Answers for Actors

Actors Destroying Your Auditions | Answers for Actors

The most insidious and uninformed observation one actor can share with their peers. Often the poorly plucked fruit is seeded with false information, an assumptive impression or a prejudiced opinion.

Paul Russell — Photo Credit: JackMenashe.com

Overheard in a cramped and cobwebbed audition corridor:

“The casting director is a dick.”

“The pianist sucks.”

“My English lit teacher was a better reader.”

“I think the director’s doing bath salts.”

“They hate actors.”

“You really don’t want to go in there.”

Actors at auditions spewing audition studio scuttlebutt to other actors: The most insidious and uninformed observation one actor can share with their peers. Even if the actor bounded out of the audition studio on a Disney-esque high with, “They loved me! They asked me to read twice and share my recipe for vegan crab dip.”

(Next.)

Planted—long before The Globe’s foundation was dug—was the actor gossip vine. It still thrives and snarls its sinews around audition sites destroying fellow actors’ auditions with actors relaying their impression of auditor behavior. Often the poorly plucked fruit is seeded with false information, an assumptive impression or a prejudiced opinion. Unless the actor is amazingly telepathic their auditor reaction insights should be regarded with as much credibility as anonymous berating bears on RateMyProfessors.com.

You may recognize the more popular eye-rolling actor observations below. But have you given thought to potential reasons for the auditor’s reactions as relayed?

“They didn’t smile.”

The auditors are often intensely focused on analyzing an actor’s skill and appropriateness to the casting. They’re not a wedding party receiving line. Often (and sadly) at auditions you’ll be before more Gordon Ramsays than you’ll encounter Paula Abduls. Yes, it would be grand if all auditors glowed with heavily medicated grins but the creases incurred from constant smiling are deeper than is our cash stash for collagen and Botox repair. Don’t focus on us. Focus on you. You’ll live happier.

“They laughed, so they must have loved me.”

The auditors may have loved you. But they also may have loved that you presented an inspired, fresh perspective to the audition material. The laughter you garnered was genuine appreciation for the much needed levity during a hemorrhoid endurance test. As to whether or not you’re appropriate for the casting depends on many factors beyond several guffaws. Pocket the laughs and move on to the next audition.

“The director barely spoke.”

Possibly, the director is not a party animal like yourself. Maybe, the director was in deep contemplation of your sterling talents. Perhaps, he just received word from the veterinarian that the time has come to put down his Fluffernutter. Or simply, the onion rings from lunch left the director with dragon’s breath and he/she doesn’t want to scorch your sensitivity. Don’t focus on the director’s reaction. Focus on your actions.

“The reader was a corpse.” | “The pianist was cold.”

The pianist hasn’t been hired as a nightclub act. Good readers are a hard find.

Unlike my auditions (where I need to trust the reader more than I do the actors coming into the room) most readers work for free and are pulled from a pool of who’s available and breathing.

With pianists, the good ones are few and very expensive. (I strive to find the best…and it’s costly.)

But good or bad both the reader and the pianist are mentally and physically taxed during a grueling assembly line of actors for eight hours; sometimes longer. Auditors and their staff are not allotted much, if any, rest while seeing hundreds of actors in a single session. Working an audition is a mental and physical calisthenic challenge that runs continuously for hours.

Am I excusing poor auditor behavior? (Those who recall my scathing and very public response to Twittergate, know better.) The affable audition-room manner many of my clients present to actors should spread like a happy virus. Unfortunately, that congenial contagion hasn’t carried to some casting colleagues.

If the auditor’s manners are truly foul that’s their life’s problem, not your immediate worry. I’ve heard tragic tales from actors telling of allegedly rude auditors. But without my having been an eyewitness to the interaction I cannot comment nor place an opinion on the allegations. I’m receiving a stranger’s reaction to an event that didn’t go as they had hoped. And I leave the telling as their personal observation—not an edict etched in stone. As well should you when you encounter an actor bitching or praising the auditors they just met as you’re about to exchange an entrance for your peer’s exit.

You’re more than aware of your stress level at an audition. Possibly your foot taps the dust bunny laden floor. Maybe you crunch your knuckles. You worry, “Will they like me?” “I owe two months back rent.” You needn’t have your anxiety’s embers stoked by an actor flaming out in the audition hallway about the auditors. You weren’t in the room. You don’t know what really happened. Don’t listen to the fodder because if you do, the focus of your audition won’t be prioritized to what is most important: telling the author’s words in an effective manner that will have the auditors engaged in you as an actor who can solve their casting puzzle.

