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SAG Award nominees (announced today) will not receive my vote if they pertain to one of these shows:

Damages
The Good Wife
Harry’s Law
Hot in Cleveland
Modern Family
Nurse Jackie
Spartacus: Gods of the Arena
Suits

It’s not because of the quality of these shows, which is generally quite high, but because they are not SAG projects! SAG Awards go to SAG projects, in my opinion. But considering how the new shows are overwhelmingly AFTRA these last few seasons, it’s interesting to note that the nominations are not overwhelmingly AFTRA. (Not yet.)

Dallas Travers has a lot of good ideas for actors. Her latest initiative is a revisiting of last year’s 42-Day Book a Job Challenge. Please take a moment to read that post before continuing here.

[pause while you read]

Okay, you’re back. As you saw, last spring 150 actors under her tutelage found focus for 42 days, took the bull by the horns, and totally beat the odds during those 6 weeks. This is significant, remarkable, worthy of attention. But — and there’s always a “but” — let’s look at the dollars involved. I think I’m going to blow your mind. I think I’m going to blow your mind wide open.

In order to blow your mind wide open, I admit that I’m going to have to make a lot of assumptions about the $$ involved, because I don’t know what these actors did or paid during the 42 days in question. I’m going to try to be open about my numerical assumptions, and open about the precise numbers we know, as well. Feel free to tweak my numbers and redo the math if you know better.

First, assume all 150 actors bought her book at $15. Next, assume 1/3 of them only did the 42-day project, which currently goes for $247. Assume that 1/3 are big fans of hers so they also bought her more-expensive “blueprint” program. I think I heard that it’s about $700. The other 1/3 of these actors probably bought another of her less expensive offerings, let’s say maybe “gold” membership, which goes for $37/month, and let’s say they signed up for 12 months. These are all wild guesses, but I’m guessing that these guesses will yield a fairly accurate total of how much money Dallas made with this program and the additional income for other programs that this program’s success generated.

Now let’s think about other costs to the actors. Assume that the 6-week push included paid casting director workshops. Beyond talking, sharing, manifesting and the like, I really have no idea what these actors did for those 6 weeks, but I’ll assume most of them hit CDWs harder during that time. Now, CDWs can be had for under $30 with careful shopping, but when hitting it hard, you can’t shop around much. So let’s assume these actors paid $50 per CDW, and let’s assume that on average they went to 15 of these paid workshops over the 6 weeks in question. Again, total SWAGs here.

There would be other expenses, too. I’m sure printing, postage, travel and miscellaneous expenses varied a lot per actor, and it may or may not have been significantly higher for these 42 days than the rest of their acting life, but I’ll assume most printed and mailed and traveled more, and I’ll just assume these 150 actors spent — pulling a number out of the air — $100 more per actor during those 6 weeks than they would have otherwise. I could be way off, I have no idea. You’ll see it doesn’t matter much when we do the math.

So much for my assumptions on what actors spent. In terms of income to actors, 47 of them had bookings. Nice. A few might have been lucrative, on-going gigs that paid really well, but I think’s it’s safer to assume that these bookings were one-day jobs at union scale, which is about $800/day. Some paid more, some paid less, but that’s a pretty good assumption. If we don’t take into account a 2nd commission for those with managers and if we don’t take into account taxes for Uncle Sam, we see it’s a pretty generous assumption. Great residuals could boost it further, but that’s never known until way down the line.

Okay, so let’s run the numbers on who made how much money from those 42 days. To repeat, I’m making lots of assumptions here. But I bet I’m not too far off in the aggregate, and even if I am, the principle behind these calculations is still valid.

Actors paid Dallas Travers $15×150 + $247×150 + ($37×12)×(150/3) + $700×(150/3) = $96,500.
Actors paid workshop operators and the casting folk there $50×15×150 = $112,500.
Actors paid Argentum, USPS and Arco $100×150 = $15,000.
Actors received $800×47 = $37,600. Let’s round that to $40,000, just for the hell of it.

So there you have it. Total cost to actors: $224,000. Total earned by actors: $40,000. Is your mind blown?

It’s not surprising that Dallas is excited that she just launched the 42-Day Book a Job Challenge again. The last challenge brought her about $100,000 of income. Of course she’s excited!

I bet the people running workshops around town are excited, too. This challenge is going to bring them about $100,000!

