Tag: acting

The Casting Couch – Sex as a Stepping Stone

Nearly a year has passed since… the incident. Can I now relay the event without the urge to vomit? Or disclose without demanding a power spray of bleach? Possibly. I don’t know. Pass me the Lysol.

This week: It’s All Fun-n-Games Until Someone Loses Their Dinner

More than  a year has passed since… the incident. Can I now relay the event without the urge to vomit? Or disclose without demanding a power spray of bleach? Possibly. I don’t know. Pass me the Lysol.

A ways back I met a Broadway power-player at an event in which we were both invited as guests. He with his Tonys in his back pocket. Me, with a book and blog upfront to plug. Neither of us spoke much to the other that evening. Our focus was on business with others in the room.

The next morning I received an e-mail via my web site.

“Great meeting you last night. I’d like to continue our conversation.

Q.Z.”

Q.Z was the impresario I met the evening prior. Our conversation? I didn’t know that we had had one. Beyond speculating the hits of the next season our ‘conversation’ was limited and brief.

I replied to Q.Z. in font. He then volleyed back with an invite to dinner and a show(case). Attending one of New York’s versions of possibly bad community theater was not the most promising of business evenings but I was game for building a new bridge. As the night neared of our networking a sense of dread dominated my demeanor. The cause I reasoned to be my usual case of jitters I suffer when venturing into unknown situations with strangers. Or possibly my trepidations were caused by the prospect of the showcase. Neither scenario sent me into a fevered frivolity.

The night came. We met at one of New York’s theater industry white table-cloth eateries. We spoke of our lives in the business and our professional journeys. Detailing how each of us got to be sitting at that table that summer’s eve in a room whose exposed brick walls were lined with posters from Broadway’s greatest bombs. Then came the missile.

“Do you and your partner ever play together?” he lobbed.

Huh? I must have missed a segue somewhere. Possibly between the wilted salad and buttering my dinner bun. Play? As in what? Jacks? Mario Cart Wii? Pinochle? Of course I knew what he meant. He was asking if I and the Gemini who gets lost trying to find home using his GPS ever intersected with singles or doubles.

Looking at the posters that lined the walls I shifted the conversation to something harmless and benign; Lestat – The Musical! (Bad choice. Damn Anne Rice and her homoerotic overtones.) My dinner partner – now an unexpected and unwelcome date — returned the conversation to sexual exploits. His. Not mine. I wasn’t looking forward to the next two-and-a-half hours I had remaining with this man. My claiming a sudden case of food poisoning – without evidence — would have seemed terribly trite. If only there had been a suffering of gas to put him off the scent.

After finishing our burgers and fries we walked to the theater. We were standing at the corner of Ninth and Forty-Second streets when I mentioned the name of a casting director I once worked for. As the light changed and we crossed south across Boulevard de Disney that’s when Q.Z. casually mentioned that he had had sex with my former employer. Ew. Ick. Yuck. I really didn’t want to know this. But when it came to my ex-boss and entertainment professionals I now encounter it would seem he has been as fruitful as Johnny Appleseed with regard to spreading his seed about New York. A past agent of mine informed me he performed on said same casting director fellatio in the back of a cab. And this I learned at the same restaurant from which I just left. (I try not to go back there.)

Back to Q.Z. I was, as I am oft to do when uncomfortable in social situations that are unpleasant, pulling back on chatter and becoming silent. We watched the show. Why he had chosen for us to attend this particular showcase which was a plot-less musical from the 90s, I had no idea… yet. I would soon discover the answer as the ‘curtain’ came down.

“I’m going upstairs to my office,” he began. “Care to come up?”

O.K. maybe I’m just being overly cynical. But I doubt that it was just coincidence that the showcase and his office happened to be at the same address.

I declined. Went home. For days I was a mixture of disgust, confusion, anger and sadness.

I never heard from Q.Z. again. Fine by me.

I’ve written here prior about the casting couch. And I’m sure you’re not surprised that gratuitous sex is a viral hobby in all sectors of our game that is entertainment (and life). What an odd and powerful tool that aphrodisiac of near anonymous amour.

If I were single would I have joined him upstairs? No.

