugh Laurie — House (FOX)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series
Glenn Close — Damages (FX)
Mariska Hargitay — Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (NBC)
Julianna Margulies — The Good Wife (CBS)
Elisabeth Moss — Mad Men (AMC)
Kyra Sedgwick — The Closer (TNT)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series
Alec Baldwin – 30 Rock (NBC)
Ty Burrell — Modern Family (ABC)
Steve Carell – The Office (NBC)
Chris Colfer — Glee (FOX)
Ed O’Neill — Modern Family (ABC)

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series
Edie Falco – Nurse Jackie (Showtime)
Tina Fey – 30 Rock (NBC)
Jane Lynch — Glee (FOX)
Sofia Vergara — Modern Family (ABC)
Betty White — Hot In Cleveland (TV Land)

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series
Boardwalk Empire (HBO)
The Closer (TNT)
Dexter (Showtime)
The Good Wife (CBS)
Mad Men (AMC)

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series
30 Rock (NBC)
Glee (FOX)
Hot In Cleveland (TV Land)
Modern Family (ABC)
The Office (NBC)

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I was surprised to find out how important it was to agents and casting directors that such-and-such actor had just worked on this other TV show. It seems to be a very good way to get an audition for an episode of X, to have just shot an episode of Y. Wouldn’t the producers of Y be more interested in fresh faces? Well, it’s not how the entertainment industry works. Or rather, it’s now how society works.

In Job Seekers Find Bias Against The Unemployed, a recent NPR article, find mention of the “numbers game,” which certainly applies to acting, and general discussion of how the working find it easier to find work than the unemployed. Ponder how this is another thing that is not unique to The Biz.

Article Five in my occasional series on things that many people in Hollywood talk about as if they weren’t true of other businesses or other cities. (For more, see Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV.)

Commercial acting teacher Carolyne Barry has put a series of short videos on YouTube. They are informative snippets that show her teaching commercial acting. You can learn a lot from them, and they also give you a sense of what her classes are like.

There are 18 of these helpful clips, but only about 20% of the viewers of clip 1 have made it through all the clips. This is probably because the title of each video is long, and identical except for the number, and that number gets cut off as the titles are shortened by YouTube, it’s pretty hard to watch them in any sort of order without a lot of clicking around.

Until now.

Visit this YouTube playlist I made, and you’re good to go.