One Less Bitter Actor's Blog

Harvey Korman

Sad news today. Harvey Korman, one of our good guys, our funny, funny men, one of our heroes died today. 

A hero? Yeah. He made it on pure talent. Pure commitment to whatever he was doing, even when it made him look like an ass. The husband in the Mama skits was at time psychotic. How did that group pull off making that dysfunctional family so damn funny? My wife says watching the HBO series Extras is too painful for her, she can't enjoy the humor.  It's takes daring to make ugly and cruel funny. Harvey Korman could pull that off with ease and he never apologized for making us laugh. He never said "Don't judge me for being good at cruel." He just let his genius flow and the opinions fall where they may. 

And he was the straight man and he was Rhett Butler, he was the traveling salesman, the Doctor...the reason I love this man is because of what he gave me and my family. Saturday nights were the time to all sit and watch the one show we could all sit and watch together, and I could hear my dad laugh. My mom and dad didn't stay together very long so I don't have a lot of laughing family memories. I have very distinct memories of the happiness we all had laughing at Carol, and Lyle and Tim and Vicki and Harvey. I loved knowing that when Harvey showed up in the scene there was bedrock. something great could happen because the glue was there. Everyone could bounce off Harvey and something funny would happen. He didn't sing or do the musical acts, so when they ended and he came out, it was another chance at hearing dad laugh.

That's what we do folks. We have great impact on strangers. We communicate happiness and love and freedom when we fearlessly share our talent and depict our characters without any apologies. Even the mean ones. That's why I say hero. We all say we do that but do we really give over all the time?

God I love that man for his bravery to flat our share his talent all he time.

I have an audition today. This comes after a long talk with the manager that came to the conclusion that I've become stale and something needs to be done to freshen me up. Something. That intangible, opinion based vagary that makes us nuts. So I go in today with the idea that I have to be something more than what I am. This is the kind of thing that makes us go in thinking about our strategy and stop acting the part out.

We were lucky to have tutors like Harvey Korman. His fearlessness taught us all, whether we know it or not, that you have to risk it all to have any chance at getting some of it right. I didn't know him but he's got a store house of good memories in my head. Isn't that maybe the biggest compliment one can get as an artist?

I'm sad today, but in a couple hours I will make those folks in the audition laugh because I will be fearless and I will be fresh. I will use the lessons Harvey gave me and I will risk being funny at all costs.

Renoir Was Busy

In Philadelphia there is a museum called the Barnes Foundation named after a wealthy man who collected art and believed that there was a way to teach art to people that would help them understand it better then by just having great paintings on a wall. To do this he collected a lot of paintings and he displays them on walls alongside hinges and other odd bits. He also hangs them at different heights and in places in the room that you wouldn’t see in the typical museum gallery of Masters.

It’s the largest private Renoir collection in the world.  There were so many it felt like there was a time when Renoir was simply giving his paintings to this man. After looking at the 40th or 50th I was struck by the fact that there were 40 or 50 paintings to look at by Renoir. I’m no art scholar but aren’t I right in thinking somewhere we were told that an element of what made his work so precious was that his paintings were so rare?  Folks, he put out a lot of product. He painted in the 1860’s, when  it couldn’t have been all that easy to just whip up an oil painting. In fact the museum has 181 pieces by Renoir. So doing a bit of math, he was either brilliant and could pop out a few oil paintings a day, or, he worked himself numb.

What I saw was only part of his work,  maybe a large part, but there are many more out there.  I tried to imagine the hours he spent each one these and the word that kept coming to me was; staggering.

What kept him painting at that pace? He wasn’t  famous or even  noted by the art community for at least his first 15 years of painting, so what was it that made him keep putting out product?

How many of us out there would last 15 years waiting for a sign of recognition? I can’t imagine many. But, how many of us would like to have Renoir’s impact on his field and the world in general? I bet all of us.

Yes I know, different time, different world. The point is, what was beating in his chest and flowing through his mind had to be the same thing that makes someone rise at dawn to go to a job that doesn’t involve their acting but pays their bills so acting is possible. It had to be the same. Why do I think so?  Because,  if it was otherwise, he just couldn’t have put out so much work.

