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Struggling Actress
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Tenacious F
The Authority of Gratitude
It’s the New Year and the tendency – even though I tell my son it’s just a “calendar thing” – is for us to evaluate the past year and project into the next one. Around our house we try to always be actively examining the things we’re grateful for, like when making a Pro and Con list we make sure to list the Pro’s first. It helps us get grateful fast and probably makes the Con list shorter.
So I thought I’d write about gratitude. But I will get there in a roundabout way. I hope.
I believe each of us has two moments that define our relationship with authority, both pro and con. If we don’t they both haven’t occurred yet. I think this is true whether we are artists or not.
I’m pretty sure my negative relationship with authority was formed when I jaywalked across a busy street to get to school in the 7th grade. I knew it was against the rules but I was going to be late for class so I saw it as the lesser of two evils. I also saw the Vice Principle standing on the main steps talking to a group of students and knew he would see me but I had made the choice not to be late. I went for it. I ran up the steps, ignoring him when he called my name. I’m sure I thought, “If I pretend he’s not there, maybe he won’t see me.” As I reached for the handle of the door, he caught me by the collar, swung me around and, as we made eye contact, slapped me hard across the face.
The psychology of what happened: Why he chose to hit me, why I ignored him, is immaterial, but what his slapping me did to me from that point on when faced with an authority figure isn’t: It filled me with resentment and mistrust, made me doubt their intelligence, compassion and judgment. And it made me defy them whenever I could. So much so that whenever a boss, teacher or other authority figure even so much as criticized or corrected me I drew further away from them. I’m grateful something happened to draw me back.
There were many events with inspirational teachers and collaborators that drew me back into a less confrontational and loving intention since then but without making this a post about my history of run-ins with authority, let me jump ahead to the event that changed the way I view the audition. It has everything to do with making me, in an odd way, grateful for authority. And it’s one of the few instances where I will allow myself to name names because it’s such a positive story and because the people involved deserve credit.
Our dear friend, casting director Debra Zane, called Riad and me one day and asked if we would help her by reading with some actors for Ridley Scott’s new film, Kingdom of Heaven. He was preparing to do some screen tests for the lead role and needed us to for a couple of scenes with some actors including Orlando Bloom, who ended up getting the part.
Usually, the casting director and director in auditions represent the authority figures many of us have, for our own reasons, chosen to resent, mistrust or defy. We’ve come to view them the obstacles that stand between us and what we want: The Job. After many years of auditioning and struggling with that, this would finally offer me a more productive perspective. In one significant way, it would “un-slap” my face.
Riad and I said, yes, we’d love to. We spent two days working with Ridley and the other actors and put the scenes up fully rehearsed, costumed and lit on a sound stage at 20th Century Fox. It was a wonderful experience working with Ridley and the other actors but mostly because of the freedom we allowed ourselves in the work: We had nothing to win or lose, we were there to be of service. It wasn’t about us. Our job was to help someone and nothing more. I found myself at times struggling with my ego, as we always do in the work, and am grateful to have been shown we are never really free of it; we can’t be. What we can do, though, is learn to find how it might best be utilized in different situations, but only on one condition: That we make the situation and conditions more important than we are. If we treat all auditions with this kind of respect – and stories, too, for that matter – and through that afford those we’re working with the same respect, we won’t have to butt heads with authority anymore. We can still question it – we must, when we disagree and in an appropriate way – but we will not be in conflict with it. And the gratitude for being called to be of service is the ultimate authority, bigger than those we elevate into a position of power, bigger than all of us.
Resolutions are common this time of year and so is lamenting the broken ones. At least until we realize the calendar, the clock, the past, the future, our desires or our fears do not govern us. We’re only really governed by one thing: gratitude and our ability to find ourselves in it. And the best way to experience gratitude is in service. As actors, one of the best places to practice that is in how we view and experience the audition. That’s one resolution that bears repeating every time we get one.
-James
Empathy for the Devil
My manager saw Showing Up, loved it, and called about a week later to give us the nicest feedback you can get on your project: “I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about it for days. I learned so much.”
A few days later he called to report that he was going on an audition for a role he saw in the breakdowns so he could “see what it feels like”. He’d done some acting over 20 years ago, started out as an actor, but it’d been so long he’d forgotten what it was like to “put yourself on the line in that way.”
