Happy Halloween!

From filmmaker Spike Jonze, handbag designer Olympia Le-Tan and director Simon Cahn comes To Die By Your Side, a beautiful short stop-motion film that happens in the famous Parisian bookstore Shakespeare and Company.

Top Ten Reasons Why I Liked Django Unchained (Spoiler Alert!)

(Please note: This is the second trailer for Django Unchained. Enjoy!)

I don't think Spike Lee was wrong -- I want to honor my ancestors, too -- but I can't criticize a movie if I haven't seen it. And yet everyone has an opinion on Django Unchained.  I supposed that's understandable. It's been awhile since Roots had everyone glued to their televisions for a week. And then we wanted to talk about it. We wanted to find our roots.

As a nation, we are in dire need of a collective roundtable discussion about race. And for once, we really need to make it an honest one. Perhaps the success of this movie will trigger an avalanche of talks, documentaries, exhibits and yes, more films.  Nothing gets more movies made in Hollywood like a blockbuster. The more information, the better.  Anything to get the ball rolling.

I have way more than ten reasons as to why I liked Django Unchained.  These are the ones that floated to the surface initially.

1. It's funny.  Needless to say, the most telling moments happen when white people stop laughing and black people can't stop cracking up. The white guy behind me was giggling quite freely until Django beat the brakes off of that white man with a bullwhip. 
2. It's fiction. Of course, that won't stop people from treating it like a documentary. 
3. It's about slavery in the United States -- something of which way too many Americans know very little. They certainly know even less about its atrocities.  And they seem to know less than nothing of the Black Holocaust.
4.  It's got a black (ex)slave hero. The truth is, there were hundreds of thousands of Nat Turners, disrupting anything whenever they could. Where's that movie?
5. It's got a black hero that's beating, whipping, maiming, shooting and killing a garden variety of insufferably racist, bigoted white people. I can't think of any black people that wouldn't want to see that. Repeatedly.
6. It's got a loving, solid black marriage.  Yes, black people want to see that, too -- in any time period. Slaves fought desperately for their marriages -- and their children. It didn't start with the Huxtables.
7. Believe it or not, the black hero's wife doesn't pass the paper bag test.  Shocking, right?
8.  It's got a black hero that's focused on saving his black wife by any means necessary.  I don't know about you but I don't see very many leading men in filmdom going to the absolute limit for the love of a black woman.
9. Maybe it's my recent forays into the Rhineland or the research that I'm doing about Germans in the (Antebellum) South but I loved the German references within the storyline. (Interestingly, my last name is German. More on that later.) And those filthy greedy Australians? That was just too perfect.
10. It's got a beautiful ending: the black hero and his girl ride off into the sunset together. I remember seeing that and thinking, Why not? Why shouldn't they run off and be happy? At Harlem's Magic Johnson Theater, the audience stood up and cheered.'Nuff said.

Perhaps Dangerfield Newby is the "real" Django Unchained.  He tried to buy his wife Harriett and their 7 children out of slavery but when the agreed-upon price was abrubtly raised once he'd met it, he sought other means and joined John Brown's raiders at Harper's Ferry. And the rest, as they say, is history.

first glimpses of "the hobbit"

for the fall season, i've moved away from my usual diet of biographies, autobiographies and history books to sink my teeth into the hobbit. now that i'm almost done, mpb says i have to take a nosedive into the lord of the rings and then the silmarillion. anything after that -- and believe me, there's plenty -- is apochyphal, according to him.

it took a sec for me to get used to the rhythm of the language and the names of the characters are a bit clunky but everything was descriptive enough to explode onto my imagination and in no time at all, i was running through the rolling green hills to have tea and toast and good ol' english jam with the hobbit as i rode the subway.

so it was with a great deal of curiousity and some small sense of wonder that i watched the following clips -- glimpses into the creative process behind the film the hobbit: an unexpected journey. (it's in two parts, by the way. it's also in 3D.)

