| Represented Talent |
For the past twelve months, I’ve been working as a “background actor” (extra) on dozens of TV shows and movies. At the end of the 2005-06 school year, I needed a job if I wanted to stay in L.A., so I decided to put my SAG card (which I’d acquired at the ripe age of three as a result of this notorious Bounty commercial) to use for the first time in a decade, and become a professional extra. It’s got to be the easiest job imaginable– seriously, I can’t imagine a profession that requires less brain function– and I’ve been riding its cushy wave for almost twelve months. I finally decided I should take the next step and get an agent for commercials and print. So I had headshots made up, printed a resume at Kinko’s, and sent out a “mass mailing” to 25 different agencies. This week I had my first interview with an agency, and it happened to be a very appealing one: Dragon Talent. They’re an agency that deals in “non-mainstream” talent, requires a link to your myspace page as part of your application, and handles all of their business by e-mail. I honestly didn’t expect to be picked up by them: my looks are relatively mainstream and I have no substantial acting credits. But they jumped at the opportunity to sign me on, and even went so far as to call me “fierce”! Yes, in the words of Tyra Banks, I have the fire in my eyes. So now I have an agent, I’m getting a BlackBerry, and I’ll start going on auditions some time next week. Pretty fuckin’ crazy. Also, I got a part time job as the assistant of a Hollywood executive. So it’s been a pretty good week. |
I must apologize for my unprecented absence. I was in Vancouver for five days, but unfortunately, I don’t have anything to post from that trip, since my camera was in the shop for a CCD cleaning. But let’s forget about the cold, empty past, and return to our originally scheduled programming! Today I found myself one degree from Kevin Bacon. I worked on an episode of The Closer (starring his wife, Kyra Sedgwick) that he was directing. The shot I’m in is part of a fake TV news show inside the TV show, and I’m (brilliantly, if I do say so, myself) portraying an obnoxious high school asshole walking behind the reporter and waving at the camera. It’s probably the only time in my “background career” that I’ll ever be asked to stare into the camera and wave to the nice people watching at home. Fun times. Mr. Bacon was wearing an O.G. Hanson t-shirt, which struck me as relatively rad. In other news, my super-fantastico boyfriend, DJ Rudy Bleu, has a new mix up over on The Hot Lisp. You can even listen to each track right there on the page… hey, I should implement that feature for my podcasts. Check it out!  Oh, and here are some shots from my brief headless cameo in the train wreck that is Norbit. Enjoy! continue reading |
Do you ever listen to an album for the first time and feel no connection to it at all? Like it just whizzes overhead, on some cultural plane beyond your grasp? Your friends might be raving about it, but all you can do is look back at them with a blank stare, like they’re speaking a different language. It’s not that you think the album is bad, it’s just that you can’t get into it. You try listening to it twice and maybe even a third time, and you start to feel more and more frustrated. Stupid, even. You may ask yourself, “What is everyone else seeing here that I’m missing completely?” But even reading verbose five-star reviews praising the album for its conceptual genius or it’s visceral beauty can’t help you understand the attraction. You think about deleting it from your iTunes library out of spite, but something nagging tells you to keep it around. Time passes by. Months, or even years, and then one day you wake up with a song from this album stuck in your head. It’s 4:30 AM. You take an aching shower and get dressed without realizing it, and you’re sitting in your Geo Metro in the buzzing, velvet moments before morning starts, trying to decide what to play on your drive to work. The Los Angeles freeways are eerily vacant, and the only drivers on the road are begrudgingly reserved compared to the flashy type of driving you’ve come to expect from the city. Today, maybe, you’re going to be an extra in the unnecessary cgi/live action remake of a childhood classic, and you’re just barely dangling on to your consciousness. And then it hits you. You have a strong urge to listen to that unsettling album– just when everyone else seems to have forgotten about it– and in this unexpectedly quiet moment, it finally seems to make sense. Alvin and the Chipmunks hot-wired my love for Daft Punk. |
So last week a friend from Gay Poker gives me a call. Am I free to audition for a lead part in an Allstate commercial? Of course I am! I have a fever when I’m pretending to roll upside some “hot chicks” in traffic, standing up in a nondescript casting room, but I still get a callback. At the callback, the director tells me, “This isn’t Driving Miss Daisy,” in reference perhaps to my cautious imaginary driving techniques. It’s a no go. But I still get to work background on the spot, spending two days out on the edge of the Grapevine. The Grapevine, for those unacquainted with the great state of California, is the treacherous Tehachapi mountain pass that separates Los Angeles from the Central Valley. So they decided to film this commercial on exactly the last road that separates the Valley and the Grapevine. continue reading |
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The way I make my living is kinda strange, and kinda rad. Sometimes I have to eat Ice Cream across the room from Samantha Bee, sometimes I have to turn the air conditioning on for Paul Thomas Anderson, and sometimes I have to video tape an alligator for Catherine Ledner. I’ve been working a lot for Catherine lately, in different capacities, sometimes as an assistant on set and sometimes as a documentarian and editor. I met her through my friend Bob, whose job it is to airbrush her photos to erase the most minor imperfections. Catherine’s putting out a book of her animal photos, and I’m helping her edit and shoot a behind-the-scenes type video. Here are some pictures from behind the scenes on the making-of video, and a short clip from the video (with footage shot by Becca, Catherine’s other assistant). |
