Box Office Blasphemy

I was scheduled for 4 auditions today. I made it to 3. I dunno if it was the fish I ate at the Abbey last night or perhaps the Sake I drank at the Geisha House after that, but either way it ended in disaster when it came time to go to work. If you live in Hollywood I know what you’re thinking. Yes the Abbey is a gay bar, and no I am not gay. I was there with friends and in truth the Abbey is a pretty nice place. Something about gay men and there ability to set a higher standard for things like that. Anyways, after the Abbey and a pretty terrible piece of Ahi Tuna priced adorably at around $17, we went to a friend’s birthday party at The Geisha House on Hollywood Blvd. I really didn’t have that much to drink and came home and watched the new Episode of 24 and felt fit as a fiddle. Jack Bauer and the CTU team are perfect after party friends.

This morning I felt pretty bad but I thought I could make it to my auditions either way. I was wrong. My first audition for a Verizon commercial ended up in cold sweats and almost puked in the casting room. Then I came home and had some miso soup and tried to recover my well being and a sense of decency.

The next thing I had to go to was a reading at the Paramount lot. I dunno if my headshots make me look more ethnic than I really am but turns out I was reading for the part of a Black or Latino roll. Information that could have spared me even more awkward vertigo had it been imparted to me earlier.

I came away from the whole situation feeling both unprofessional and beaten down. I guess it worked out okay that my acting class got canceled as a result of my teacher falling ill. I do feel bad that he sounded like he was on the verge of death but I can’t help but sigh a deep breath of relief that I won’t have to “act” like I am not as nearly as ill as I feel.

Yesterday I shot a music video for a French artist that is with Sony BMG. I haven’t done a music video in a while and yesterday I remembered why not. Almost every video I have shot in LA over the last 6 years has resulted in total disaster.

I played the love interest of the female singer. The artist was very sweet and nice and the crew was relatively small. The idea of the video was a girl holding a tv everywhere she goes and in the television plays clips of her and her now-ex-boyfriend in the peak of their romantic affair. I play the asshole that broke her heart by cheating on her while she was away. Well at least that’s what I gathered from the production assistant who was trying his best to translate everything including the directors notes to me from French into English.

The actual shoot took place all over LA and I swear I was in the French Amateur version of Lost in Translation. The director would look at me and speak French for elongated rants and the translator would simply say, “More complacency.”

The thing about shooting a video is that your SAG rights are out the door. They can basically pay you whatever they want(usually really low) and keep you as long as they want. I thought since I had been taken advantage of before that perhaps I could escape such a bad deal but I was dead wrong.

Turns out the artist’s eye itches. Little did we know in France her eye itches sometimes too and that she has a special cream for when her eye itches. Well at the end of the day since we are in a rented SUV for location shoots, she decides she needs something for her eye now and not later. We went to a few places where she and the make-up artist took forever to figure out that there was no US version of her french cream…or creme. Next we went to see a pharmacist who told her what I had told her from there very beginning which was:Cortisone cream. She refused. She thought that the Amercian pharmacists(at this point we had seen 3) had no idea what they were talking about.

I hadn’t eatin a real meal all day since SAG wasn’t watching my back no one was. I wanted to get dropped of on the street so I could even walk to the studio where my car was parked and go home. This was unacceptable however and I had to go to everyplace they went until we were right back where we started with still no eye cream. I suggested Benydryl but of course that was absurd. I should have kept my mouth shut.

So after a 11 hour day I am now extremely struck by the flu that I had felt coming in the days leading up to the shoot. We did eventually make it back to the production office alive and cranky as ever. Now I am one who believes strongly in professional behavior and patience, but when I went in to sign the contract of course i asked, “This is only the agreed day rate, I will get over time for the hours right?”. “Oh no. We don’t have the budget for that”, replied the producer. I should have known. IN this business and perhaps in many others you mustn’t do such silent favors. Free job, cheap jobs, non-union jobs, are all a big mistake. I called my agent and in my sickly exhausted voice tried to explain that if I was to be beckoned for another such job I ask what my union requires as my day rate. As far as additional hours worked I expect to be paid for over time as well. I can’t encourage this for everyone enough. Video producers(and many others) think they can get away with treating the talent like total shit for ridicules hours and get away with it. They will lour you in by telling you how much they like you and your work, and the reason that they are allowed to pay some talent as low as $400 a day is because people will do it. We need to rise up and stop doing shitty jobs. Some of these jobs have 120k budgets, and the people that are the very essence of the them are are being the most mistreated and under paid.

I for one am never doing such a job or a favor. I am not going to become celebrity or fussy about it. I am simply going to stand up for myself and my fellow performers in demanding what I feel we all are worth.

Cast Joan Chen, Michelle Krusiec, Lynn Chen, Jin Wang, Guang Lan Koh
Writer(s) Alice Wu
Genre(s) Comedy, Drama, Romance
Release Date May 27, 2005 — New York/Los Angeles
DVD Release Date Oct. 18, 2005
Official Site

Cast Zach Braff, Garry Marshall, Don Knotts, Patrick Stewart, Amy Sedaris (more)
Director(s) Mark Dindal
Writer(s) Steve Bencich, Ron J. Friedman
Genre(s) Animated, Children’s, Comedy
Release Date Nov. 4, 2005
Official Site

I went to see Chicken Little at the desperate request of my girlfriend. I am a fan of some computer animated movies but not all . Having really enjoyed Finding Nemo the bar was raised going into this one. I thought certain humor was entertaining and cute but the animation and plot line didnt impress me much at all. basically when an acorn falls to the ground, a young chicken (Braff) thinks the sky is falling and causes widespread panic by spreading the inaccurate news to the rest of his animal friends. Later, after his reputation is ruined, the chicken is clobbered by a real piece of the sky as it falls to Earth.

