Too Busy to Blog

This past week has been pretty hectic and I've given this blog less attention than I would like. However, leading a life so interesting that I don't have time to write about its myriad happenings is not an altogether bad situation to be in. For now, I'll just give you the bullet points, and with luck I'll be able to find time to write more detailed entries later.

• I attended the opening night of my friend Diablo Cody's film "Juno". See this movie – you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be quoting it for weeks.
  
• I signed with a talent manager named Blair Silver who found me through a cold-submission by Sage Marketing for Actors.
  
• I love my Groundlings class. I'm learning a ton, and my commercial acting is improving as a result.
  
• I've got one week left in my commercial acting class with Jeff Hardwick. I'm learning scads here as well.
  
• I attended a free workshop held by John Sudol on commercial acting which was extremely informative.
  
• I've fleshed out the story of my screenplay a bit more.
  
• I got the first of a series of checks in the mail from my day-job. Thank goodness!

What A Manager Does

Peter Kluge came to speak at The Actors Network and I was really quite impressed. He's a former-actor/business-man turned talent manager. He really reminded me of Aaron Eckhart in so far as he was tan and charming. What struck me as being really unique about Peter is that he was completely devoid of smarm. The man was smarmless. When faced with the possibility of dropping and F-bomb, he instead literally spoke the word "blank".

The following are some excerpts from my notes.

On actor's taking themselves too seriously:

In the grand scheme of things, we're not that important. Sure we tell a story, and sometimes we get a message across, but in the end, we're entertainers. We're here to entertain people.

In response to SAG having way too many contracts. What's next? The...

after school Disney, blank me up the butt rate?

On most actors' fatal flaw: myopia

To separate yourself from the vast majority of actors, don't be so me oriented. Don't just walk into an audition room and forget to engage with others as human beings. Be nice to assistants and receptionists. They often do the submissions for you - or cast the deciding vote in a casting office.

What a manager does:

• A manager fights for their clients, they submit them on projects they are right for - they can be specific because they have fewer clients.
• Managers represent you across the board, which means they get a piece of the pie whether you shoot a commercial, film, series, or print ad.
• Your manager helps you to better market yourself. He/she won't intentionally give you negative feedback, it's not in their best interests. If they tell you that CDs say you read like an ice queen - don't take it as a criticism, use it as the starting point for your new ice queen marketing campaign.