The Actor Unprepared

New Pilot.

U kneed 2 c dis.

Ummm…

Someone explain to me how this character name isn’t racist?  Aaron Asian, anyone?  Mark Mexican?

The Cupcake is Half-Full

So the last couple of posts have been me bitching about being screwed over from an MFA program about 6 years ago.  And while I’m sure that you’re all riveted hearing about that over and over, I thought it might be time to either share some good news.  

Last month I booked a movie.  It’s an exciting, action filled movie with the word “Operation” in it.  I play a character who has “Enemy” in the title.  Intrigued?  Of course you’re not!  Because you know there’s always an other shoe to drop on these teases and so here it is: I landed a role in the Hallmark movie “Operation: Cupcake,” playing the character “Enemy Baker.”

Takes a little steam out of my badassness, huh?

I have to say, all jokes aside, that this was really a wonderful early Christmas present.  I auditioned for it about 2 weeks before Christmas and didn’t think much about it.  Roles like “Enemy Baker” are usually dayplayer in variety and have about as many lines as words in the character name.  To be honest, I was more focused on the Taco Bell commercial I had just tried out for earlier in the day.  These days, it’s about the money, you feeling me, yo?

So when I got the call that I booked the role, I was expecting one or two days shooting.  My bad, it turns out it was going to be 8 days of shooting.  Two in December, 6 in January.  I was standing in the Best Buy in Sherman Oaks with a 19” LCD TV I was going to by for my video gaming.  After I heard how many days I was working, I put the TV down and bought a 32” TV, then told Sarah to buy all the gifts we were thinking about for the kids.  Merry Christmas, indeed.

But even more exciting than the money (cause that’s what it’s all about, cuz) was the billing.  The casting director had managed to get me opening credits billing for the movie.  That’s something I haven’t had for quite some time, going all the way back to Invisible Man days.  It’s a status symbol both on camera and on set that you’re important enough to NOT be squished into a 1” cube at the end of the show while they plug the next movie about a girl and a Christmas wish about her parents.  Opening or “Top of Show means that you’re an important enough ingredient in the show to be featured at the beginning.  While I try not to ascribe value to the size of the role anymore, this was, as we say in the biz, “nice.”

So not to ruin the plot or anything, but the show is about cupcakes and I do play an enemy baker to the protagonist.  *** SPOILERS *** Beyond that, you’ll have to watch on Father’s Day to see how this all shakes out.

Below is a picture of me and my bakery.  In the script, I’m always referred to as “Enemy Baker.”  On the last two days of filming I got a name, “Ned.”  I feel like that sign might have already been on the studio lot and they reverse engineered the name for me. 

Honestly, I was hoping for another name.  Knowing that Dean Cain once played Superman in The Adventures of Lois and Clark, and I was his enemy, I was really pushing for “General Zod.”  Here’s my storyboard of the plot:

“Son of Jor-el!  Frost before Zod!”

Some People go to Bars on Friday Nights and Some People…

My MFA

I’ve decided to become my own University and and grant myself an MFA.  From now on when people ask me what my MFA is in, I’ll reply that it’s in “Mother Fucking Acting” and I am now a certified “Mother Fucking Actor.”  I may stay an extra year to get the “Mother Fucking Actor, Bitch” distinction, but I just don’t know if it’s as useful these days, what with computers and all.

You are all free to call me “Professor MFA” from this point forward.

Did I Win or Lose?

About 6 years ago, I tried my second attempt at a Masters degree.  

It was at CSULB (Cal State University Long Beach, for those you initialization phobic) and it was an MFA for Acting.  Now it was supposed to be a 3 year program, but some people got to have a year credited to them for “life experience.”  I was not one of them, despite having better credits than many of the people who were granted this exemption.  to be honest, it was clear that they were giving this to the people who were older and merely wanted to get an MFA for teaching.   Instead, they classified me as an “Acting track” student…whatever the hell that meant.  

Now, I’ve bitched about this plenty in the past.  I asked repeatedly, nicely at that, to be considered for the teaching track.  Again and a again they said no.  They wanted me to be an actor.  ”But I am an actor” I would reply.  I’m 37 and I’m regularly going out for movies, commercials and leads on TV pilots.  What I want is to learn how to teach what I know to students, to pass on my in-the-trenches knowledge.  

But they held fast.  The ‘head of acting’, who in my estimation is a bully and an ass, (but I won’t name, because I’m better than that) wanted to create a “Yale of the West,” complete with broken actors molded to his specifications.  Pass.  Our family savings were not built for me out of action for three years.  It was two or nothing.  At the end of the year, said bully and ass took about 30 minutes to yell in my face about how I wasn’t conforming to his program.  Got it.  Check, please!   Acting is really reacting, and I’m reacting my ass outta there, yo!  I’ll get edumakated somewhere else.

And I did.  Got my degree in two years with nary a hitch and never felt bad about the experience.  Booked a lot of work in the interim and have a solid acting and writing career to boot.  

But like a jilted lover, I can’t let things go like I want to.  There’s always that part of me that knew I was right about what I was talking about, that the program should be 2 years to accomodate working professionals like myself.  And like any jilted lover in this day and age, cyber-stalking is a simple and often gratifying thing to do.  So once or twice a year (3 times?  9?  I forget..), I stop by the Cal Rep website looking for vindication.  

Today, I found this:

And there it is.  The other shoe.  After 5 years, they finally caved and all they admit are people looking for two-year, teaching intensive instruction.  The “Yale of the West” has set in the Western horizon.  There is no more “acting track.”  That has been derailed.

And so here’s my big party, everyone!  I was right and they were wrong!  Whoo!  I win…right?  I mean, I didn’t get the degree and now it’s just easier for everyone else to get it so…how do I win again?  Wait, what the hell?

This is, in the academic world, is what we call the Pyhrric Victory.  I win nothing but delayed gratification.  They are hurt in no appreciable manner but in the corners of my bitter little mind that I’ve reserved for them.  The Bullass (new word I’ve coined) of an acting teacher is still there, teaching at the “CSU of the Long Beach”, making a nice paycheck, and no one there remembers my bravery of walking away on principle.  And had I stayed and toughed out a third year, no one I would have taught in the future would know that I caved on my conviction that my career was worthy of a scholastic discount.  And if I hadn’t made a long blog out of this old issue, none of you would have even known this change occurred.  So in the end, I guess I’m no Karen Silkwood.  Hell, I’m not even Karen Kalensky, classmate who did endure program and graduate.  I’m just middle-aged bitter guy.

But you know what?  My blog: my fucking rules!  My blog is the goddamn, Yale of the West blogs!  And today, I am the Emperor of Righteousness!  Sound the petty trumpets!  I win!  I win!  All hail Mike!  The Principal of Principles!  The Master of Masters and the Vizier of the Third Year!  

There, that’ll learn ‘em. 

I went to see the Muppet movie today at the El Capitan theatre in Hollywood.  At one point in the movie, the muppets return to the theatre where they used to do the old Muppet Show.  They used the exterior of the El Capitan theatre as that exterior location.  Later, they entered the theatre.  We weren’t there.