One Less Bitter Actor's Blog

How about that for faith?

2008-11-06T08:37:19-08:00

Actor's have to live on faith. I remember my teacher introducing me to the term's "actor's faith." He said it was our magical tool that allowed us to believe in anything so deeply that what ever that thing was became our honest reality and we could then live it for the sake of that play, or scene.

Hasn't that happened with this election? What if not faith got someone like Obama to think he could be the next President? Money? The advice of others? It was sheer faith and will. My gosh folks, this guy has more faith than all of us. So, how did he do it? I know the common answer, but I hate the sound of "he sold us the dream" mostly because selling has become a pejorative to me.

I feel like he showed us what deep faith in a personal vision looks like. Unshakable, remarkable, growing by the minute, faith.

Do you want acting work for the money it brings? Or do you want to relate to the masses all the greatness and feeling you have in your heart? Communicating with many is absolutely intoxicating. When you get that laugh or gasp while you're on stage it's intoxicating isn't it? When you get that laugh or gasp isn't that the audience "voting" for the work you've put in to this play?

Take a lesson from a guy, an underdog, that showed us what it looks like when you're not pretending to be something your not just long enough to get a desired result. This is what it looks like when a person has true conviction for their message and their vision for what they would do with the job at hand should you decide to vote for them.

Would you audition differently if you decided you were there just to really, really, be an actor and not a business person, not a celebrity, not a list of bills that needed to be paid?

I am staggered by the depth of this man's faith in his path. His faith in his value to everyone on the planet. The whole planet! How heady is that? How many of us are that convicted of our value? Would we not love to get fan mail from the whole planet saying our work changed their lives?

Faith is built by you every day. That is to say, it is unless you let the critics and the pessimists invade your psyche. You have the ability, every day, to reinforce that what you do is worthy, valuable, and down right noble. The struggles are always there, the McCains, and Hannity's and Coulters will always there. Are you taking advantage of your private time? Or are you clogging your mental bandwidth with thoughts of being good enough to shut up the critics?

I just stole this from Michael Moore's blog...remarking on Obama's win, he thinks it's our time too.

We may, just possibly, also see a time of refreshing openness,

enlightenment and creativity. The arts and the artists will not be

seen as the enemy. Perhaps art will be explored in order to discover

the greater truths. When FDR was ushered in with his landslide in

1932, what followed was Frank Capra and Preston Sturgis, Woody Guthrie

and John Steinbeck, Dorothea Lange and Orson Welles. All week long I

have been inundated with media asking me, "gee, Mike, what will you do

now that Bush is gone?" Are they kidding? What will it be like to work

and create in an environment that nurtures and supports film and the

arts, science and invention, and the freedom to be whatever you want

to be? Watch a thousand flowers bloom! We've entered a new era, and if

I could sum up our collective first thought of this new era, it is

this: Anything Is Possible.

Gotta Gotta Vote

2008-11-04T07:15:09-08:00

Big day right? Big Day...

How many decisions do we make of great importance? How do we make them? What do you go through to arrive at the answer that is going to suit your future best?

Gut.

We are trained to believe in our gut and to trust and go with that and we're trained to do it in an instant so we can perform without flaw. Most of the planet isn't. Most people love to labor over things until they hurt. stick to your skills.

Decide and vote.

Oh and by the way do the same thing with SAG. Make sure SAG knows what you think.

Oh and by the way be as vocal as you can about anything that moves you. We are the arts. Our job is to influence. Help people make a clearer choice.

Can it get worse?

2008-10-05T20:53:02-07:00

Sure it can. How? Ignore the long term. Actors are good at that. We need to know we have the immediate in hand that we are living moment to moment. Artists are allowed to be ignorant of business, we're allowed to say "I'd rather leave that to someone who knows it, I do the creative part." The bad news is that most of us can't afford to have someone look out for us the way we'd hope to be looked out for with our career, our union's objectives, our retirement money.

Actor's are always on guard for the actor who might get a role, for the strategy that will get them more work, but are we ever taught to think 5 moves ahead? The SAG strike, the coming Presidential Election, our inevitable time on the "not hot" list, it's all coming, or here. So...how does one make a better choice this time to not land in this same place in 3-5 years?