Other people will receive $15,000 in additional business, but they probably won’t be excited about it. It will be more of an every-day nature for them.

Actors are excited about the challenge, too! I know. I talk to actors all the time and if one word describes the feelings they have for Dallas Travers it’s “excitement.” So, an additional 150 excited actors are going to get together for a 6-week push to spend approximately a quarter of a million dollars and in return, they will probably book some awesome jobs and earn $40,000. That is a ROI of so many negative percentage points that I don’t even know how calculate it — but I guess that a negative ROI is what they mean when they tell you to invest in your career.

An additional point I’d like to make is that the jobs booked were jobs that would have been booked with or without the 42-day program. The program did not generate any actor employment, even if it did have some impact on who got the jobs. Even so, I’d guess most of those 47 actors were on the verge of booking already.

Any of the 47 bookers want to weigh in? Better still, any of the 103 that didn’t book? The comments section of my blog is wide open.

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.

Allow me to recommend a very fun article by French Stewart over at LA Stage Times about theater. About small theater, mostly. Part seriousosity, part tongue-in-cheek.

So why small theater? A couple of years ago I told a friend I was doing another play and she seemed really perplexed. “Why are you still doing this, French? It’s an irrelevant art form. You might as well concentrate on CAVE PAINTING!”

Indeed. For me it’s really simple. It’s a small group of people making something for another small group of people. It’s the same feeling you get when someone sends you an actual letter, prepares a meal for you, or helps you move furniture. It’s personal. Time has been taken, effort expressed. It connects both parties in a very direct way. Plus, you’ve  had an experience that isn’t held hostage on hard drive or film. It’s the sole property of memory. Lovely.

Yup, lovely. This is true and wholesome. But the other side of theater is fun stuff like, “Backstage, we do a pedophile-themed vocal warm up (‘get in the van, I’m a family friend, get in the van, I’m a family friend…’).”

I recommend his current production very much. What’s not covered in this article is that Watson is very inventive in its stagecraft!

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.”

In the last seven weeks, I’ve seen seven plays. They span quite a diverse spectrum of good, contemporary American playwriting, including three world premieres. I’m glad I saw all of them! In reverse chronological order, with links to those still running, they were Extraordinary Chambers, No Word in Guyanese for Me, Pursued by Happiness, Re-Animator: The Musical, The Prisoner of 2nd Avenue, Burn This, and A House Not Meant to Stand.

My highest recommendation of the lot goes to No Word in Guyanese for Me because of the strong performance by Anna Khaja in this one-woman show written by Wendy Graf. You want to see good acting? See her. (Disclaimer: I know Anna pretty well.) I’d recommend the performances of Brooks Ashmanskas and Adam Rothenberg, too, but Burn This has closed.

As for the writing, I loved Neil Simon’s comedy as expressed through the spot-on anger of Jason Alexander starring in The Prisoner of 2nd Avenue, but the biggest gut-busting laughter came from a few wonderful moments in the crazy, gory, out-there spectacle that is Re-Animator: The Musical. It needs some small rewrites, if you ask me, but it really knocks home some great laughs — and gross grimaces. I haven’t had such a full-body reaction to theater in a looooong time. On the serious side, I’m glad I got to see Tennessee Williams’s last play, though I didn’t “get” its ending. The chance for reflection on personal tragedies that I got from Keith Huff’s writing in Pursued by Happiness and the reflection I got on personal and global tragedies from David Wiener’s writing in Extraordinary Chambers leads me to recommend these shows and their fine performances and directing wholeheartedly.

Another note. In three of these plays, there’s a role I’m very right for that I tried to audition for or that I actually did audition for. Seeing those actors perform something I’d hoped to perform was interesting. At two of these shows, as I scrutinized, I admired, and that’s that. In one, however, I believe I would have been better, and it was at one of the most prestigious venues on the west coast. What the?

So, with a little luck and a little discrimination, I’ve seen good-to-great performances at a nice little clip lately. You go out and see a good show, too!

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)

My friends Tanya and Phoebe have made a web series called Da Legendary Remix of Itty P and DJ Model T. Below, see them and my pal Tony P in episode 2. Watch carefully and you’ll see me play a tranny. Playing it straight, I should say — as a tranny named Kay Kay. Good times!