one day in the midst of a bustling tech rehearsal with george wolfe working on harlem song at the apollo -- when we were onstage and inside one of those moments when everything was coming together and falling apart at the same time -- he offhandedly remarked that directing musicals was like storming the beach at normandy. i surmised that this was especially true if you were originating work because you are creating it as you go along. (it takes 7 to 9 years to develop a musical if you're taking the conventional route. george put harlem song together in 7 to 9 weeks.) in this way, contemporary original musicals are a microcosm of what happens on the movie set, especially when it's this ginormous and ambitious and cool. they're basically setting up, feeding and moving a small army from one breathtaking expanse of new zealand after another. it's exhaustive, just thinking about it. and if you include pre-production and post-production, they've been at it for several years, now.



this clip gives a wonderful overview of what's happening on the set and lets the world see the hobbit's little home -- which looks exactly as i imagined it would.




this is director peter jackson's first video blog from the set.




this is the latest production diary/video. it's especially interesting because it delves into the technical aspects of the 3D camera work, what the equipment is like, the renderings and how complicated all of it is to shoot.

for your viewing pleasure

first up - flame and citron. it's about two world war II danish resistance fighters -- legendary, iconic heroes, actually -- who get caught out there with double crossing agents, a triple (yes, triple!) femme fatale and assassinations run amok. it's loosely based on fact, but who cares. it's a bloody wild ride - in part because everything was constantly unraveling so thoroughly and so believably around them all the time.

inglorious basterds should have been this good.



here's another gem - black book. it's another world war II epic about a dutch jewish woman who becomes a spy for the resistance. unbelievably shockingly great film. more twists and turns and unexpected potholes than anything i was anticipating. i mean it. you must see this. there were moments when i was actually yelling at the screen, in this totally involuntarily way.



it's interesting to see films about world war II that show another european perspective besides concentration camps and what happened to the jews. what about everybody else?

here's the based on facts world war II movie i'll make someday: german prisoners of war shipped off to america believe it or not. specifically, i want to go off about the ones held in barracks deep in the heart of the lone star state in the early 1940s. what happened to them -- most of them ended up staying, getting married, having a life -- is a story for the ages.

uptown saturday (film) night - "monsieur hire"

"The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person." - Chuck Palahniuk

if it's saturday night. that means if i don't have a gig -- or something else that's going to drag me out of the house -- i'm at home watching something interesting on netflix. although this saturday finds me out of town, that will hardly stop my fun. (i did look for a drive-in in the area to surprise my permanent boyfriend, but things are pretty soggy around here so that's out.)

my taste in film is running sideways lately. here's a "top ten" taste of what i'm into, so far this year. have you seen any of these?

1. a somewhat gentle man
   
2. ratcatcher
3. diary of a nyphomaniac
4. for a lost soldier
5. mother
6. ip man
7. revolver
8. lo
9. micmacs
10. the girl who kicked the hornet's nest
    

be warned: these are mostly independent, foreign, cerebral and bent. apparently, i have a driving need to be intrigued. if you don't, look elsewhere.

i'd like to believe that i'm beginning to think visually. that is, i want visuals that tell the story -- not words. i'd also like to believe that i'm gaining a better understanding the inner workings of all the elements that make a movie come alive.

i wish carrie could answer my stupid questions about mise-en-scene or sound choices or camera angles. i really do.

monsieur hire is what i saw tonight.

i refuse to give this film away plotwise but i will say this: this movie is a love story that is so achingly beautiful in such a hopeless way, it's nothing short of cringe-worthy. the romance that unravels so carefully inside of it all epitomizes the aforementioned chuck palahniuk quote. the thing that i clutched to my chest in the more harrowing moments as i got lost in the action was that when you really love someone, when that love is real, you don't care if they love you back. real love doesn't have to be reciprocated. it just is, whether the other person accepts it or not. and what's more, the love you have for them has the capacity to sustain you, in spite of whatever they say or do.

if you want to see what i mean, you'll have to watch the movie.

your inner svengali

i've been auditioning a lot this summer for on camera work: mostly commercials and independent film, but occasionally a short here and there. i usually get a callback and then i don't get the job, for whatever the reason -- reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with lack of talent or effort on my part. that's hard to explain to people who quantify success and hard work and employment with an inside-the-box, 9 to 5 day job mentality, that way of thinking that has building blocks that lead all the way to success.

