​From the top

    I started film acting when I was 10 years old so I never had a chance of growing up normal. I wasn’t pushed into it by parents, living vicariously through me, no. No, it was a choice I made for myself, so I guess you could say normalcy was never really in the cards for me. Actor or not. But being an actor makes you weird. Anytime you ask yourself if the guy who played the lead in your favorite movie is “cool” the answer is no. He’s weird. 

    None of us ever stood a chance, weirdness is sewn into the business like the ugly flowers on your Grandma’s blanket. For starters, you can’t take anything personally, but it is impossible to not take it personally. I should describe the audition room for you. It begins like this: you get an email from your agent, a middle-aged lady who also has a job as a flight attendant or something because you’ll never make her enough money. She gets 10% of the roughly 60 dollars you’ve made in 6 years. You spend the first two years or so in the business trying to find auditions on Facebook and Craigslist to get an impressive enough body of work to get her attention and then you spend the next four years after she’s accepted you as a client trying to get enough auditions from Craigslist and Facebook to keep her attention. She sends you an email and tells you you have an audition in two days and she attaches a two page scene that you are not allowed to show to anyone or else the Film Cops will show up to your door and take you away to Bad Actor Jail. Or at least that’s my understanding of how non-disclosure agreements work. Michael Bloomberg would hate me. You memorize the super-secret script as best you can, then you leave school in the middle of last period and you feel cool. When you walk into the audition room there are usually two people in the room: the casting director and the casting director’s assistant. The assistant mans the camera, reads the lines of the other people in your super-secret scene and smiles at you. The casting director on the other hand just stares. 

    Now, the relationship between the actor and the casting director is unlike any other relationship ever had between to humans. It is simultaneously the relationship between the dog and the hand that feeds it and the relationship between the horse and the whip that drives it. The casting director doesn’t make any of the decisions really, that’s the actual director. But the casting director is the go-between. They are the go-between you and the person who could make or break your dreams, pay for or not pay for your next meal. To be or not to be. 

    The casting director is not the enemy though, that’s one thing you need to learn if you ever want to successfully audition. It takes practice though. Every time I walk into the audition room, I tell myself, “Casting directors are friends, not fears.” 

    I imagine the casting director also has a mantra. “Actors are friends, not food.” 

    After you walk into the casting director’s den, you do your best at the one minute scene you were given, smile, thank them for having you and maybe if you’re lucky they’ll say, “Good job” in a slightly surprised tone, as though they were not expecting you to do well. You then walk out to your car, tell your mom you think it went well and then you do not hear from any of these people until it’s time to do it again. 

    One of the things people ask you when you say you act is “how does it feel to be someone else?” And the answer is fine. Method actors are crazy and weird, but you don’t have to do that. Most of the time it is just fine. Sure, sometimes the director has you dye your hair and you don’t recognize yourself for a month but most of the time it is fine. That’s not why actors are weirdos, okay? 

What makes you weird is the repetition. Think of your favorite scene with your favorite guy from your favorite movie. I need you to know that your favorite guy did your favorite scene roughly 20 times before they got it right from every camera angle and no one walked into the frame. That’s why your favorite actor is weird. Especially when it’s a Western, because you’ve been standing for an hour in boots that are too small and it’s both too hot and too cold and those borrowed Old West clothes always smell like dust and someone else’s sweat. The director says, “Take it from the top! One more time.” 

And you know you will be there for another hour at least. 

That is what makes you weird. “One more time” it’s never true. Even beyond a set, it is never true. One more day until the weekend. One more week until you can see your boyfriend. 1 more month of isolation. One more time. One more time. 

The number one has lost its definition. It now encompasses infinity, a vague hazy value that translates to “not now, but eventually, I promise.”

But what else can we do? Take it one more time from the top, with feeling this time. 

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