Has LA Changed You? Or: Remembering Your Passions

Have you ever gone through your life, business as usual, only to have something shovel-smack you in the face and remind you that you have neglected what once was an important part of yourself?

This video, of a Camp Jitterbug Jump Session, did just that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcsyUhZgcps

When I was living in the Bay Area, swing and blues dancing was an essential part of my life. I'd go out dancing 1 - 4 times a week. I'd practice steps at home. I even taught swing dancing as a Choice Day elective at East Bay Arts, hoping to spread some of the joy.

Then I moved to Los Angeles, and I stopped dancing. I went out a couple times, but it just wasn't the same. My friends weren't there, I'd have to drive too far, and alone. It didn't seem worth the effort. So I stopped trying.

Knowing my birthday was fast approaching, and unaware of my distance from dancing, a dear friend in the Bay Area plotted a gift. Despite an incredibly busy schedule, she started taking lindy hop classes so that we might spend more time together in my favorite environment: the dance hall. On the week of my birthday, I came up to visit her and my other friends. She took me out dancing. I was hesitant at first (Would I be any good, being so out of practice?), but eventually I gave in a had a fantastic evening. It was quite possibly the best gift I had ever received.

But a return to LA, meant a return to dancing apathy. When my friend would come to visit, she would propose an evening of swing dancing, but I never had the heart for it. "The drive's too long." "Eh, doesn't sound like fun." "I'm tired, how about we catch a movie?" I had become apathetic about something I truly loved, I let the city beat me into submission. In so doing, I failed myself, and I failed my friend.

I'm sometimes asked: Has LA changed you? To which I reply, "No I don't think so, I think I've done a pretty good job of holding on to who I am." Seeing this video, knowing I've neglected a part of myself and afraid I've hurt a very giving friend, I'm not so sure.

Why Too Much Knowlege Can Be A Bad Thing

I came to Los Angeles a confident actor. I had just finished playing the lead in a one act play. I had consulted with all of my actor friends who had taken a swing at LA and thus was assured I wouldn't make the same mistakes. I was in great shape and had a certain pep in my step that only new love can bring. I felt like a pretty big fish in a small pond.

When I got to LA, I hit the ground running. I started my agent search. Self-submitted for roles. Auditioned all the time, and even got cast in a few shorts. On some of those shorts, I felt like I was slumming it.

To look back at it now, I was an ignorant ass.

I now fully appreciate just how big a pond LA is and just how small a fish I am. I am riddled with doubts about my abilities as a performer. I understand how important a first impression with a Casting Director is, and I have no intention of blowing it. As a result, I'm not submitting myself for roles. I'm not actively seeking an agent. I am floating. Worse, I have become the thing I most despise: the class & coffee shop actor. I have strong opinions, beliefs, and theories but rarely exercise them outside of conversations with friends.

I just had such a conversation with my extremely talented buddy JP. It served as something of a reality check:

Yes, I'm a small fish in a big pond. BUT, I was an even smaller fish when I first arrived in town and I actively sought and got work. I am a much better actor now than I was two years ago, and by all rights I should be pounding the pavement. If I'm not ready enough to begin now, I never will be.

Which all reminds me of what I believe to be a Los Angeles truism:

A bad actor with confidence in his/her abilities will book more work than a good actor with poor confidence in his/her abilities.

Oh to maintain the joys of ignorance whilst enjoying the benefits of wisdom!

How To Lose With a Winning Hand

Since moving to LA I've started doing something I haven't done since I was a small child - playing poker. Things are a little different since I took up the game as a six year old in the green room the high school theater. For one, I've started playing for money. Not much, no more than $10 a night, but enough for it to feel like proper gambling.

The problem is, I know as little about the game now as I did then. My strategy basically breaks down to: hold onto any face cards I may have and go all in if I see any cards on the table that match. I have yet to win a game of poker.

Tonight, I was quite impressed by just how bad a player I am. We were playing Texas Hold 'Em. I had a five and a king. On the table were three other fives. The betting was getting pretty intense. All cards had been revealed, but the bets were still going up. I looked at my cards, and looked at the cards on the table. The best hand the other players could have had was a full house. I only had four 5s. Given the tenor of the bets, I knew someone had the full house. As the full house would beat my four-of-a-kind, I folded.