When I was an actor I rarely spoke or listened to my audition hallway neighbors. I didn’t want my work compromised by the insecurities of others—I have enough of my own doubts, thank you very much. I don’t lug other people’s baggage. And neither should you.

When at an audition, focus on you. Avoid the actor gossip grapevine and don’t harvest sour pickings yourself. Actors who share auditor behavior (good or poor) have a reason for doing so. Ask yourself, “Why?” Are their disparaging barbs (or gushing gloats) about the director to embolden your endeavor or to weaken your resolve to profiting a job opportunity? No one person passes an opinion without having an agenda.

The enemy is not the auditor. We want you to succeed (our job is then made easier). The enemy is often a competing peer seeding doubt in your garden of anxieties. Don’t let the weeds strangle your blooms.

[Want to know how Broadway and Hollywood actors deal with auditors, discover for yourself in ACTING: Make It Your Business. And yeah… there’s lots of other goodies in the Random House read that casting director Bernie Telsey calls, “Humorous and witty. The actor’s roadmap!” www.ActingMakeItYourBusiness.com ]

My Best,
Paul

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Paul Russell’s career as a casting director, director, acting teacher and former actor has spanned nearly thirty years. He has worked on projects for major film studios, television networks, and Broadway. Paul has taught the business of acting and audition technique at NYU and has spoken at universities including Yale, Temple and the University of the Arts. He writes a column for Back Stage and is the author of ACTING: Make It Your Business – How to Avoid Mistakes and Achieve Success as a Working Actor. For more information, please visit www.PaulRussell.net.

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Entertainment’s Gay Mafia | Answers for Actors

“The gay mafia,” Name Withheld [hereinafter referred to as N.H.] begins to name past and present casting directors, directors, who were/are both powerful in the industry and gay. “They’ve locked up the business which in my world, at least, is oriented towards a narrower perspective.

Deemed too litigious for print when the 1st edition of ACTING: Make It Your Business was released an entertainment industry power-player included in my book for actors strapped them-self to entertainment industry’s St. Andrews Cross: the gay mafia. Do attorneys have too weak a gag reflex?

To protect the identity of the interviewee–and my pauper assets of two cats and a single winery tasting takeaway glass–the power player’s identity here is concealed.

——

“Pet peeves?” I asked.

“There is a sense of their work that is limiting,” NH continues. “For example certain directors hire the same actors. Now I am the beneficiary of that and the opposite of that. I’m not casting any aspersions about homosexuality. I [work in the arts]. I know how to camp with the best of them. I was in the dressing room for five years. I have no problems. None. Except for,” and N.H. speaks of a past Broadway play, its lead and director, both male, whose relationship N.H. feels was, “a weird relationship with director and actor that had nothing to do with the play. Not to say it doesn’t exist elsewhere, it does, but in the theater, particularly, and I’m not talking about myself but women have been so discriminated against. Remarkably so.”

N.H. begins to name gay male directors of high visibility within the theater. “I’ve seen women suffer. Heterosexual and homosexual. The sadism of that,” N.H. then begins to impersonate a director who consistently snapped his fingers as a means of directing an actress. The snapping is relentless. No words spoken, and then, “There’s always a whipping boy somewhere in the production. Always. More often than not, it’s the woman of a gay director or a guy of a straight director. It’s bizarre. I can’t explain it to you. I abhor that,” N.H. discards with distinct disdain.

“The gay casting director is a perfect example of the gay mafia,” N.H. asserts. “It’s not sexual gender. It’s vision. You want the role to be realized based on the talent and character of the actor.”

In our conversation I mention the gay casting director who asked of me to give him a massage. N.H. affirms that is the type of power giver who happens to be gay of which he speaks.

Though gay by coincidence myself I do understand N.H.’s complaint. But I never tagged abuse of authority by gay colleagues as being the gay mafia. What would be the warning-sign of bitchiness you’ve disrespected the lavender mob? Keds in your bed?

I voice to N.H. that the phenomena is aligned to a general abuse of power no matter to whom the gate-keeper raises their heels to heaven to. Power brokers (gay or straight) giddy with misplaced gate-keeper regency place themselves in a position of uncompromising authority; fashioning themselves as the givers and destroyers of careers.

