Off to little school as always and then hit the office. Printed out some pics at the office and loaded them onto J's computer. Met Julie in the office and was immediately taken by her energy and positive outlook. Great attributes in this town. Red hair, freckles and green eyes! Very Irish. Spoke to her about me repping her.
Picked up littl'un and then home.
Took some Easter pics of the monkey with the Spring Flowers, ah. Chatted to Jules again and she is moving her LAC account to us.
Christiane is also. She moved it in about 30 mins and I've already submitted her for a job!! She's serious and fast! When we spoke on the phone, she asked me if she now had a commercial agent and I told her that she did! She was so pleased she said she would be going out to celebrate! Another happy camper!
MNoel (a real sweetheart) from PHW has a script originally written in French by her Canadian mother and then translated into English (albeit USEng) that she would like British-ized so she's going to drop it over tomorrow. Sounds like a great project and I'm happy to take a look! There may even be a part for me (you never know).
Emailed B about a space for filming and he told me that we could use his warehouse!! WE HAVE A VENUE - hooraaaaaay! Called G and told him and then had an hour long chat about B, the venue and the film. Luce is meeting with them on the 15th to go thru a budget for her film. She's written an excellent script, earthy gritty and violent too. Can't wait to get my teeth into it!!
Watched "King of Comedy" with Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis and Sandra Bernhardt. Excellent film. Interesting scenes, some obviosuly improvised! De Niro wasa lot more free than Berhardt. You could see Berhardt feeling under pressure to think about what to say next whereas De Niro was quite obviously in the moment and incredibly easy.

Wednesday...Off to class and came to T's door! Went very well, got a 'good work' from S. Headed off to the Friar's Club in BevHills for the teaser trailer shoot for Stephen's film, VI. When I arrived there were several other people moping around mumbling the (incredibly long) monologue. Some of them were saying that it was impossible to memorise. Come on people, this is one of the things you have to do as an actor. Memorisation isn't normally the best way to 'feel' a monlogue but sometimes it's the only way. Anyway, I drank tea and spoke to everyone else. Met the two lovely ladies who were going to be draped across me as I spoke my piece. Lovely, leggie, beautiful (and intelligent, I might add) blondes. One I knew from PHW. Small world. The other, Lorin, was a lovely little lady who was bubbly, bright and talented, ho yes.
Stephen was on top form but we were running behind schedule a little. So I was up and, dressed in my white tux, open bowtie and wing collar shirt, we all moved to an intimate room with a beautifully rich and sumptuous corner sofa where we were set in a sculpture of bodies, me in the middle with the two ladies port and starboard. Off I went and it was sweet as a nut. I was naughty, smarmy, devilish and a perfect gentleman all at the same time. We did it a couple more time, each time with the girls getting more naughty, opening my shirt, pulling off my tie, mussing my hair... that kinda thing. It was great. I remembered all my stuff and even managed to make a performance out of it. Real and natural even with some.. er.. distractions. Stephen was happy as was everyone else, it seems. Met the producer, FS, who was very please to have some British class on the set. He was very kind! A perfect gent and a man obviously in control of every situation he ever found himself in. Very subtle and quietly confident. He laughingly called himself the 'bad cop' which is, let's face it, what a good producer has to be. Trailer should be up in a few weeks. I'll link to it when I know where it is.
Home again and worked on the 'puter. Emails and submissions and more work on the pics. I have to work out which ones to print up and I need to do it soon.
I'm reading 'My Fat Friend' by Charles Laurence at the moment. Very funny.

Oh, by the way. If you're approached by an agency called 'something something' or 'something, something and something' (no names, no lawsuits - heareafter called Agency X), think incredibly carefully before agreeing to let them take you on. When they do graciously allow you to be on their books, they'll INSIST that you have new headshots done by one of five headshot photographers. Sorry, to be fair, they do say that you can have any photographer take your shots but they'll 'have to approve them first'. Yeah, right. What's the deal between these five 'approved' photographers and Agency X? Who knows. Would you like to take a guess?
Then they'll instruct you to join a certain 'commercial' acting class, one and only one commercial acting class. Not sure of the rates but I think it was around $400 a month or $400 for seven classes or something. If anyone knows, maybe they'd be kind enough to drop a comment here.
Oh, and the deal between Agency X and this commercial acting class? No idea. But I do wonder.
Anyway, dear reader, commercial acting classes are no substitute for good solid, all 'round training and are about as relevant as taking classes for 'learning to breath thru one's nose'. They're that useful.
Yes, I know, fellow LA thesps, that being offered representation is incredibly enticing and soothes the deep rejection scars you bear from life in LALA land but think about it.... Would you really want someone offering to take you on without actually seeing you on stage or film or even auditioning you (They didn't ask to see what you can do, did they? NO monologue, NO reel, NOthing. THIS IS A RED FLAG PEOPLE!). You might be crap! They don't know if you are or not and, frankly, my friends, they don't care. You are just another open wallet to them.
Buyer beware.
If you're not local and have no idea what I'm going on about, the above describes a typical scam from a seemingly reputible talent agency here in LA and a network of photographers, acting coaches, classes and suchlike which, on agreeing to a backhander deal, are put onto a shiny list of approved suppliers for new 'talent' (male and female actors) to use to gain entry to their 'books' (the catalog of actors represented by the agency for communication to casting directors, producers, directors, etc.). Getting an agent is a foothold in the 10 mile high cliff face in front of anyone trying to pursue acting as a career out here. They prey on these poor saps, throw them a bone and rev them up into thinking they're being signed by a great agency and regular work is seemingly only moments away. So how many people do these Agencies take on? How many agents do these agencies have? How could one agent be able to represent all of the actors being taken into these places? Truth is that they can't. The talent signs up, pays the approved photographer and the approved acting coach and is then never called for an audition. Upon calling the agency, if anyone bothers to speak to them, their type isn't working at the moment (truth is they not submitting them and they also have 50 of the same type anyway) or some other crap excuse.
Oh, and don't even get me started on 'Advance fee agencies'.... Holy Mother of God....