It reminded me of when I was going to an orthopedic surgeon a few years back for a shoulder injury who told me about the time he had surgery to remove his thyroid. He said, “I was a hot shot surgeon who scoffed at patients when they exhibited fear in the OR before a procedure and decided that I would forgo any medication to take the edge off before they put me under, so I could see what it felt like. Well, I was terrified. It was cold and I was alone and very afraid. It was the most fear I’d ever felt. I got it. I’ll never minimize a patient’s fear again. I know how they feel.”
It should be known that my manager is the nicest man in show business. He doesn’t need to do this to find compassion for his clients or even how to communicate with them more effectively. He was simply inspired to become a better manager by becoming better acquainted with the devilish details he saw examined in Showing Up.
This audition wasn’t a stretch in terms of what the role called for; he was going to be a talent agent in a scene talking to a client in his office. But the casting director said there would be a lot improvisation so he called me to ask if there was anything he shouldn’t do in an audition where improv is called for.
I told him a few things, I don’t remember what, nor is it pertinent to this story, but mostly I just encouraged him by saying that he was enough and if he stuck with what he knew he couldn’t go wrong. Oh, and I reminded him to listen.
He went, waited for almost an hour before going in to meet the director and producers, did some improvisation with the casting director – was very proud of himself, he said, for answering his cell phone in the middle of his conversation to improvise a call from a casting director who was a kind of a nuisance. He said, “I think they all thought I actually got a call and had the nerve to answer it in the middle of my audition!”
The payoff was that he got a new perspective on what his clients do, how they feel, and how to communicate feedback to them if they get it or even commiserate if they don’t get the job after putting everything they have into the audition.
Audition du jour
Too Much Too Late
Lately it seems as though the new high-drama circumstance for casting offices is to call with, “the person they wrote this for didn’t work out so we’re holding sessions. It works the day after tomorrow.” To be fair, in many cases casting directors are held hostage by untenable deadlines the same way actors are. But 10 pages for a next day audition? What can they possibly need to see in 10 pages that they can’t see in 3 or 4? Especially since the chances are they’ll know before you even open your mouth whether you should even open your mouth at all.
I live outside of L.A. now, so if they don’t make an offer from my reel, I either have to put myself on tape at home with the material or drive two hours for the audition so they can put me on tape. The latest was a TV show that films in NY so I put myself on tape at home. They sent 4 pages of sides, a reasonable amount of material on such short notice – no script, but I rolled with it – I did the work, rehearsed it and then taped a couple of passes before submitting it. There was a time when what I now recognize as desperation would have forced me to tape it 10 or 15 times until it was “perfect” and still sent it off with reservations.
It’s so nice when, after it’s over, you can say about your audition – and really mean it: If they can’t see what they need to see from this and know that good actors can make adjustments, I don’t want to work with them anyway.
Happily, I’ve found a new definition of perfection.
The latest audition, however, had a slight twist. Once again, they’d written the role for an actor who “didn’t work out after all” – and were now holding last minute casting sessions. It’s 8:30 pm, they email 10 pages of sides, and the audition is 11:30 the next morning. The casting director’s pitch when calling for me was: “We know it’s late notice and there’s a lot of material but the upside is that even though we’re seeing an actor every 15 minutes for 4 hours most of them are at the level of your client so they won’t show up because it’s such late notice and there’s so much material.”
If they know actors won’t show up if they give so much material on such short notice, why do it unless, perversely, that is the desired result?
At any rate, they were right. I didn’t show up. Sometimes you just can’t. I made the choice to get a good night’s sleep so I could get up, make my son breakfast and walk him to school.
We simply need enough time to put in the work it takes to feel OK about being imperfect. – James
Eli Wallach
Actor’s Fund and the SAG Foundation
When we first sat down to seriously examine the possibility of filming our idea for Showing Up, we wanted to know, even before knowing the narrative through line or who we were going to interview, who our target audience would be. We decided that while we certainly wanted to touch on the idea of the audition as metaphor for seeking our path and pursuit of our dreams and goals, hoping to include those who aren’t in the entertainment industry, we needed to celebrate working actors and the way they get work and speak directly to them to bring aid and perhaps even comfort. Before we even put pen to paper or sat down for our first interview with veteran character actor Pat Hingle, we decided our film would be geared to somehow benefit the Actor’s Fund and the SAG Foundation. That dream has come true. It turns out that we will, in some yet-to-be-determined way, be working with the Foundation’s educational program to aid our fellow actors in their journey. We couldn’t be happier or more proud to do so. More news on that to come!