If my libido were of a voracious appetite and he were remotely an enticing entrée upon my extensive buffet table of tastes would I have sampled his serving? No. Not even if he were a strawberry-n-butterscotch Oreo cookie cheesesteak. Some things are just never meant to be swallowed.

I have never and hope to never cross that threshold which is an exit from professionalism. And if a similar situation is presented to you; I would hope you have more respect for yourself than to let sex be a stepping stone for your career.

Next.

My Best,
Paul

AMIYB_AmazonRead advice from legendary talent agents,
plus Hollywood & Broadway actors in Paul Russell’s Best-Selling Book ACTING: Make It Your Business!

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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Talent Agents, Agency & Casting Director Contacts

The lack of consistency for a valid contact address leaves the actor — who is wisely doing land-based mailings — with a problem. How best to keep GPS-like watch with the entertainment nomads? There are only two reasonably assured address accurate outlets for actors.

If you rely on ‘audition boards’ and ‘actor-friendly-sites-for-a-fee’ via the Internet for finding the current addresses of talent agencies and/or casting offices you’re wasting valuable time.

If you’re purchasing books on the entertainment industry that claim to have the most up-to-date contact information on agents and/or casting directors just how up-to-date can those entries be when the publish date on the cover page is a year or more past?

Agents, casting and other entertainment professionals are just like actors when it comes to maintaining permanence of brick-n-mortar placement. The cardboard boxes for moving are always close at hand. An address for an agency or casting office that was valid yesterday is often vacant or occupied by another entity tomorrow. Why? Several reasons, two of which include:

1. Real Estate is Expensive

Payouts in entertainment are often cheap to non-existent. Agencies and casting (unless they are cash-rich corporations) routinely move from one office to another in order to survive financially. When rents go up the name plate on the talent reps’ or casting directors’ door comes down and is soon placed upon an entry at a more wallet accommodating abode.

2. Film & TV Casting are Nomadic

There are only a handful of screen casting directors that have a permanent, non-home, office for which they are responsible for the rent. Most film & TV casting directors are freelancers who work from whatever four-walled and worn industrial gray carpeted cubicle the production company provides. Once the production wraps, the casting director picks up their lap-top and toys and moves on. The next tenant (often a civilian based business) is left wondering why they are getting, daily, actor headshots via land-mail.

The lack of consistency for a valid contact address leaves the actor — who is wisely doing land-based mailings — with a problem. How best to keep GPS-like watch with the entertainment nomads? There are only two reasonably assured address accurate outlets for actors. The Call Sheet (formerly known as The Ross Reports) and Actors Access (Breakdown Services) which is the beter of the two..

Both contact information for talent agents and casting directors are released several times, in both print, online, and app versions, throughout the year. Prior to each publication a representative from either publisher of talent agent and casting director registries seek address corrections and staff updates- contacting the agents and casting directors listed on their pages. Actor-friendly web sites, pre-printed mailing label sellers and other ‘resources’ rip this information from these resources and then re-sell at a mark-up to actors. Actors are paying others – often other actors – for ‘used goods’ that are continually flawed. Most of these re-sellers never update and/or make corrections. Like lazy actors who never bother to update their own mailing lists, the re-sellers put to print information gathered once and then re-sell it many times over.

How do I know this? Because my office still receives mail (often on pre-printed labels) to the long ago abandoned addresses.

Re-sellers of agent and casting director addresses aggravate an actor’s quest for correct contact further by often limiting the geography of the talent markets. If an actor wants contact information for agents and casting directors on both coasts they must be purchased separately. The re-sellers also sometimes force the actor to purchase separately contacts for agents and contacts for casting. Actors are paying out lots of money for outdated information.

Whereas with The Call Sheet, the actor gets every franchised agent and casting director across the country. That’s IF an agency, agent or casting office wishes to be listed. Most do as a professional courtesy to the industry.

Keep current your contacts. Avoid re-sellers. It’s your career. Your business. You can either run it like a Fortune 500 company or piddle away like a forgotten mom-n-pop convenience store. You’re the one who is in charge. Do something.

My Best,
Paul

AMIYB_AmazonRead advice from legendary talent agents,
plus Hollywood & Broadway actors in Paul Russell’s Best-Selling Book ACTING: Make It Your Business!

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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Classes with Paul Russell Paul's book ACTING: Make It Your Business!

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