cablebody

recently i was 'put on tape' for director/writer jay alaimo's latest project. it's called chlorine. david arquette and demi moore star (tho the imdb lists julianna margulies). michael rappaport was listed for the role i read for. the imdb is not frequently updated.
they sent me a pdf of the entire script for chlorine. one hundred seventeen pages. generally one page equals one minute of screentime. i read 30 minutes worth of it.
it has an american beauty setting and tone to it, but told from the pov of the teen-aged daughter. occurring in the thick of the me-decade 80's, there's loads of drugging and upward mobilizing. one scene contains an overt line about all the spending leading to an economic implosion.
i read for the part of a pot-smoking groundskeeper at a country club. no gophers. no kenny loggins. one ray liotta.
my friend philip read the other sides for me. this is key. often my agent will try to read the other side, turning pages while simultaneously running a mini-dv camera and vcr. it's like eating BBQ ribs, tapping a party ball keg and shifting into third through a late-night roadblock. kinda nerve-wracking.
so we got a rhythm going. had some flow. i improvised one line in a fight with a girl. instead of just plain old 'bitch' i came up with this nugget:
me: "that is so retarded"
her: "you're retarded."
me: "you're a gay bitch."
heh. 80's cutdown. high five.
by the way, jay alaimo's last film was slingshot. the only review i read for it (10 seconds worth) glowed "slingshot will surely land a slot on cable."

access wilmington!

the percentage of jobs i land from auditions is low. maybe 20%. which is relatively good. imagine going on several job interviews a week. rejection pervades the career choice. it sounds silly to hope the people at chik-fil-a like your smile enough help you pay your bills.
there are advantages to the steady snubs. you get to read scripts for episodic series ahead of everyone. take today's audition for the nbc series 'surface' premiering tonight. me and brandon read a scene as nerdy air traffic controllers trying desperately to finish a game of stratego while ET activity sucks a plane into the sea. now i couldn't tell you they didn't deserve it. could be the previous episode this pilot burned a church down. or perhaps everyone on board worked for the GOP.
what i love is the narrative that goes with the dialogue. the description of what writers expect to be produced. in this scene, the flash to the plane includes:
"as it spirals into the sea there are - yes! rainbows, all swirling transcendently in a beautiful orgy."
incidently i would fucking love to be on this show. i got bills 2 pay.

schablazzle

back on april 11 i did a promo. here it is.

deep drive to splinterfield

yesterday i auditioned for a commercial. the client was a radio station. they have a sports talk show. it's called 'the zone'. for four hours beginning at six in the morning they host a segment called 'mayhem in the a.m.' designed for the sports addict.
i auditioned for the sports addict. he's hired a hooker. taken her to a seedy hotel room. here, instead of hanky panky, the john gets off listening to the calling of game 7 of the 1992 nlcs braves versus pirates. 'sid bream falls into a hole, he's chugging, a glacier moves in from left field...bream stops for a smoke etc.' only their version was verbatim the game call. and i bet there is someone who actually gets off on this.
the sweet painted lady i auditioned with came dressed for the role. it was 9 am. she was wearing fishnets, hotpants, a wig and enough make-up to make her face totally irrelevant.
the clients, a young woman and a bespectacled dude studying a laptop, did not laugh. more often than not, you get clients in love with their ideas (as they should be) laughing not at your performance, but at their words coming back to them. it validates the spot.
if anyone ever takes the time to step back and look hard at a commercial, no matter how high-concept or brilliant it is, they see it's still just a pitch. but get 30 or 40 people invested into it and it becomes an honest day's work. truthfully, the science behind filmmaking is astounding. the social benefits can be lucrative. and while everyone pretends to be behind the product and clients and the agency's creative marketing, after a day or two you forget who-what-when-why. because it's an ad, a temporal coax, meant to get a response quickly and efficiently.
so this spot is actually pretty funny. i doubt i'll get it. being skinny and nerdy, i wouldn't be the type of person to 'join the guys and gals from mayhem and vitaminwater at eatzi's in buckhead!' and i certainly don't ever want to 'c'mon out and enjoy vitamin water with zone girls.'