I think we show our love for our product in many ways. Getting lazy isn’t one of them, complacency  isn’t one of them.  If you simply can’t act every day, what you do is you keep yourself in a ready position to act every day. Doing what you have to do to keep yourself in a position to act, create, paint, dance is what  we do in lieu of having a sponsor like he had that allowed him to paint every day. He also lost sponsors along the way , but it seems he never stopped painting.

I like knowing that even the masters worked their asses off, and for years had no idea if their work would see the light of day in their community. It reminds me that all our years of unpaid development  is not lost, wasted,  time. We are always seasoning ourselves.

If you’re an artist don’t be afraid to paint every day even if you think it will never sell. 

Ignorance is bliss.

In an effort to get enough work by June 30th (to make my health insurance minimums before a strike deadline), a friend started to send me the daily breakdowns so I could see what roles were available for me. She said that it would double my auditions because as hard as they try, agents just miss stuff. The theory was that this would put me in many more rooms over the next 4 weeks improving my odds for the jobs I need. So, I'd scour the lists for appropriate roles and send in emails to my agent and manager.

Gosh I wish I hadn't.

I looked through and started seeing the names of friends. Casting, producing, directing. Good friends. Friends I had come to trust were looking out for me because we weren't just business friends we were social friends. They know that I'm in a tough spot with a looming strike and they'd surely include me in their project. Right?

Then, of course, my mind went to "This can't be the first week they've had a role for me...." Why haven't I been in? In 4 seasons of some shows, I haven't gone in once. Not once. For friends? There hasn't been one role for me in 4 seasons? So, naturally, I do what insecure actors do, I start to sort through my mind and think of how I burned the bridge or turned them off. I had to have done something right? It feels crappy. It feels like this fragile thing called a career can be over in a flash if you just don't do everything right. And not even "right" enough to get the job, you have to do everything right just to get back in to audition again! The pressure that puts on your every move when in the presence of those who hold the access to those who make the decisions is crazy making.

So I commenced with the strategy, emailing my agent and manager and asking about specific roles, with a reminder of the connections I had to the Exec, or Casting Dir or whatever the connection was.

First week, nothing changed. Second week, nothing changed.

So, I called the agent and asked the very simple question "Are you getting resistance? Are they telling you they don't want me in at all?" My paranoia is on high alert. I've been told for a while that there's not much going on for 40 year olds, and yet I'm seeing plenty of roles that have a 35-45 age range attached to them. How is it I'm not auditioning 3 times a week?

My agent calls me back and says she spoke to one Casting Director I emailed her about. An old friend who I have done many personal favors for in the past. The news was that they hadn't started casting that role yet and she does think I'm a good guy for that role and will bring me in when they start casting that role. No problem. Hmm.

My agent relays my fear of not making my insurance minimum before the strike. She says she'll help where she can, and then they get to talking about the state of casting. She reveals that now that casting is electronic and submissions are but a click of a mouse, she will pare down 2400 submissions to the 8-10 she will bring in to producers for the role I'm after. Uhh... what? 2400? Yes, 2400 actors for a one week guest star part. And one would guess that's every week.

Man now I really wish I didn't know.

Your team, doing their best to put you in for the right roles, are up against those odds. So suddenly thinking it was something I did doesn't feel so bad. The numbers game that I have no control over feels like a bigger problem. 

My team is doing what they can, the biz does what it does, and it's my job to make good use of the opportunities that come my way. How do I combat the feeling of futility one might feel at those odds?

I believe in my ability. I know that I am better than 2400 other actors at being me. I have something to offer and I know I want to offer it. So on the days when I get the call, I go in with a understanding of what everyone has gone through to get me there and I make sure that the odds of my delivering what's inside of me are 100%. My magic can overcome the most lopsided odds, it's happened before. A lot.

Mr. Smarty pants got another lesson about trusting his team and doing the most he can with what he can control.

SAG, AFTRA, and the inner war.

Sad really. We rely on our leaders to fight for us and want to believe that they are.

Why is AFTRA negotiating without us in the room? Is that a good thing? It's not what SAG wanted so I guess it's a bad thing.