The only problem is: Four of a Kind beats a Full House!!!

I didn't know this at the time, if I had, I would have gone all in. I managed to claw defeat from the jaws of victory.

The moral of the story: before you start gambling where something real is at stake (money, job, relationship, etc) - make sure you know what winning looks like. If you don't, you might fail to see that success is within your grasp, give up, and lose everything.

Alternate moral of the story: ensure that every game of poker you play is worth the amount you are betting in entertainment value alone. More likely than not you'll lose, so be okay with that.

Moral #3: If you want an easy 10 bucks, challenge me to a friendly poker game.

Trying vs Doing

My friend Nima just gave me one hell of a Rocky-style pep talk (the gist of it is below):

Talking about doing things is fun. Trying to get things done is nice. But the only thing that really matters is getting things done. You're in LA, you've got no reason not to make this committment, now get stuff done. If that means background work, then do it. That's doing something. Don't try to do something, you've done enough to get where you are, now do what it is you want to do.

It's all too easy to get caught in the trap of preparing for some fuzzy later date. Continue to prepare, but do so by acting - do so by making forward movement.

As in: Stop reading this post. Get up, and take concrete action towards your goal. Now.

I Miss Home

I recently used timeanddate.com to do a little calculation, the intent was simple enough: how long have I been away from home?

From and including: Friday, September 5, 2008
To, but not including : Friday, January 16, 2009

It is 133 days from the start date to the end date, but not including the end date

Or 4 months, 11 days excluding the end date

It's a long time to be away from home, friends, and family. To put it in perspective, a typical big-budget hollywood film shoot is 3 months, and 6 months is standard for a hollywood action project. I have no idea how those actors on the Lord of the Rings managed to be away from home for 3 years.

It looks like we've got about 3 weeks left. Wish me luck!

The Beauty of Audacity

From an environmental standpoint Los Angeles simply shouldn't exist. There are far too many people to be supported by the annual precipitation of this semi-arid climate - let alone the endless green lawns and Beverly Hills gardens. So says Emma, a friend who visited from out of town. Given her credentials, a BS from MIT and a MS from Princeton in some sub-category of Environmental Sciences, I'm inclined to agree. But even she admitted "I really like it here. I will be coming back." I think she got caught up in what is truly beautiful about LA - the sheer audacity of it's existence and persistence.

What is perhaps most surprising to someone visiting LA is that it pretty much is everything it purports to be in films and television. The walk of fame, Mann's Chinese Theater, the Hollywood sign, club goers, all-night diners, and rows of palm trees all exist and are readily accessible. It's a little surreal. Walking by these landmarks seen time and time again in fictional narratives can make it feel like you're floating through a storybook landscape.

Even seeing coked out hookers and tatooed gang members can be a reassuring experience - "Look ma! It's exactly like in the movies."

As I approach my one-year Los Angeles anniversary I'm so grateful to have friends visit. They help me to see this place with renewed awe and optimism. No matter how "bad" my days get, working for myself and being able to laze away a Sunday on the beach beats just about anything else out there.

Kung Fu Panda Screening & After Party

My friends Phil "Captain 3D" and Deepa invited me to see an animators' screening of "Kung Fu Panda" earlier this evening. Both Phil & Deepa are employees at Dreamworks Animation – the folks that brought you Shrek. Phil is the "global director of stereoscopic digital photography" or some other equally long title for "the guy that makes 3D animated films fly out of the screen at your face." Deepa works in the texture department and is currently making computer generated buildings look like they're made out of real concrete, steel, and glass. Most of Phil & Deepa's friends work within the animation industry, and were already invited to the screening, so they brought me along as their plus one.

The screening was held at Grauman's Chinese theater – the space was done up in deep reds with gold accents, a significant improvement over the slightly dingy digs I first experienced when I saw "Judge Dredd" in the theater 13 years ago. "Kung Fu Panda" is Dreamworks' latest foray into the world of animated animals, and the martial arts theme made it seem right at home in Grauman's. I have to say that "Panda" is probably my favorite of the Dreamworks Animation films. The action sequences kept me engaged the whole time, and the jokes were funny without resorting to a panacea of pop culture references.