This week has been busy, but good busy. I’ve worked a lot and I’ve been unusually productive and I’ve been watching a lot of movies and TV on DVD. I went to the New Beverly with my friend Bob for a kung fu double feature at the two-month-long Quentin Tarantino-programmed Grindhouse Film Festival. I’ve been watching Twin Peaks with Rudy (his first time) in preparation for the impending release of Season 2 on DVD. We made the trek up to CalArts for a screening of Wild Tigers I Have Known, one of the most affecting and unique films I have seen in a long time. The director, Cam Archer, did a Q&A (moderated by my former mentor– the illustrious French critic of Chinese cinema, Berenice Reynaud– who, literally, had no idea who I was) after the film. Cam holds claim to the title of being the youngest person to have participated in the Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab. It was inspiring to hear such a down to earth filmmaker talk about how he got his film made. It made me realize that, even with my propensity for doing things my own way, I think way too much about making films the “right” way as opposed to how I’d be naturally inclined to. I go to a weekly poker night organized by my friend Kyle, “for talented and interesting gay men”. What that means is: no straight people, and no women. Kind of fascist, but that’s how we roll. I hosted the night for the first time on Monday, clearing out the Black Diamond living room (which was still in post-traumatic shock from our recent out-of-control crowded Pisces Party) to make room for twenty talented and interesting gay men. Wednesday I photo assisted for Bob’s boss, Catherine Ledner. She was shooting a veritable menagerie of assorted animals in synthesized domestic settings– a sloth, an alligator, a hedgehog, a miniature fox (who, in a moment of true tragedy, devoured a mouse– and fellow animal model– that the trainer was dangling above him, in a bid to make stand on his hind legs) and the two remaining mice. 
But most importantly, this week I put together my very first zine. It’s called “Green Nights Ablaze With Snow“. I wanted to create something physical and put it Out There. There’s something highly satisfying in holding an object in your hands that you created. I mean, what would I do if the Internet collapsed tomorrow? There would be no record of my existence. Rudy used to write a zine called Scutter back in the 90’s that eventually turned into a nonprofit music festival that donated college scholarships to gay teenagers. So that kind of inspired me, even if I can’t hope to be so radical or philanthropic with this simple offering of my short stories and photos. I’ve been meaning to make something like this for a long time, so I finally organized a photo shoot last weekend and spent the rest of the week going back and forth to Kinko’s putting it together. It’s three short stories and a handful of new photos that are all kind of about gay love (and shit like that). I’m going to try and get some independent book stores to sell it through consignment, but for now you can buy it directly from me (you know, if you have a couple extra bucks). It’s $5.00, including shipping. |
I’m standing close enough to study the hair on his cheek. I guess most teenage boys would be more excited about working with Lindsay Lohan, Jaime Pressly, or even Drake Bell, but it’s Ethan Suplee that does it for me. And I’m sure there are a small legion of teenage boys out there who would scratch out my eyes to get this close to the man. The studio is an anonymous warehouse in a nondescript quadrant of the San Fernando Valley called Van Nuys. This might be the same place where they flimed 90210. Inside the studio, Ethan Suplee and I are standing on the second-floor walkway of a fake motel, in front of a printed backdrop that’s two times the size of an ordinary billboard. It’s a ginormous photograph of the motel parking lot. There are a couple dozen extras and crew members crowding the platform with us, rushing back and forth, constantly re-lighting the scene from different angles. One enormous light is set in front of the backdrop. It floods the motel room, emulating sunlight. The rest of the studio is shrouded in stale darkness. continue reading |
When people ask me my occupation, I usually tell them I’m an extra. It feels pretentious to say, “I’m an actor”, when I don’t go on auditions and I almost never get speaking roles. Background acting is what I do: standing around for hours on the sets of television shows or films, usually for what will amount to no more than a few seconds of entirely forgettable screen time that will not even register in the memories of the few people tuning into “Dirt”, or “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody”, or “The War at Home”. Despite all of its inanity, being an extra is a good job. It couldn’t be easier. You get to drift from set to set in the vast world of Los Angeles’ entertainment industry, rubbing shoulders with celebrities, psychos, starry-eyed delusionals, disillusioned veterans, and occasionally some really interesting folk. Not to mention, it pays the bills… at least for union hacks like me. And on certain occasions– very special occasions– you get to be part of something glorious, like the world’s greatest soap opera: NBC’s “Passions“. If you are one of the many people who were taken aback by the absurdity and outrageousness of this anomaly of daytime television in the past eight years, you may be saddened to learn that it is being canceled this fall in order to make way for a fourth hour of the “Today” Show. Personally, I spent a few weeks following it religiously the summer it debuted, and I was never the same. So, when I received a call one November morning– moments before the opening of Los Angeles’ first H&M clothing store, while I stood in line, where I had been waiting for seven hours for a chance to put my hands on a much-coveted pair of Viktor & Rolf for H&M jeans– informing me that I would be working the following day on “Passions”, I was filled with understandable excitement. After my experience on that legendary show, I found myself on a new plateau of contentedness. Because, really, what more could I ask for than to be a wine server at a wedding on “Passions” where, amongst other scandals, the jumbo wedding cake is found to be concealing none other than the corpse of a murdered tranny? continue reading |