Tuesday. It's pissing down again. Seriously folks, this is 'buildings sliding off the Hollywood Hills' amounts of rain. No kidding. We've basically had all of the rainfall for a typical April already and it's only the 4th. Muchkin and I braved the rain to hit a museum for 4 hours. Ran around and built stuff out of Lego. Peed and pooped on command - yes, he's well trained... or I was lucky I suppose... probably the latter. Jimmy left me a message with the number for the guys we shot the CC pre-viz with. I'll give 'em a call.
Hit the library to pick up an Ed Hooks book, ordered two more and got my online pin to order more thru the LA Library website - ain't technology wonderful.
Bath & bed and then crammed up on the monologue again. Ready for tomorrow?? I'll let you know at midnight.

Monday. Met Rich for coffee and a scene rehearsal. Bumped into BB fro UTV with his Mother in law. How random is that?? Rich and I are in good shape. Off to class.
Did the scene with Rich and it went really well. So much so that T asked to do it again with some other direction, to have a bit of fun! That's a stamp of approval in my book. The rest of the class was great except for C who I think has had an emotional lobotomy. He does whimper, pissed-off and shouting. Very broad repertoire. The scene was stale and Y didn't really have a lot to go with. They're doing it again next week. Even A & B had a restart but take2 was great. C & J first read was fantastic. Totally captivating. Good class. T kept a few of us back to tell us about some books to find for our imminent move upto Advanced!! Yeehaaa. It'll be an extra class for a few months so as not to decimate the current class numbers. Fantastic!! The books are two by Mark Baker, The SR anthology and 'Csfts' which I think everyone has heard of! Bought one from Amazon and ordered the rest thru the Library for free (can't beat it!).
Off to Y to discuss the (other) movie. Reworked and rescripted scene 2 between B & I. Gave Y the rewrite of my script and left B a copy too. I need to get it finalised so I can think about filming it. I suppose I can re-script it up until I film it - it's great being the writer! Still looking for a space. Called Jimmy for advice.
Trying to learn the VI monologue for Wednesday's filming. I will end up making it my own, I have no doubt. It'll be fun too!

Next door's for sale. Probably go on the market for $1.5M. 2 bed, 2 bath. Seriously overpriced. This area's OK but it ain't the friggin' Hollywood Hills.

Hello UK! Saw you pop in yesterday - appreciate the visit!

Up late. It wasn't the clocks going forward that caught me out, it was my phone alarm deciding to move the alarms forward not back! Great. Off to pick up M whose convention was running over (a lot) - surprise surprise. Littl'un played with another littl'un, I, and they had a great time. Wound our way home via CC (very exciting). Bought some new pillows (the memory foam things). That's going to be the highlight of my day (sad -innit). Littl'un has the terrible twos REALLY bad. Mom went to have a 'nap' and left me with bath and bed AGAIN. It's not so bad though!
Sat up, updated my new LAC photo and reviewed my scene. Presenting it tomorrow. I think I'll show the guys the rewrite and see what they think.

Munchkin and I headed out for a nice lunch for our 'out and about without mom' day! He had a blast. He chatted away and flirted with the waiting staff in Topz which was funny.
The boys headed over for the afternoon, G, R & G's mate B. We chatted about films, filming and I showed them the Panama & LA shoot pics (mostly the ones of the camera)!
Littl'un was as good as gold as we munched pizza and chatted. He watched WtP as happy as a sandboy.
The boys read thru my rewrite and told me how much they liked the (very) first one better. Great! I told them that the rewrite was a lot lighter and I was much happier with it! So there! G showed me his notes for the super secret project (200 pages so far and a stack more at home)!
Bed late.