After the film ended, the thousands of animators that filled the theater took to the streets – inciting one taxi driver to let out a genuine NYC-style honk at the pedestrians crossing illegally. We all poured into the Roosevelt Hotel and made a B-line to the bar to make the most of our Dreamworks-sponsored bottomless cups. On the way to the bar, Phil went over to talk to a gentleman who was introduced as Jeffrey while I ate a complimentary cupcake. As Phil and I waited in line for the buffet, I asked him who Jeffrey was – turns out he was Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of Dreamworks animation.

While Phil was away on his colleague-chit-chat adventures I spent most of the evening hanging out with Deepa. I started talking about my plans to take a trip around the world with Gabriel to make a feature film and Deepa asked if I was going to visit India. "If you do, you should stay with my family. My mother is very friendly!" So it seems I might actually know someone in India outside of the wonderful guy who helped me troubleshoot my DSL connection a few months back.

News Flash: American Sign Language is the new Spanish! This is to say, if you are going to speak a second language in California, it seems that ASL is the one to know. Deepa is deaf and normally has to read lips and use contextual cues to figure out what it is everyone is talking about. However tonight one person in almost every group we met spoke ASL to a greater or lesser degree. A lighting director's wife taught ASL to underprivileged kids, one of Deepa's supervisors took ASL classes to better communicate with Deepa, another woman's father lost his hearing in Vietnam, and still another was learning ASL to speak with her neighbor's daughter. It's an absolutely gorgeous language - I was surprised by how much and how little I understood by "reading hands" and using context clues.

Later in the evening, Phil was talking with another person that seemed to be a friend. I introduced myself as Donovan and asked "I'm sorry. And you were?" to which the man replied "Conrad". "Good to meet you." Conrad it seems is the director of Dreamworks' next film "Monsters vs. Aliens". Oh, and he directed "Shrek II" one of the highest grossing films of all time.

Having met both the head of a major film studio and the director of Shrek II without knowing who they were in the moment, I started to wonder… Is it better to not know so that I can have a genuine experience, or is it better to know so that I don't ask questions like "So what's your role with the production?" "I'm the director. Without me you wouldn't be eating the free food tonight you dip shit!"*?

*This is an entirely hypothetical dialog that I might have with a director like David O. Russell.

My First Red Carpet was for a Good Cause

Last night I attended a benefit for The Barrio Symphony at the Sonora Café. The barrio symphony is a non-profit music organization founded by Peter Quesada, my neighbor and dear friend. Peter invited me to the event so that I might record video of his students performing music from the European, Israeli, and Latin canon. Unfortunately, neither of us was able to track down a video camera so I merely attended as his guest.

First let me say: the kids playing in this orchestra are amazing and could probably hold their own amongst most classical studio musicians. If I had only been there to hear them play, it would have been a fantastic evening. However, things got way more Hollywood than that.

Some highlights:

• I spent a goodly portion of the evening chatting with Vicki Randle of the Tonight Show band. She's a good friend of Peter's and an extremely talented and passionate musician. Just a few weeks ago, I was watching her perform at a taping of The Tonight Show. Unfortunately, she and the rest of the band are currently unemployed due to the WGA strike. I still support the strike, but fallout like this is truly unfortunate. So, please support her by checking out her album "Sleep City," the title track is a funky number that takes me back to a time when lead singers could still summon sass.
  
• I met some of my neighbors from Peter's building. Turns out, Thai Town is crawling with actors, writers, directors, and producers. For the first time since early childhood I'm meeting and getting to know my neighbors. It's great!
  
• Celebrity sightings: Tim Curry, Billy Baldwin, Wendie Malick, and Bellamy Young (Dirty Sexy Money).
  
• Someone donated $20,000 to the orchestra so that they could have a "Dirty Sexy Dinner" with Billy Baldwin and Bellamy Young.
  
• I was devastated to see a signed Dali lithograph on JaPan paper get auctioned off for only $3,600. But Dali is dead and these kids will still get plenty of benefit from that money.
  
• At the end of the evening, I had Michelle Phillips cello from The Mommas and the Poppas in the backseat of my car. She donated it to the Barrio Symphony and I was responsible for escorting the cello back to Peter's apartment.
  

(Above: Billy Baldwin, Peter Quesada, & Bellamy Young)

Did I mention free food and an open bar? I think I'll keep pursuing acting if for no reason other than an endless stream of benefit buffet lines.

