Weekend Rant

You know what I hate? When people post castings for actors and rant and rave about how much exposure it will bring and how it will be seen by millions of people and then say . . . no pay. If it is going to be seen by that many people than you are clearly making money off of it and you obviously don’t value your actors. Or you’re just a lying SOB. I'm glad that I’m in SAG so I don’t have to worry too much about this anymore, but you’d be surprised at how many SAG productions still try to get around paying their actors. It’s despicable.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest- I realize that I’ve lost a bit of focus lately with the recent events in Iran. I guess that’s one of the downfalls of being an actor- some things just get to you more than “normal” people. But I think it’s fully acceptable to lose focus for a couple days because of an international crisis.

So, onto my wonderful and weird last weekend. Friday night was hilarious. HILARIOUS. After getting out of rehearsal and taking a bus across town (which on a Friday night took 45 minutes as opposed to 10), I walked through a very shady part of town before making it to the nice part, and was greeted at the door of my last film’s wrap party with shots of Tequila and chex mix. We then proceeded to watch the rough cut of our short film which was one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen in my life. Of course, it may have just seemed that funny to us because we were the ones who made it, so we shall have to wait to see what the general public thinks. But I think it’s great, (which I rarely say for my own films). It was quite refreshing to be in a comedy after doing so many dramas lately.

Then Saturday, I got up ready to rally again- this time for my feature that would be premiering on TV. I’ve been on TV before, but not with a part this big so I was pretty excited. I had a bunch of friends over for mojitos and popcorn, and this is what proceeded to happen:

K: Umm, E? Isn’t your movie on right now?
E: Oh yeah, I forgot! (turns on TV)
K: Omg, that’s you! This is so cool!
E: Hmm, yeah so anyway back to my other conversation . . . .

I was not even remotely involved in watching myself. Not because I wasn’t interested, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I just can’t watch myself in dramatic scenes. Because I think they’re side-splittingly funny. Which they are definitely not. It was just weird. Really weird. I thought I’d love it, but it’s a bit like staring at yourself in the mirror and having all your friends over to stare at it with you. Just weird.

One cool thing is that one of my old French friends that I studied with in Ireland was in town and came over to watch it, so it was neat for him to see how I’ve progressed throughout the years. He said to me, “I remember you talking about what you wanted to do, and now here you are doing it!” That felt pretty good. Because I am doing it. Regardless of whether I can watch myself or not, I am doing it. I’m not where I want to be yet and I have a lot of room for improvement, but I’m still plugging along.

Let’s just hope I keep getting paid.