The casting director who continually harassed me sexually is one such person. I recall to N.H. the day when my gay employer was on the phone with an agent. The casting director of TV and Broadway with his bloated face flushed red barking into the phone to the agent, “Do you know who you’re talking to?! Do you know who this is?!” His tirade ending with his slamming the phone unapologetically into the cradle, and then demanding I haul my “hot ass” to him “pronto.” One could remark that that same gay casting director had self-respect issues. He routinely discriminates against gay actors, proudly chiding that he will not audition gay actors of whom my former employer remarks as being, “too much of a faggot.” Yet on the other hand with erotic excitement he’ll verbally exercise his imagination about the straight male actors he wishes the chance to bed.

“Gay/straight is not the issue,” N.H. continued. “The issue is the foibles of man, in our perceptions. The director is heterosexual, and beating up on a woman with snapping his fingers; he’s paid a cost.”

N.H. goes on to reflect of a play that he/she did in New York. “It became corrupted by Friday night dates [between the director and their actors].” N.H. then points to this type of “professional” behavior spurring his own career path alteration. “I went away from musicals because I didn’t like entertainment,” N.H. states.

I laugh in agreement, “There’s a lot of that today.”

“Exactly,” N.H. shoots back. “Entertainment wasn’t as interesting to me as art. Call me Julliard. Call me arrogant, call me whatever. Art to me has a responsibility. There’s a social contract with art. Us as artists to our audience. And the audience to the stage. That social contract I relish. And when it’s corrupted — gay, straight, yellow, green, doesn’t matter — that bothers me,” N.H. reflects with disappointment but not with naïveté.

“I’ve seen many actors who get the job not because they’re brilliant but because they’re the friend of the director. Director’s fire and hire actors because they’re the friend of. That corruption bothers me.

“I’m talking about the corruption of the promise of art. Lawrence Olivier, when I was doing [title withheld], came backstage and he said about actors, ‘What are we? Angels and whores.’ We’re a little bit of both. The whore aspect of myself and the business I’m in, that’s what bothers me. I’m not speaking from a high moral plane. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do that. This is the place and time for it, whatever it is. I’ve been in too many shows where a lot of the time the show’s [been] corrupted by both straight and gay. The opportunities that present themselves that,” N.H. repeatedly slaps hand to desk to emphasize the following, “have nothing to do with the purpose at hand.”

Our conversation drifted back to my inquiring further on defining ‘the gay mafia.’

“I don’t really mean the gay mafia,” N.H. responds. “What I mean is the gatekeepers. The gatekeepers have a different point of view and different purpose than what I think they should have.”

N.H. references a quote by a once powerful Broadway casting director; “He said he would cast all day and then go to the bar at night. And he made mention that when he would die you could always find him at Rawhide.”

N.H. points to an example of academia to demonstrate his/her view that it’s the gatekeeper and not necessarily the sexual preference of the person in ‘power’ that rules decisions.

“Michael Kahn was the dean of the Julliard school of Music; the drama department,” N.H. begins. “Most heralded school in the country, creating the next generation of artists. The word on the street is that the graduating class of late; they’re all pretty boys, coming out of Michael Kahn. That’s not acting. That’s not what the theater needs, necessarily. If they’re pretty boys and the best actors he can find, I have no contest. That is why it’s not the gay mafia, per say. But it’s that perspective, that inhibits, the promise of the theater. Whether it be gay or straight.” Then N.H. smirks with sarcasm, “Cause God knows there have been no straight people who have taken advantage of women. Hence the casting couch in LA to say the least. It’s the promise that’s corrupted that I can’t stand. Because of, and I’ve been guilty, I haven’t slept with [talent] I was going to hire. I’ve never done that. But God knows I’ve slept with [talent], who I was working with to get something out of them for the role that I was playing. So I’m as guilty. But that corruption, which I’ve now come to realize, is awful.”

What’s more curious and possibly just as corruptible

Paul Russell's Best-Selling Book for Actors! — Paul Russell’s
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are the gay gate keepers of talent (casting, talent reps., directors and producers) who are turncoat against fellows gays like Jews turning-in Jews to Gestapo in order to delay the inevitable gas chamber.

Paul Russell’s career as an author, casting director, director, acting teacher and former actor has spanned three decades. His projects involve major film studios, television networks, and Broadway. Paul teaches acting class annually at MFA and BFA acting programs in the U.S. He is the author of ACTING: Make It Your Business – How to Avoid Mistakes and Achieve Success as a Working Actor. In addition to his books for actors Paul has written several gay fiction novels including a murder mystery. For more information, please visit www.PaulRussell.net.