Neil Patrick Harris is my Competition Now

Yesterday was my 22nd birthday. I spent it up North with family, friends, and my amazing girlfriend in Davis, CA. It was really wonderful to get to spend the day with so many people that I cared about. I was reminded that I do have a complete life; it’s just that different parts of it may be located farther away than I would like.

21 was a really great age for me. I had my first successful year as a teacher (I taught for 2 years previous to that, but didn’t feel wonderfully about the experience). I was in a successful production of “Take Me Out” that played to sold-out audiences and great reviews in the main stage at The New Conservatory Theater. I matured a lot in my dealings with other people and I finally “sacked up” and moved down to Los Angeles to pursue my acting career.

I am optimistic about how this coming year will pass, but not without some trepidation. I can no longer be considered a whiz kid, boy wonder, Doogie Howser, or prodigy – all terms that were bandied about in my previous careers. I am at last going to be judged as an adult.

Just like Neil Patrick Harris who is now forced to prove his mettle beyond his child stardom, I will be evaluated against the same, more universal, yardstick. Here’s hoping I measure up.

I'm about to bust this blog wide open... thematically.

I've been reading Prince, Diablo, and now Jon's cultural musings and I have to admit: I'm jealous. Here I am rather single-mindedly blogging about my career, while these folks get to write about music, movie premieres, and pop-flavored lip balm. Well, no longer will I sit silently in the corner thinking private thoughts about the latest happenings - I'm going to blast them out to YOU my reader.

And to kick off my turning a new leaf, I'm going to give you one heck of a... career update:

I'm back in LA after a week in the Bay Area. When I finally opened up Outlook on my home computer, I had 300 breakdowns that I had to go through to see if there was anything I wanted to submit for. Once I eliminated all the postings for little people, it became a much more manageable list. I submitted to a number of projects and I've got a couple auditions coming up - both are student projects. I'm excited about one of them. It's about an 18yr old kid who can't wait to take up his dead father's mantle by going to war - while his mother fights his leaving and the prospect of losing another loved one to the war. Its thematically similar to a show I did called "Here I Go Boys, Wish Me Luck!" for the Bay Area One Act Festival.

My timing is off...

I was at a Q&A session with a commercial agent at The Actor's Network tonight. There are definite seasons in a talent agency, and it appears that it's currently Spring - which means they're too busy watching the blooms to try and plant any seeds. In other words, September-November is pretty much the worst time to try and land an agent because they're all working really hard on getting their current clients into pilots or episodic TV.

If agents aren't opening their mail until the end of December - I need to brace myself for a lot of independent submissions to casting agents. This is frustrating because I really thought I had given myself enough lead-time to get an agent before shooting season began in earnest. Moral: submit ASAP if you move down in August, don't wait to get "situated". Better still: move down during June or July.

Oh, and I saw Super Bad tonight with Jon and Prince. It was incredibly funny, but the jokes wouldn't have played nearly so well if it were 1954. For half a second, I thought the swearing was excessive... and then I remembered my students. Nope, the movie is pretty spot on. I'd love to do a project like that.

EDIT: I am ashamed at how many times I just incorrectly used combinations of: their, there, and they're.

Mud People Music Video

So I drove up to the SF bay to do some contract work for my old school, and while I was there I helped my buddy Gabriel shoot a music video for his new solo album. I have a background in film making and thought I could assist in some meaningful way.

I ended up being in charge of making mud. Having spent the better part of my childhood making cat-turd pies in a sandbox this was a specialty of mine. I lost my pair of brown euro shoes to the bay - it's a shame because they cost a grip and were some of my favorites.

In addition to making mud, I shot production stills and promotional photos for the album.



Towards the end of the shoot, I also got covered in mud from head to toe so that Gabriel could have more mud-people for the final shots. It was quite disgusting - and expensive. I had forgotten to bring a change of clothes, so my friend Emily ran to Target and bought a whole new outfit for me so that I could make it to my friend Tom Orr's "iTom Shuffle" cabaret show @ 8. But it gave me some taste of what it might be like to work on a Zombie film - maintaining continuity from the master shot would be quite difficult.

Financial Update:
+$300 Contracting Work.
-$70 Replacement outfit at Target.