Why would our leaders let that happen? Why is their even a "The Bold and Beautiful" disaster/misunderstanding/weirdness that would make the president of AFTRA walk away from us? Yes I got the email saying "nothing happened" from SAG but whatever did happen, we're not united. SAG is the bigger union. Therefore it has to make the bigger decisions.

If we strike it will be the end of me and my career. The journeyman actor, the middle class guy who is 40 with a family, will lose his health insurance. I can't allow a year of uninsured kids. So I'll move on to another career and get my health insurance and the union I was part of for 22 years will go on without me.

I hope it doesn't come to that. It'd be a shame to cash it all in because our leaders have decided that it's okay to pit this actor against that actor for the favor of the producer. A producer who would pay actors minimum wage if they could.

The fact that there are factions within SAG is really, really, childish. That any actor would marginalize another actor due to income, address, or popularity is flat wrong. The agenda of the President should be the agenda of the union. There should never be a "Membership First vs. (fill in the blank)" vote. It's petty and short sighted and stupid. We still have no agreement or standard language with Talent Agencies...wasn't that part of this new reform? How has that worked out for us?

Children will be uninsured if you strike. Shame on both of the Presidents for not doing whatever it took to make sure that the families of it's members had the best shot at getting the best deal they could. Divided we fall folks.

What were you thinking? Your ego's are not important, your union's families are what's important. Please keep that in mind when you are crafting your speeches and laying out your clothes for the press conference. There is no wholesale victory here, there can only be compromise, that's the nature of negotiation. I just hope you negotiate with the children of your union in mind and not the glory of your "factions". Anyone who lets a petty squabble interfere with the bigger picture has to have their motivation called in to question.

If you make an "Us and Them" scenario come true, you should both go to detention until we can schedule a parent teacher conference to sort you out.

Back in the old neighborhood

Last week I went to NYC and stopped in at my starting place.

It was 25 years ago I sat tense, lonely, and worried watching an old man with thick glasses and a cane enter the room. I had no real idea who Sanford Meisner was, I hadn't been a student of the game, I was new to the idea that I'd be an actor. I knew he was important to the school but I really didn't know he was a whole technique. Then like a bad movie the guy next to me said quietly, "The man, the myth, the legend."

That shook me. He was a legend? He was my first teacher. How did I get a legend guy? Then he sat down and started to speak in a controlled belch. We were warned about this and we were warned he had bad eyesight and not to be late and not to make him repeat himself and to never, ever, miss his class. He talked in very concise words. He introduced me to the idea that to tell this big lie that actors do, to be really good at telling this lie, we had to tell the truth. Man, that about blew my head open. Somehow I found a place, finally, found a place that made sense. High school sure didn't.

We all have to experiences where we are drawn to things or people for unknown reasons but it ends up being the right thing. In hindsight we are able to piece it together, but in the moment you write it off to pure dumb luck. And that's how I felt.

I remembered that feeling as I stepped through the red door at 340 E 54th St, and saw that absolutely nothing had changed. Like, nothing. The feel, the sound, the colors, it was all the same and it was dynamite. My room/ class mate Nick Bandouveris met me there for a talk I was giving to the students. We toured the classrooms and sat for a minute looking the old place over. We laughed when we realized we were sitting in the same seats we had always taken in class.

Up the stairs to the dance room the students filed in, Hal Baldridge (Neighborhood's big cheese) introduced me and I looked at these great faces and spoke on how to remain sane while trying to earn a living as an actor. "Use my experience to your benefit" I told them. They applauded when the talk was over, and Nick and I left for his place for dinner with the wife and kids.

I guess I should have felt proud and accomplished being 23 years removed from this place with the knowledge that I'd met the goal I set when I left. I have an acting career. But honestly, you know what I felt...? I felt jealous. They were so bright and so pure and so enthusiastic. And they are in a place where every day they are asked to dig deeper. To discover those triggers and snatches of ego that build the toolbox for later use. That push for discovery and the fear of not finding enough, that was your every day in the early days.

Telling the truth to sell the lie is still the best technique I've ever come upon. Learning my truth was the best time I ever had.