stupid actor comments

okay, so this chick can pass her ability to choose her work over to me, since i believe i can actually make a difference in society by providing people with a safe getaway from the realities of life and also touch the deeper part of even just one person, make them think, cry, feel, believe... i think this is the most obvious & discouraging display i've seen recently of an actor not realizing what an impact they can have on the world. or perhaps just not wanting to take the responsibility...

maybe she's not old enough or doesn't have enough life experience to understand the power of this medium. maybe she's just not deep enough. but for that desperate, emotionally abused wife who goes to the movies to be inspired to leave and start a real life for herself; or for the kid in the midst of a custody battle who gets a chance to laugh, to stop worrying that it's about him, to escape from the thoughts of having to shuffle homes...

maybe, just maybe, if we care enough, actors can save a life or two in our own small way.

(i'm sorry if this seems crazy to you, but this is the backbone of why i have always wanted to be an actor...and it just about kills me that someone in her position career-wise doesn't get that valuable part of it. very discouraging.)

happenings

hello there at the end of a rather slacker week. it was my b-day on monday so i sort of took it easy. also this stifling heat and humidity *forced* me to go to the beach a few times....

but here's what did happen:

• went to hear about producing your own film. interesting stuff in terms of trying to develop exposure for yourself and showcasing of your talents. also dauntingly complicated. i really liked the woman who spoke though, TAN member stephanie saxe. i hope to keep in touch with her and maybe do some work on one of her sets.
• i signed up for improv class at second city--now just have to determine what level i can enter into. that happens next week.
• went to an info session on the writer's bootcamp based here in l.a. met jeff gordon and cameron graham there, had a little lunch, and discovered that i would like to scrounge up the money to do this. but that'll be a ways down the road. meanwhile, there is an opportunity to join their writer's group in an actor capacity, similar to that of safehouse. looking forward to it.
• heard manager christie thomas speak. a new management candidate for me--she really knows her stuff, has worked in other aspects of the business, worked in nyc for years, and has a really great (and dare i say unusual) attitude about her responsibility to her clients. definitely someone i'd like to have on my side!
• also spoke to barbara divisek, recently joined with the savage agency, via referral from a friend. i'll be dropping by her office monday to say hello and deliver my material. yay!

okay, that's it. nothing too crazy this week, but hey, i was busy laying in the sand and giving my boogie board a workout! surf lessons next week...... :)

walken on cats

i love this.

giggle.

new clip on my site!

hey, go to my web site if you want to hear a short audio clip from one of the songs i recorded with robert petrarca and tom fish for the film "finding gloria bainbridge." link is on the main page.

enjoy!

emmy nominations

yup, they are out....

and here they are, in case you wanna take a look.

notable absences:

• best male actor, drama~matthew fox, "lost"; noah wyle, "er" (his last season)
• best female actor (or maybe it'd be supporting..), comedy~eva longoria, "dh" (not that i vote for it, but it was expected)
• not a single CSI division was nominated for anything~awfully popular shows though to have such an L&O style franchise kicking

strange inclusions (my humble opinion only, of course):

• best male actor, drama~james spader, "boston legal"
• best supporting/male/drama~william shatner, "boston legal"
• best supporting/female/comedy~holland taylor & conchata ferrell of "two and a half men"

i'm not slamming boston legal here either. i find that show reasonably amusing. however...i just see other more suitable nominations. especially when i don't think william shatner repeating his character's name over and over in an elmer fudd sort of way (and this is on the writing, not him) is any sort of emmy-worthy material.

again, my 2 cents and not necessarily unbiased.

goal achieved!

so, i just got a call to take a meeting with brandon @ bobby ball. yippee!

in case you haven't been reading, right before i left on vacation i had made it a main short-term goal of mine to get a one-on-one with him. and voila! i guess persistence does pay off. also i think my instincts are right-on about the kind of generous, cool person he is.

it's not till the first week of august~but everyone please send good vibes and cross your fingers!

cheers!

i heart my job

so my print shoot went fabulously, and i got a check as i walked out the door~rare and absolutely lovely.

and the film shoot was this past weekend, and also went quite well. the small crew and my co-star were all wonderful people and lots of fun to work with. i hope that this turns out as well as i believe it might.

