A note on “Oopsies!” And other modes of embarrassment

This is what one gets for reading David Sedaris past bedtime and feeling huffy. Luckily I never had my pants pulled down to my ankles in the middle school Courtyard, but now I can at least relate.

Normally if I were to rant nonsensically, it would be on the street corner with a donations cup present or it would at least be very well written. This is what pains me the most about the previous post that was accidentally thrust into the public domain, I should have at least employed one of those measures!

Long story short, said post (which has since been deleted), was meant for a private blog of mine which is a combination of character sketches, short stories and personal musings strictly with no audience. It is a lose weave between fiction and a dramatization of true life events, kinda like what you might see on a crummy crime show reenactment.

I suppose every writer needs their verbal underwear hung out at one point so that the power of the internet can come crashing down on them and rake them flailing into the ocean and leave the residue of respect in their matted, seaweeded hair (see dramatization really is just in my nature). One click, and dear friends and upright citizens of the world are emailed on my behalf with no par for recourse… Yikes! Power realized!

All in all, incase you were slightly concerned that I am on drugs, the answer is no (at least not often) and as far as I know I haven’t developed early onset dementia (though considering the poor quality of my health insurance, the jury is still out on that one). I’m quite apologetic that I may have hoisted upon you such an unpolished piece of unfiltered rant but please don’t take it, or me, too seriously. I am most sorry to anyone I may have offended or caused concern, it was a private head fantasy meant for no audience. There is an embarrassingly little amount of true drama to report so besides my brain (which is often unruly) and throbbing embarrassment, I am surprisingly well.

On the bright side I must say, at least my last name isn’t Wiener! Hooray!

Working Elusions of Grandeur

Oh God, well. Yes, I’ve been gone from the particular internet interface for a few months and instead writing moodily in my diary but I guess better late than never applies to blogging as well.

I appreciate positive feedback, in a rather pathetic way, though I’m working on not giving a fuc* (see not quite there yet, but close!) a little more often. So, here I am despite irritating personal advices that I invariably receive from beloved non-strangers concerning my writing temperament, exaggerated opinions and potentially poor life decisions (part of the reason I’ve been so unenthused about it lately too, ‘spose). Not to mention my talented ability to harass my own ego.

Also, I got this horrid thing called a real job. It requires heaps of time, thinking, making marginal amounts of money, seemingly stressful decision making, and sometimes people getting upset at me, and honestly(!) I have my feelings hurt enough getting honked at in traffic. It’s at an MMA gym at which I have been training Brazilian Jui Jitsu since moving to LA (…) and have a variety of ties (vaguely speaking). However, in ways it is exactly what I was looking for because since graduation I have a very real sense of anxiety about being a very old Los Angeles diner waitress/dis-inspiring actress and I’m really rather fragile. Plus I am learning some pretty neat-o things so I shan’t complain more than I already have in the last paragraph.

Furthermore, I’ve been acting. Nothing fancy, but stuff. Real live stuff! Music videos, short movies, and directors reels, mostly (also exclusively), but crazy thing is I’ve actually been booking them all by myself, like a really good ratio of them. And sometimes they pay me. I go in, shake a hand, I enunciate almost all of my words, sometimes I say something suave, and then I act. I feel emotions and sometimes impress people. I’ve booked work where I’ve had my lover die, grown tired of my lover and I am just smitten to dickens with my lover. I’ve played an alter-ego, “a rich girl driving a Mercedes G wagon” in a tube top (seriously though that was the character description), and a woman who is in love with beards, but not the people who inhabit them. I’m kinda good. I even cried repeatedly on cue and had the director refer to me as “an actress of your caliber” in a personal thank you letter, post-production. I mean that’s practically like the worlds most miniature Oscar (as you may have noticed I frequent between the states of painful self deprecation and elusions of grandeur). And while I have you here, I’ve let you know another thing! I’ve had TWO referrals from projects I worked on last month. Although one was for an “erotic romance horror movie” which unless its a movie about adorably horny teething piranhas, sounds an awful lot like porn…. ahh Hollywood :]. Don’t worry, I declined!!!

I’m allergic to piranhas.

Peace and plants,

Kelsie

The closest I will get to my very own people’s choice award… This year.

Waiting in the hollyWoods.

One big fat fact of show biz, I’ve learned, is waiting. It’s become one of the very most significant features of my current life.

You have to wait to get auditions, wait in traffic on your way to your audition and wait at your audition. Then, you have to wait to hear back. Maybe you book it, and have to wait for the shoot date. When you get to the set you have to wait for your scene and wait for the the director to empty his memory card in the middle of your scene. Then you have to wait for the footage.

Yes there is stuff you can do between all the waiting, but it doesn’t change the fact that you are still waiting. It’s like being busy filing your nails in the grocery store line, or even reading a pretty intriguing magazine article in the doctors office, but still there is a little voice throwing verbal rocks at the back of your skull because your bleepin sick of waiting.

You also have to wait to find managers and agents.. You have to wait and see if they’ll respond to your gentle pestering. You have to wait to meet with them (…yes). When you do get an appointment to meet with them two months later, you’ll probably have to wait for them at lunch because they are important: and are allowed to be running late. After you meet with them, you have to wait for the answer. You have to wait to meet their list of demands (i.e. get better headshots, shrink two inches).

I know you’ve been waiting for the list of waiting to end for awhile now, and well, lucky for you, your wait has paid off. Now keep your fingers crossed for me !!

