Getting Started

I am getting more and more comfortable in my apartment. I have been spending a lot of time here and I haven’t gone crazy, yet. I guess it is good that I enjoy being by myself, because that is who I spend most of my time with. I got a new cell phone, home phone, internet and have started changing my address with the companies that I do business with. Other than that, I have been shopping for stuff to fill out the apartment.

I went to IKEA for the first time out here. I really liked it. Lots of good stuff for cheap prices, right up my alley. I got a bookcase and a desk so I could unpack some more boxes. So I feel like I am really living in a place instead of out of a suitcase.

I was a little down earlier this week, just sort of bored, worried about money, a little lonely and I didn’t really have a way to get out the frustration that I was feeling. So I went to see a couple of movies. I saw I,Robot and Anchorman. I,Robot is a renter. It is a decent summer action flick, but nothing special. Some of the special effects were poor and Will Smith was playing the same old Will Smith summer action movie character. Streetwise, witty, sarcastic and able to kick major ass when he wants to. In this movie the ass of choice was robot ass, all CGI, which bugs me.

Anchorman was a very funny movie. I had low expectations for the movie, and not because I don’t like Will Ferrel, I do. But the trailers just made it look like a really DUMB movie. However, it was really good. Will was his usually self but the three guys that made up his “Action Team” made the movie. There were three of them, but I only know 2 of their names. Paul Rudd and Steve Carell. They were both terrific and I thought the movie would not have been nearly as good as it was without them. Just goes to show that movies need talented secondary players. Kind of gives me hope.

I got a call on Wednesday from the Central Casting agency, which is the agency where people go to be extras in movies and television. You know those patrons at restaurants, or the people walking around the zoo, or the family on the bus that never talk. They are extras, and television shows and movies need a LOT of them. So there is a whole side business of working as an extra. A non-union extra makes about $54 per 8 hours of work. So, a little above minimum wage. I did some extra work in Chicago and hated it. You usually sat around for 3-4 hours in a room. They you were moved onto the set and sat/stood around for another hour then did the scene for an hour or so. Then you left with a story to tell people about. Most of the people I met doing it in Chicago were not actors, they were teachers, parents, garbage men, who just wanted to say to their friends, “Hey in Mercury Rising, I was in the library scene, you can see my suit walk right by Bruce Willis. He was kind of an asshole”. But in L.A. most of the extras are actors just hoping to catch a break.

My friend who is working on a television show entitled “Desperate Housewives” called the agency and told them to sign me up for Union extra work. Union extras make around $115 per 8 hours. Not bad. Plus, if you get three days of union work, you can be in the Screen Actors Guild, which is key to getting ahead. So she pulled some strings for me and they called me in to register.

I drove in and saw a long line of people waiting in line to get in. The woman who called me told me to go past the line and tell the person at the desk that I was here to see her so I wouldn’t have to wait in line. Smiling to myself I walked past all of the other schmucks to the front of the line. I told the woman who I was and who I was there to see. She made a call and said “She is out and won’t be back for 20 minutes or so, wait in line”. So I walked back past all of the smiling schmuck’s to the back of the line. I am sure there were some “rookie” comments. I got an application and filled it out. But in one part of the W-4 it asks for your first name and I was not paying attention and put my full name there. I started to panic thinking that my filling out the form incorrectly would be a deal breaker. The pencils they gave you to fill out the application are the little golf pencils with no eraser, so I asked a couple of people around me for an eraser. No luck, or at least they weren’t going to help the “rookie”. I really started to sweat it. I even ran out to my car hoping that for some unknown reason I had decided to stick a pencil with an eraser in my glove box. No luck there. Then I was sure that I had put a pencil in my trunk a couple of years ago. I didn’t. So I went back in ready to look them in the eye and tell them that I would be great as an extra but I can’t fill out a government form for shit.

My contact had arrived by then and I met her. She was very nice and walked me to the front of the line again, take that smiling schmucks, and told the woman that I was to be signed up to be eligible for union work, even though I wasn’t union. The woman at the desk looked at me and asked “Is he political”? I thought she was making a joke and started laughing. She wasn’t. My contact said “Yes, he knows so and so”. The woman at the desk continued to stare at me then she filled out my application. I decided to go for broke and said “I made a mistake on one of the forms, do you have an eraser”? The desk woman didn’t even blink an eye and said “No, no one cares, just cross it off”. So I did. So now there is a form that the government has that clearly indicates that I am a moron.

I got my picture taken and then my contact told introduced me to her associate. He was a nice guy who quizzed me on my sizes and asked if I was available either Friday or Monday. I said “Yes” and he told me that I would be playing a mailman in a scene on one of those days.

A mailman?

Well, it’s a start.