Ask yourself if you can afford to remain numb and strategically ignorant. Ask yourself if you really need another car, or another latte, or another boring night watching cable. SAG is about to implode. How did it happen? Where did all the animosity come from? The country is about to implode too...hmm...same thing, much animosity and finger pointing, so where did...

Greed folks. Greed. Being in a capitalist country it seems the only real universal value is money. Doesn't matter how you make it, (and we know guilt is only about what can be proved, not whether or not you did the wrong thing to get it) and money is the absolute last word on most of the sets I've worked on. Who makes the most? They run the set. Who's the star that got the project green lit? They run the set. Does that make them the most talented? No. Do they run the risk of being out of work in year? Sure do.

When the character of anything is measured by how much it's worth, we have left the world of art and entered the world of desperation. I haven't met many people in this biz that are truly content. People whose lofty status and insane pay that truly have that feeling of being at peace with their spoils. How can that be?

The long term and short term vision are the same. Fear.

SAG can't bend on a non-union allowance and no residuals. If they do, we really don't have a union. AFTRA has such a low pay scale it really doesn't matter and AFTRA actors aren't used to getting residuals anyway. SAG also can't strike or deepen the fear in every actor that they will not be able to make a living let alone their health insurance minimum. If this union leaves me without health insurance, I don't see why I'd stay in it.

If the Republicans are allowed to bury us in another yet unknown but certain-to-happen (The S&L scandal under Reagan?) financial disaster, the end result will be one giant entertainment company and one news station. How many banks will we lose this year that will fold into a bigger bank? Monopolies are the goal of capitalism. What defense would SAG, or any union, have with the one company that holds all the deals in Hollywood.

Art should be the great leveler. The thing that allows anyone to compete. Think of trying to climb the corporate ladder in order to get on stage...

Long term folks. You have to see the world now as long term because everyone who thought they didn't have to look at the biz because they were being an artist is now understanding what a world of businessmen will do with the world when they are the only ones watching the store.

Save your money, support your union, and by god vote and scold anyone you know who says they're "not going to bother voting" until they vote just to shut you up.

A frat like no other

2008-09-24T10:12:59-07:00

I was talking with Stuart Rogers the other day and I was apologizing for not making it to his writer's group that I like to go to. Every other week at his theatre we sit on the stage and read one another's pages followed by a discussion. I was a regular for a long time but scheduling has kept me from the room for a while so I asked Stuart not to bounce me out because I wasn't able to contribute for so long. This was his response;

"Your a theatre guy. You get it. That bond doesn't break because you miss a few meetings. Theatre people just understand that the work takes precedence, the theatre takes precedence, being there every time isn't what keeps you part of this theatre, it's about whether or not you get what the theatre really is, and you get it so you're cool with me for life. Theatre the most unique fraternity in the world. There is no other group so immediately unified anywhere in the world as theatre people. If you get it, you get it and you can be trusted to never violate the unwritten rules, so you're in for life."

He put into words that hard to describe feeling I have when I walk into a theatre, any theatre. The feeling that I'm an insider. I trained in a theatre school and even though it's never said out loud you learn that there is no greater meaning on the planet than art, that there is nothing so sacred as a play and bombs could be falling but we'd still make it to rehearsal.

It's a fraternity like no other because to get in you have to hang around other theatre people and learn by osmosis and it either makes sense and becomes your compass or it doesn't. There are people who went to school with me who aren't theatre folks, there are actors who take the stage that aren't theatre folks.

It's a nice group to be in and you know a fellow member when you meet them. There's no secret handshake and no newsletter but there are dues, we just pay them to the theatre gods.

Unforseen Victories

2008-08-26T16:34:57-07:00

Last night I received a cryptic email asking me, through three different forwards, if I "would consider doing this?" attached were sides with no project name or hint. Just a scene in a bar which was nice enough. So, I called the agent this morning and after a brief dialog with him ended up on the phone with the Casting Director who opened the whole conversation with, "It's been a long time since we met on that independent Sean Young movie I was casting...." Folks, that was 10 years ago.

She offered me on her current project. Gosh it was flattering. An offer being made from work I did on her movie (which I got but couldn't do) 10 years ago. In cases like this what the job actually is means nothing in the face of news that the work you put out IN AUDITIONS can actually serve you for jobs beyond the one at hand.

Interesting huh?