Sunday Drum Circle on Venice Beach

The best part is the game between the police and the wild dancing heathens (I’ll let you guess which category I fall into) that starts up at sunset when it’s time to disband. Police start their sirens. Drive a little closer. Drummers start up in a beat in synch with the sirens. The dancing gets even more intense. The police drive a little
closer and “woot” their sirens a few more time. The heathens take this opportunity to dance in the police car headlights and start a new beat to match the “woots”. I think despite everyone’s airs, it’s the most symbiotic relationship between police and dancing hippies I have ever seen. Everyone seems to enjoy the ritual, the healthy version of checks and balances.

Snooze king

I thought I was the worlds best snoozer but turns out my room-mate, Chris, has yanked that trophy right from my hands

Demo of my Demo

I met with “the new potential manager” for lunch and she was awesome. She is highly motivated and smart and relatable and looking to grow which is like the best possible combination for a manager to have. I drank a lot of iced tea during lunch and may or may not have chattered like a hyper active monkey throughout the entire meal at this chic Palisades organic cafe but whatever the case, it seemed to work. The attraction was mutual! We’ve been texted and emailing for over a week, now the only tricky part was getting the rest of her team to give me the go. I think I mentioned this in my previous post but they are three women managing the careers of 39 actors and some of the actors are pretty big deals. So if they took me in, it would be awesome. They are the real deal, this would be a company that I wouldn’t be trying to upgrade. They’re already up there.

Though I’ve gotten a lot better at it management is certainly not one of my strong points: you have to make appointments and phone calls, and sell yourself to people and read contracts and make decisions like whether partial nudity in this random independent film is going to bring you to the Cannes Film Festival or is going to haunt you for the rest of your career. A good manager can be the difference between a short, mangeled, undirected career and well, whatever the opposite of that is.

Now in order to sell me to her team, I needed a Theatrical Demo. I had none. This requires sorting through a fair amount of manure, as in past projects. Bad sound quality, bad image quality, bad cut, small unimportant parts, none of those can really get into the demo. Surprisingly enough this left us with mostly stuff that we had shot ourselves.
Here is the demo that I have put together and Guillaume has graciously edited and color corrected and sound stabilized and whatever else he does.
I just sent the manager the final cut this morning and she’ll let me know if she thinks I’m ready to be pitched to her team.
Keep in mind it’s clearly not a high budget projection, but the idea is to showcase to a manager that I have potential, that I feel comfortable infront of a camera and that I can act. And hopefully, not the opposite.

Tad Brown

This is Tad Brown. He is one of our room-mates and my good friend from highschool. That cape of gorgeous burnt red that is flying behind him in the salty sea air, is his hair.

BMX show on Venice Beach

Finding an Agent

Phew- two interviews over and they did not bite me and I did not bite my nails which makes the whole thing much more successful than I was anticipating.

Infact, one even wishes to represent me commercially, only problem is the head agent was a little too Hollywood phony for my taste buds. The other agency, while quite reputable and successful smelled a bit like a gerbil cage and they had dell not apple computers which for an agency, is highly suspicious.

The agent for agency #2, as I will call them, was giving me the bold opportunity to audition for him theatrically. The boldness is derived from the fact that I have very few professional acting credentials. So despite the fact that I studied with some pretty snazzy teachers in New York, it will take an agency a lot of work getting me low budget indie movies and no paying webisodes (Internet based series) to bulk up my résumé before I will make any money theatrically (theatrical covers any jobs that aren’t commercials). That’s why the most professional, yet still struggling actors make the majority of their income with commercials, which pay anywhere between 10-100 thousand dollars).

So, agency number 2 sent me sides (a piece of script to audition with), the night before, which I prepared despite the fact that my good friend from high school Tyler, arrived that night to visit for the weekend. After a few hours of work, I went to the audition the next day mildly confident. The part was for the lead in a pilot show for MTV that was currently casting, no small peanuts. I managed to act casual as I gravitated between leaning forward and backward on an awkwardly shaped couch while I conversed with the agent. He had a blue tooth on his ear and occasionally he spoke for such long periods that I had time to wonder if this was espresso or drug induced.
We emerged through all the chit chat and he called his assistant in to watch me perform. I wiped my sweaty palms on my pretty pink frock and fake smiled (no acting class seems to be able to remedy this) and exploded into dialogue. I got the very first sentence wrong which immediately pastes a look on my face that says “Eeeeeeeek” but I keep trudging through. I was expressive and pretty open and managed to do my jig without having anyone yawn (in this business you have to take points where you can).

The agent then went into anther mini dialogue of his own (it seems they need attention as much as actors) and managed to critique me until I felt like a picked scab. Sure, he said some nice things, like comedy was my thing and I showed a wide range and was very expressive, BUT mostly I heard him say that my comedic timing was off, I wasn’t ready to audition for leads, he would “think about representing me theatrically” and that I would have to study improv at either Groundlings or UCB if I could get in if they were to take me. What?? No confetti? No golden star that says I was fantastic?? Not even an A for effort?? I mean sure it wasn’t the worse news but Dam, it really is hard to show all of your guts, all of your insides to some stranger, and feel like they are totally underwhelmed.

He then sent me over to the commercial division where I had a nice long chit chat with the agent (frankly though I think I could be with a stronger commercial agent) and left. This whole process took nearly two hours, which I consoled myself meant I wasn’t a total waste of time to them. However the fact that this process took 2 hours meant I had a 63$ parking ticket on my windshield. After a short wallow in misery sitting in my car in my the parking lot, wondering what I was doing with my life, I had to smile because that’s the ride isn’t it? I mean if parking tickets and rejection isn’t part of the Hollywood experience- then I don’t know what is.