i also happened to get my hands on a bootleg copy of the muscial film i shot earlier this year (bootlegging only because for some reason the director hasn't sent me my copy yet....strange since it's obviously done...) and have started to do some editing work for my reel.

as well, i finally received a dvd with a few scenes and the trailer from the last project i did in nyc. have been waiting for this for a while, and though the actual film will have better fodder for my reel than this disc has, at least i have something to try and work with.

i'm currently going to pick up the printing of some new marketing material i put together and do my target mailing to my new commercial agent prospects (yes, i did go thru with dropping my agent last week).

as a side note, i saw "mr. & mrs. smith" with a friend the other night, and it was much better than i thought it would be. it was actually quite a bit of fun to watch! though the characters didn't have a ton of depth and the action/violence was a bit excessive at times, it was afun little flick. it would be a good time to play a role like that at least once in my career. they must have had a blast shooting that. but also saw this on the tails of reading this (extremely accurate and relevant) article in the toronto star about female characters and film.

in case you can't get to the article without a login...

Women are going backwards
Bewitched latest return to sexist days
Few strong role models, little romance
PETER HOWELL
Boys and men trooping to War of the Worlds this weekend will find plenty to engage them: Action, explosions and heroic Tom Cruise and plucky Justin Chatwin defending their family from nasty aliens.
Girls and women might enjoy the movie, too. But if they go looking for a positive role model, they'll look in vain. The main female figures are Miranda Otto as Cruise's pregnant and shrewish ex-wife and Dakota Fanning as his screaming daughter.
Neither Otto nor Fanning are given much chance to develop their characters beyond the stereotype of the angry ex or the terrified tot, and their experience is very much the norm this summer. Films hitting the multiplexes in recent weeks have been significant for the insignificance of their estrogen content.
Bewitched and The Honeymooners are both based on two of the most sexist TV shows ever. In Bewitched, the wife is ordered by her self-important husband not to use her natural abilities as a supernatural witch. In The Honeymooners, the wife is threatened to be knocked "to the moon" by her pugnacious spouse. (The movie versions downplay the mental abuse, but old memories die hard.)
Batman Begins has Katie Holmes as Christian Bales' supposed love interest, but she's barely there and the sparks generated wouldn't ignite a puddle of gasoline.
Cinderella Man, as good as it is, is concerned with the struggle by Russell Crowe's boxer character to find personal fulfilment, not with the hopes and fears of his loyal wife, Renée Zellweger.
War of the Worlds, a remake of a 1953 hit about aliens invading Earth, has the dubious distinction of dropping a key female character from the story. In the original George Pal production, Ann Robinson played the assistant and love interest to Gene Barry's hero egghead. In the new Spielberg version, Cruise is in control without the help of an adult female.
The comedy in Bewitched, meanwhile, is derived from Will Ferrell's Darren character stealing the thunder of Nicole Kidman's naïve witch Isabel in a gender-flipped remake of the old Bewitched TV series. Even when Kidman is getting even with Ferrell, she still seems far less sure of herself than Elizabeth Montgomery's Samantha did 40 years ago on television.
The one big Hollywood movie that runs counter to this trend is Mr. & Mrs. Smith, in which Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are equally matched as married assassins hired to rub each other out. But the movie is violent and vacuous and makes no impact whatsoever on an emotional level. (Practically the only place you track down interesting female characters and serious sexual attraction is at arthouse and foreign films.)
There have been many theories advanced this summer for the alarming slide in movie attendance. High ticket prices, poor product, illegal downloading and competing distractions are often cited as culprits.
But perhaps a more subtle force is at work, one that directly affects half the population of potential moviegoers. If women don't see themselves presented realistically on the big screen, why should they spend big bucks to go to the show?
Some are starting to ask themselves that very question.
"Women are stereotyped based on what men think of us," said Stephanie Stonley, 24, a Toronto accountant.
"The woman in War of the Worlds is a cranky pregnant lady, and that's exactly what men think every pregnant woman is going to be like. With Katie Holmes in Batman Begins, it's irritating that she's the lady in distress and the man in the rubber suit has to come and save her. And in Cinderella Man, Renée Zellweger is way too pouty and always crying. She's like Edith with Archie Bunker."
Toronto filmmaker Deepa Mehta, 55, is also having trouble finding movies that speak to her.
"There aren't that many that strike me on a personal level that I would say, `Omigod, this would be great to see.' Because women usually play secondary characters. There's nobody out there saying, `This is where we are.'"