Now, I know the normal thing here is to use the details of the job to reinforce that last statement but I'm not going to include them. Not because I'm embarrassed about what the job is, but because I want the lesson to stand on it's own. There is a media driven illness to always qualify our work and the value of our careers with what I call "the People Magazine parenthesis" i.e. Markus Flanagan (author-One Less Bitter Actor) it seems to have us playing up the projects that have the most exposure and being embarrassed about the ones no one's heard of. Why is that? I will tell you the job won't change my life, but I bet it will be fun.

I received an offer for work. Two big wins come out of this if you ask me; It came from the work I did on a previous audition, and, I didn't have to drive anywhere to get a job. In LA not driving to get a job is a huge win. The profile/quality/ scale of the job isn't as important the news that my work stayed with her for 10 years.

10 years? Why then hasn't she hired me earlier? Again, a logical question, but isn't that also seeking to qualify the news at hand? Who cares? Take the win and the faith affirming illustration that we actors rarely get to see in such a blatant fashion.

Always do your best work and let the pieces fall where they may. They may fall on you years later, and if you're still mentally available for them, you'll be really damn proud of yourself. And how do you stay sane? Read my book, be good to your significant other and believe in the power of art.

I'm gonna brag

2008-08-19T12:17:49-07:00

The power of our collective is working. Slowly but surely I'm getting emails from people that are terribly encouraging. Yes the web has a great power to connect like minds, but I'm talking about the spirit of the artist that knows there's a better way to deal with the biz and not really having a place to plug in. The spirit of the theatre that binds us like no other group in the world. My book seems to be finding itself in the hands of people who need it and it's being put there by fellow actors. It's all happening through the power of us. The Less Bitter revolutionists. Like this;

I received the book on Friday, graduated from SMU's MFA graduate acting program on Saturday, and completed reading the book on Sunday. My former voice teacher, Virginia Ness-Ray strongly recommended this book and I am so glad that I ordered. So many things are much clearer for me and I have a new way of looking at and approaching the business. I finally feel that I am enough. I don't have to be or pretend to be someone else or what I think "they" may want me to be.

I don't know Virgina Ness-Ray. But she's "strongly recommending" my book. How about that!? And this;

I purchased the book after an audition I went on for a pilot with Janet Murphy of ABC. I was told to read the book by a friend that has been in the business longer than I have and who has more audition experience, after I told him what had happened he told me to go get your book it would help explain or should I say help understand what happened.

Again, I don't know who the friend was but the book seems to uniting us in a new way of thinking about our purpose and place in this endeavor.

I am an actor from New York. This book was recomended as a must read by my acting coach Jimmy Palumbo, I loved reading every second of it. It was so on about everything. I wanted to personally thank you for putting out a great book that you can actually use.

So, yes, I'm bragging but the point is the same. I don't know Jimmie Palumbo. I know who he is because he's been around so long, but he's not handing my book off as a personal favor. I did email him with thanks for the endorsement, this was his response;

Hey Markus,

Great to hear from you. I came from a blue collar family with NO background in acting or the arts. I have read MOST of the books since 1990. I read yours and it was SOOOOOO dead on that I have been telling ALL actors I meet to read the book. Rookies may not get it all but for a 17 year guy like me, it was PERFECT. Your book should be in every acting section in the country.

peace,

Jimmy Palumbo

PS...please call me when u come east...cup of joe sounds great.

That's who we are folks. That's us. That's our community helping itself out. That's us taking care of us. There is plenty of fame, money, roles to go around, there is no need to keep all your best advice and help to yourself. Whether it's my book or just a tip that'll save a fellow artist from kicking themselves all day, share the wealth and feel connected to a power bigger than any one of us. The power of the artists' collective. The power of being able to whole heartedly cheer for a friend who's up on stage acting their guts out because you really know what it took to get there. You know it because you helped him/her along the way. The help will always comeback to you.

We're artists and our job is enormous, yet simple. We educate the planet on how people who care about each other, treat one another. We communicate better, deeper and clearer. We are not limited to just words like most of society, we have the grace of using hips and sounds and brushes and stares and notes and humor. We have to be better and bigger for no other reason than we can. We're gifted.

Don't hoard the gift. Pass it on, especially to those fellow artists among us who too are trying to get into a position to stand up and risk telling their truth. Am I a genius for writing this book? Of course! But I had much help along the way and I keep getting more.

Damn it's good to be us.

