steve in hollywood

In some of my past blogs I have explained to you about actors doing “extra” work, or as we call it here, “background.” One thing you have to remember about doing this kind of work is, as far as cast goes, you are on the bottom of the food chain. You are about the equivalent of the guy who gets everyone coffee. Or maybe the Styrofoam cup that it comes in.

Now that I think about it, you are more like livestock. They herd you around, tell you where to go and stand or sit, and then they make sure they feed you at the right times. Besides that, they don’t expect anything intelligent out of you. There’s a problem with working in Hollywood that I have mentioned before — there are so many actors here desperate to get into the business that many of them will do plenty of work for free. This is because they are told something like it will give them a “big chance” to possibly be featured, or meet a certain director, or make it on a television pilot. Of course, 99% of the time none of these things happen, and you have wasted your time.

My Big Fat Waste of Time

So a “friend” of mine that I had in my contacts sent out a text to her actors list saying there was a spec show for Comedy Central needing background, and that you would get an IMDB credit for it. (A “spec” show, or spec anything here, means “speculative”, as in, we are making this and hoping someone picks it up and shows it on TV.) This is the list of things wrong with that shoot I went to:

• I was not told it would be no pay
• others were not told this either
• The directions were incorrect
• When we arrived, we could not find the building on the location and there was no one there to meet us
• The casting lady who called us was not there — she was at a paying job
• They had no food for us, and gave us “set dressing” bottles of water to drink that were warm (they used the bottles for atmosphere for the scenes.)
• I was told by the principal actor that she would do a scene with me, but they skipped me over
• When I asked the director about it, he pretended I did not exist and did not acknowledge me
• It was really hot inside, but they turned off the fans when shooting because of the noise (and left them off the whole time.)

You know, I don’t mind doing some work like this sometimes, but “surprise” free work isn’t really that exciting to me. But wait, here is the best part:

When I complained to the casting director lady, she acted like I was being arrogant, took me off of her casting list, and never spoke to me again.

Not only that, but this was someone I considered a friend!

This is Hollywood though. I guess the lesson I learned is don’t trust anyone, even if they claim to be your friend. Also, get it all in writing. ‘Course, I already knew that.

Picture of the Day

This is outside the parking lot for a local Starbuck’s.

That is not a speed. 5 miles a day perhaps?

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