Some might argue that it's nothing new, since men have always dominated the movies. But the screwball comedies and film noirs of past decades always had strong women in well-written roles, and directors wouldn't have had it any other way. It is simply unthinkable that a Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubitsch or Frank Capra would have put their names to such vile nihilism as Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
Where are the modern-day counterparts to the classy and confident women of yore? Women like Kate Hepburn, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Vivien Leigh really have no equals amongst today's Botoxed babies.
And it's sobering to think how little progress has been made. Bewitched and The Honeymooners were both damned by the Women's Liberation movement during the 1960s and '70s, yet they're considered ripe for renewal in 2005.
A movie remake of I Dream of Jeannie, a notorious TV series about a sexy female slave and her dominant male master, is in the works for next year. Kate Hudson, the daughter of Laugh-In punching bag Goldie Hawn, is set to play the unliberated role of Jeannie.
A lot of it has to do with the male domination of Hollywood and that hormonal 15-year-old boys are presumed to be the only movie audience worth courting. The lads want to see Katie Holmes' nipples protruding beneath a silk blouse — "She's the only district attorney in America who can't afford a bra," one woman ruefully commented — and they're going to get just that.
But men aren't entirely to blame, said Kelly Otter, an assistant dean and instructor at the University of Pittsburgh who specializes in gender and cinema.
"We can't always absolve women from falling into the same trap," she said in an interview.
"Nora Ephron directed Bewitched, and she wrote it with her sister Delia, and they did it like a 25-year-old Hollywood male screenwriter who isn't conscious of what he's writing. They came up with the same kind of stereotypical roles and images that women are supposed to have in these kinds of Hollywood movies."
The sad fact is that all of American pop culture depicts women in a negative way, Otter said.
"I wouldn't look to American popular media for role models for women. If women were attracted to movies solely to find positive representations of ourselves, we would never go to the movies. You have to be able to look beyond that if you're going to get any enjoyment at all."
Negative media portrayals do take a toll, she added, although the impact isn't always apparent at first. Repeated exposure to starvation-thin actresses with artificially enhanced faces and bust lines leaves many women feeling inadequate and in need of an overhaul.
"Anorexia nervosa wasn't a problem 25 years ago. People then weren't going out and getting plastic surgery at the rate they are today. These images are having an affect upon our culture and women are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their images. These things do play upon our anxieties."
One of the side effects of the male domination of movies is the lack of real romance on the screen, and romance appeals to both sexes — even if men don't always admit it. You don't need soap opera antics or cheap melodrama to give a screenplay some emotional heft, and that usually means the yin-yang of a strong couple.
Where would Spencer Tracy have been without Kate Hepburn? Or Humphrey Bogart without Lauren Bacall (or without Hepburn in The African Queen)? Or Richard Burton without Elizabeth Taylor?
And yet so many of today's movies treat romance as something to be disdained rather than embraced.
The one place where women still find an important role is in the art films that are the lifeblood of film festivals. The Toronto International Film Festival announced this week that Deepa Mehta's new work, Water, the final chapter of her elements trilogy, will open this year's show on Sept. 8.
Festival co-director Piers Handling praised it as a movie that realistically deals with women, in a story about enslaved widows set in 1930s India immediately prior to the rise of Mahatma Gandhi. Water will have plenty of company with like-minded films at the fest, Handling promised.
"The range of human experience in what you see at the festival is extraordinary," he said.
"There are films about children and their experiences. Teenagers and their coming-of-age stories.
"People in their 20s and their anxieties. Adults getting married or in marital crisis. Elderly people confronting loss and death.
"You find the full range of human emotions and experiences, and that's what I've always loved about the film festival. But to a large extent, some of these films are just not commercial."
That's a very big "but," as far as Hollywood producers are concerned. Why strive to make noble and uplifting films that treat both sexes fairly and well, when you can earn vastly more money by pumping out formula thrillers, tired remakes, rote comedies and lazy TV adaptations?
As we're learning this summer, however, such logic isn't paying off at the box office the way it once did. Maybe it's time Hollywood started thinking more about its entire audience, especially the half that wants to see something other than whores, nymphs, victims or bimbos.