More sports analogies

2008-08-15T13:16:47-07:00

The Brett Favre saga has riddled the sports headlines for too long, and I'm not going to voice an opinion about him and his decision, I am going to use it as a way to illustrate the similarity to our business.

You see, all the reaction to his plight isn't so much about a guy who decided he loved the game enough to un-retire, it was about the brand, the loyalty, the city of Green Bay's love affair with their hero, their icon, their symbol of guts and intensity having no place to play because the team didn't fall down dead to have him back.

He is everything you'd like to be known as one day; someone who makes everyone around him better, someone that makes fans believe in greatness. How could he possibly do that anywhere but where it all began, where he honed his talent, in Green Bay? It's unthinkable and outrageous to football fans everywhere. But in the end what won out?

Business.

Green Bay didn't have room for him. Legacy, records, all that fell flat when it came down to the guy refusing to be anyone's understudy. He went to a team that made him the best deal. We too have our hurdles of loyalty and pleasing those who supported us through the tough times. Out of all the actors I know there's only 1 who still has his first agent. One. Everyone else has been through many. Why?

Business.

Brett Favre is a purist for the game. He reminds me that no matter how great you are and how much you have done to further your talent, how much money you've made for the network or the studio, no matter how many favors you've done for friends in the business, it's the business that everyone points to when making decisions that include or exclude you from their project. I mean if the Green Bay Packers don't have room for their Mickey Mantle, you can't be staggered to learn that the network that your hit TV show was on wants you to audition for their new series.

There is a biz urban myth where Shelly Winters being asked to audition, shows up, sets her Oscars on the desk of the Casting Director and says "Do I still have to audition?" to which she's told "Yes." I don't care if it's true, the fact that a story like that is repeated enough times for me to hear it, is there to do nothing more than reinforce the lesson that's stuffed down our throats early and often. The lesson that is sure to make you instinctively start fighting battles that haven't started yet. Actors are always looking for a place to join and grow and create and feel safe. When we hear things like that we go into defense mode, don't we?

I think it comes down to our perception of what "should be." If you keep in mind that the biz is not a foundation on which to stand, that it's a flowing, changing, evolving thing, you will constantly be looking for the changes and won't get caught in some battle of egos or pride that has nothing to do with your value but undoubtedly with the perceived financial success of the check writer. No, we are not slabs of meat on a rack, we are artists that have a product to offer to a business that rewards us for them. Keep in mind that not unlike your search for a deeper understanding of your work, the biz also goes in search of even more "products." It's nature and as human beings we seek solid ground called loyalty.

The head shaking about Brett Favre had me chuckling really. I mean, actors are asked to reaffirm their talent every day. He had a steady job for 16 years and even when he lost the game he kept his job. An actor's rating slips and they lose their job. He had it easy really. And for all his life changing heroics, what happened in the end? He went where he could do what he does best. That's sounds familiar doesn't it?

“I always thought the real violence in Hollywood isn't what's on the screen. It's what you have to do to raise the money.”--David Mamet

It's never enough

2008-07-24T00:14:06-07:00

In a discussion with a young actor I mentor here in LA, he referred to the work he was getting as " just these little movies..." and I stopped him.

Why do we do that?

Where did we learn that there are places that are big opportunities and places that are little, nothing, opportunities? It's true isn't it? Don't we always qualify the size of the project? Our enthusiasm for the role can sometimes take a back seat to the size of the project, or our paycheck. The cancer in that is letting your ego know you don't have to do your best work because the project is crap, or too low a budget for you to "really" do your best work. Hmm...does that sound at all like fear?

I have news for you, the artist in you only knows one honest way to create and express.

If you stifle it for whatever reason, your artist will start to hide. It will start to protect itself from the critic that lives in the same brain with it. So, know that you do damage to your real creative self when you qualify any opportunity with thoughts as subtle as "these little movies," or, "some small student thing"...and the like. Just go act. Use your time on the set, or stage, to create and grow. What do you care how big the project ultimately becomes? The common thought is if it becomes a hit movie you could be set for life, right? Okay, well, how does the movie becoming a hit months later help your creative process on the set trying to deliver in a scene? Your artist doesn't know the difference between big or low budget or church basement, only your ego does.

You cannot grow by trying to only be as good as the size of the project. You can only grow by going all out and learning about yourself every time.

2 quick stories...