Cast Charlize Theron, Marton Csokas, Jonny Lee Miller, Sophie Okonedo, Frances McDormand
Director(s) Karyn Kusama
Writer(s) Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi
Release Date Dec. 2, 2005
Official Site

Four hundred years into the future, disease has wiped out the 90% of Earth’s population. The survivors are the residents of Bregna, a city-state protected by a giant wall and ruled by scientists. Aeon Flux (Theron) is a expert trained rebel for the Monican Rebellion, an underground group led by the Handler (McDormand), who wants Aeon to lead the operation in taking down the imperial government leader.

I liked this movie although I didn’t love it. I myself was a huge fan of MTV’s liquid television that aired late night screenings of the gritty cartoon when Peter Chung and Denise Poirier held the reins. I think my only problem with the movie was that it was a little too clean and pretty. I wanted textures abrassivness. The choreography was good but fell short of what I expected. Had they chosen to hire the fighting styles used on films like The Bourne Identity it would have made for an amazing film. I can’t say only bad things about this film though, I did find it entertaining and I do really like that Theron did the film. I just wish MTV had the guts to stop this bubble gum shade they’ve cloaked todays youth with by airing such eye poison as The Real World and TRL, and bring back the cool MTV generation on Remote Control and Liquid Television.

Cast Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Miranda Otto, Justin Chatwin, Tim Robbins
Director(s) Steven Spielberg
Writer(s) Josh Friedman, David Koepp
Genre(s) Science Fiction
Official Site for War of the Worlds
Tom Cruise has had an interesting year. This movie does have some blatant flaws and not-so-subtle errors, however the special effects were second to none. Young Fanning is one of the most capable actors of any age in Hollywood today and doesnt let us down here at all. Though the plot can only do so much with a film that is made to gross profits, this movie is entertaining.

Cast Jake Gyllenhaal, Jamie Foxx, Peter Sarsgaard, Lucas Black, Chris Cooper
Director: Sam Mendes
Writer: William Broyles
Release Date Nov. 4, 2005
Jarhead tells the story of a marine sniper in the first Gulf War, who never fires a shot. Director Sam Mendes excels in why he chose to make the movie, which is based on Anthony Swofford’s memoir with the same title. Mendes says that he wanted to explore why soldiers are drawn to war, even those who seem to oppose it.

Director: Anand Tucker
Writer: Steve Martin
Featuring: Steve Martin, Claire Danes, Jason Schwartzman, Bridgette Wilson-Sampras, Samuel Bottoms

I read a review of this film by a man named David White, who rated it with a D+. He wrote:

“When celebrities reach a certain level of A-list fame, they lose touch with reality. It’s almost like one of the laws of physics. And that is clearly what’s happened to Steve Martin, because this story — based on his thinly veiled autobiographical novella — of a rich, older guy who falls for a wan accessories clerk at Saks is so far removed from anything resembling actual human experience that it appears to have been teleported in from another galaxy. He’s still playing the Jerk, but for an entirely different set of reasons.”

This is blasphemy! This movie was wonderful in every way. The acting of our three main characters ( Clair Danes, Steve Martin, Jason Schwartzman) is chemistry truly unseen. Though the film has some mid-life-crisis resemblances to “Lost is Translation”, this movie is superb. The only thing that bothered me the slightest bit was Steve Martin’s narration. It’s my guess that after writing his novella, Steve wanted to have this film be the image of the story in its narrative form. Aside from that its about as entertaining as an uneventful movie could be. Claire Danes is living in Silver Lake(East LA) and is the worst dressed female protagonist ever. Her emotions seem subdued and hard to read so as a viewer you never have a clear opinion of where you want the film to go.

Steve Martin has an immense density of both intelligence and acting chops. In this film his gentle subtitles make him glide through his sterile opulent lifestyle with candor and finess. As an actor I see tremedous growth in him as an artist and a human being.

Jason Schwartzman is perfectly awkward. He is original and laugh-out-loud funny, and adorable. He is a perfect scale tip in cinematic alchemy opposite Danes and Martin.

The cinematography and directing are first rate, and the films score/soundtrack are wonderful.

Directer: Harold Ramis
Written By: Robert Benton and Richard Russo
Released November 13th 2005

John Cusack stars in this dark comedy as a mob lawyer who has taken his gangster boss(Quade) for over 2 million dollars. Billy Bob Thorton is his mysteriously callused partner in crime as they stumble through a comedy of holiday errors. The mobster (Randy Quade) is tracking them down as they make their way through strip clubs and bars to a hopeful attempt at a clean getaway.

Focus Features lives up to it’s elite reputation again and again, and in the case of the Ice Harvest they’ve remained on track. Though the screen is often hard to even see with its gloomy lighting and dismal shadows, it’s flared with red satins that make Connie Nielsen illuminate in every shot. This film is carried by well written dialogue and hilarious acting from Oliver Platt. Cusack was perfectly cast as a wimpy hero with clear potential strength, and Thorton followed through with another great performance. This has been one of my favorite holiday releases this year.