Today I began my two-week run as a core employee, technically a copy editor, at "h2a" (Harrison Hill Ad Agency) on the film Perfect Stranger, directed by James Foley. In attendance was Halle Berry. I basically sat around for 10.5 hours and was wrapped without ever being used. I'm back on set tomorrow; we are shooting at 7 World Trade Center, a new building in place of one that fell down on 9/11. No one seems to have moved in yet!

 

 
March 7, 2006 (Tuesday)

Today I worked another day on the film Perfect Stranger, directed by James Foley. In attendance was Halle Berry. I sat around for most of the time, working for about 20 minutes in a scene in which I was but a mere reflection in some kind of surface.

Apart from that, nothing. Let's assume that I'll update this blog with shooting information over the next two weeks if it's important. ;)

P.S. It seems I've been nominated as a candidate for the Board of Directors for the New York Society for General Semantics!

 

 
March 13, 2006 (Monday)

It's Week 2 of work for me on the film Perfect Stranger, directed by James Foley. Nothing much to report!

 

 
March 16, 2006 (Thursday)

Today I worked background and as a stand-in on the pilot for Six Degrees. I was in the club scene.

 

 
March 18, 2006 (Saturday)

Yesterday afternoon through early this morning I worked background on the pilot for Ugly Betty. I was in a touch football scene with Eric Mabius, who plays Daniel.

 

 
March 25, 2006 (Saturday)

I had an amazing and important time on the set of Perfect Stranger. I made important friends, was around actors more regularly than I've been in a long while, and I've been reacquainting myself with an industry that's changed in the last couple of years since the introduction of color digital photography, internet casting companies, and text messaging. Not only these things, I feel I've been either finding myself, reacquainting myself with myself, or shocking myself with the direction my life has gone in these last 2+ years spent writing a book.

I feel that in these next few months, I will be reincorporating my acting career in my life to parallel the work on my book rather than letting my book dominate my life. Since I began writing my book, I moved my acting career to the back burner, largely taking acting work as it came to me through connections I'd already established rather than actively seeking work on my own. In the past, I was intense in my marketing and networking discipline, not to mention my auditioning schedule, something that could have been improved even more. I miss those things. I could say that I miss them so intensely that there's a feeling of loss that I'm not doing them as much. I get a little teary-eyed thinking about them. I feel a bit downstream and want to really start swimming again. And to do it better than I did before.

I'm not unaccustomed to improving myself. For example, I ran my first marathon in an impressive time, and my third marathon in an astounding time. I probably can push myself to these levels in my acting career. Among the things I'd like to do is to think much bigger, do much bigger, and basically reconceive and reinvent myself. I would like to live as an actor rather than as an actor/office worker, something that is a very scary thought to me but something that I think if I dedicated to myself I could do and do in an envious way. That likely means inviting a lot more unpredictability into my life. For some reason, that kind of life seems much more attractive to me than the life I'm living now.

I don't usually write these kinds of thoughts in my news blog. But being that they're related to my professional interests, and being that writing things down for me holds me more accountable to them, I am doing it. I would like to be back acting on the stage; I would like to be back taking acting classes; I would like to be meeting agents, auditioning, proving myself, rather than riding on my ego for evidence that I'm "good." I would like to be developing a television show for myself to work on, an improv training DVD, and potentially doing my one-man sermon show. Basically, I would like to discipline myself to live more as an artist than I am now. Right now, you might say that art is but a practice to me.

These thoughts have been coming to head of late since the film finished for me on Wednesday, and finally emerged in this blog after doing my taxes. I feel a bit embarrassed that my acting expenses and acting income is unimpressive. This is the guy who wanted to do G.I. Joe commercials from the very beginning. This is a guy who has yet to book a principal role on a commercial. That feels very, very wrong to me. I see myself as the face of a popular product. I need to push that.

So this is where I am as a result of writing this: I need to take my artistry to the next level. The direction I am going is toward depression if I do not make these steps, for what I want to be doing is much clearer to me now, and where I'm going currently is not in that direction.