Years ago a friend who was nervous directing his first movie (a short) asked me to play a silly role in one scene for him. I had to drive forever to the location and everything that could go wrong technically seemed to go wrong up to the point we actually rolled. He had limited film stock so takes were precious. I got to play a goofy store clerk that is outside the normal perception of me. I had a great time and now I have a bit on my reel that shows where I can be very broad and funny.

Years ago I subbed for an actor in a one act play who had to go out of town. It was bad play in a "crappy" black box theatre in Hollywood. In that play I had to act with an little known actor named Tobey Maguire. Did doing that play help him get Spiderman? Sure. Had to. Everything you do makes you better. Did the director cast him because he saw him in that play? No. He cast an actor with chops.

Those little theatres, little movies, little projects are places to act. Why you waste an opportunity to act with thoughts of little or big?

Acting is fun if you let it be.

Get Outta Town

2008-07-16T08:38:30-07:00

I had lunch with an actor friend who is 28 and doing really well. He's got plenty of work but the defacto strike has him frustrated like everyone else. When I asked him how his summer was going he answered "I just want to work."

That's all of us. We want to work and we really enjoy the time working on the set, but do we really enjoy the time between jobs? Do we enjoy the days when we really can't go to work, like right now? How do you handle this time?

You recharge. Re-evaluate. Re-invigorate. My advice to him? Travel. Go somewhere you don't speak the language and you don't know anyone, and you've never been before. He can afford to go far away, but even if you can't go far away you can go somewhere that isn't here. Travel and grow your artist by experiencing things outside your circle of comfort. Invest in the deepening of your artist.

What can you bring to any character that isn't a character that lives in your home town, does your job and loves the person you love? You can bring sympathy and compassion and a good guess. That's what we do we apply our sense of truth to each character. Stop pacing the floor in frustration and use this time to grow and walk in streets and through lives that will broaden your scope. It's damn fun really. Money is always an issue but every actor out there gets their little fixes paid for somehow, you don't need a lot of money to create an adventure for your psyche.

I appreciate how boring the waiting for SAG and the Producers to agree on something is. Don't waste your energy complaining about the lack of work. Go work on yourself.

tick, tick, tick

2008-06-24T13:35:31-07:00

What to offer about this current SAG negotiation conundrum...

AFTRA is going to ratify, they're so far behind SAG in rates and benefits that a big increases still mean less than an actor can live on. I am a duel union member and after three years as a series regular on a AFTRA contract show (that's been rerunning twice a week for 4 years), I've received a total of $181.00 in residuals. An actor cannot live on jobs and contracts like this. They've upgraded that contract but even if they doubled it to a "100% increase!" who can survive on $362 in residuals over three years? Canada has this kind of arrangement, but their contracts are buyouts so they get paid more upfront and with free health care they don't carry the fear of not making minimums for health care coverage.

So again, what is one to think about the current state of things concerning SAG and AFTRA?

You must flood AFTRA and SAG with opinion emails. You must be heard.

This is it folks. 6 days left. The producers don't play nice and the leadership of both unions have left actors everywhere vulnerable to being sharecropped into oblivion. Yes, an AFTRA contract will protect some of us, but it certainly won't create a place for the working stiff actor to build a life. We'll be piece meal-ed and day played into having acting be our second job until the day we get a series and can make the restaurant our second job.

One could say this blog isn't helping, that this is evidence to the producers that SAG's ranks are fracturing. I'm in solidarity with my union. Both if them. I think speaking up is admitting I care. I'm going to send this to SAG and AFTRA. They've put us in a terrible place.

I'd like to think that after 20 years of giving what I think was my best effort to this business I'm entitled to launch an opinion about my future. It's always been their ball, their court and their game. I've known that since I showed up. Agents get to decide who they'll represent and who they'll submit. Casting gets to decide who they'll bring in. Producers get to decide who gets the job. With all those hurdles, why would my union, either of them, ever put me in a position to have to decide which union I'll favor? Why would they ever make an actor try to get in with the faction of their OWN UNIONS who will be the victor in this game called eligibility?

It stinks. It stinks. It stinks.

Corporate America wins again. We are not a corporation but the mentality is surely there. Most of us will have to suffer for the egos of a few of us.

Email SAG and AFTRA now. Whatever your opinion, email and be sure you say something about how this is shaping up.