it's even harder to explain to people who've watched way too many episodes of that tv show fame, or who semi-worship the movie - people who honestly believe that if you have talent, you'll "make it," whatever that is. that's right up there with that idiotic all-american horatio alger "rags to riches" myth. nobody pulls themselves up by their own bootstraps. nobody.

let me say this loud enough for you to hear it, whoever you are: having talent does not guarantee your success on any level in the entertainment industry. while it's true that talent helps a great deal, in the grand scheme of things, talent doesn't matter. this is especially true if we're talking about on camera work. i suppose if i lived in hollywood, that's a bigger part of where my focus would be. like i fit into their beauty standard, anyway.

just because you're talented, just because you do a great audition and maybe even a great callback, just because you have presence, that doesn't mean that you'll get the part. and if you do get the part, that doesn't mean you'll keep it. the whole thing can fall apart at any point in the process. there are no guarantees, even when you're working. especially when you're working. because if they think you look funky in the playbacks on that monitor or if your chemistry with your co-star isn't up to scratch or whatever, they will replace you. it happens all the time.

there are so many variables involved. and it's usually stuff that has nothing to do with you. stuff like, how tall you are. or whether somebody thinks you're pretty. or not pretty enough. or whether the camera likes you. what does any of that have to do with whether you can act or not? not a bloody thing.

there, i said it.

let's get one thing straight. there is fat, as in overweight. and then there's hollywood fat, which looks fine in the real world. but in el lay or on camera, a size 8 is positively bovine. i'm not anorexic. i'm not bulemic. i don't have love/hate issues about my body. or food. or anything else. i am simply a theater actor that's hollywood fat. and by working this weight off, i'm doing something about it.

or i could keep eating and turn myself into a big black woman who plays caricatures that amount to little more than what can only be described as mammy for the 21st century -- usually with a lot more attitude and sass than she had in minstrelsy.

i don't want to have some long, drawn out post-feminist argument/discussion about how hollywood's obsession with youth and a size 4 body ideal has given a lot of girls and women in this country a complex and how you may or may not think i'm buying into that by doing any of this. all of that stuff is cute in theory. but this isn't theory. this is my career. and that's what makes it counterproductive - and moot. i realize that this is an important moment for me. i can either get it together and do what i have to do to make the transition to on camera work - get lean and get my teeth fixed - or not. this aspect of the business involves paying a great deal of attention to what i look like, and turning myself into something of a junior triathlete to get the leanness i know i need to look a certain way on camera is par for the course. now i understand why the actors i'd meet in LA were so foaming-at-the-mouth obsessed about what they ate, how they looked on camera, what they looked like, what everyone else looked like. and when they weren't looking at everyone else, they were expecting everyone else to look at them. everyone, constantly checking each other out. think about it: if you look that good, the compliments have to keep coming, you have to stop traffic, you have to look a certain way - or what's it all for, and how will you ever know what you're worth?

in this weight loss struggle, i am not alone. there are many bright shining examples of actors and actresses and performers in hollywood who did what they had to do to get that look. i just read lena horne's excellent bio stormy weather and i didn't get to the middle of the book before she was popping pills to get her weight down after having had two children, because the studio demanded it.

all in all, the results of such studied efforts have been transformative visually for many, to say the least. here's two of my all-time favorite examples:

once upon a time, greta garbo was a working film actress in sweden and happily studying theater. she was on her way to becoming a funny fat comedic actress with bad teeth, but filmmaker mauritz stiller saw something more.

 greta garbo at 16 years old. cute!

he made her take elocution lessons to walk and talk differently, and he got her a stylist so she could dress differently. he gave her acting lessons for the camera. and yes, he made her lose weight. she went on to star in two very successful european films.

 mauritz stiller and the much less chubby, frizzy haired virtually unrecognizable swedish movie star greta garbo, 1924

then they went to new york city. they languished there and almost went home but something interesting happened -- they took portraits of garbo and -- on the strength of those pictures alone -- MGM bigwigs decided to meet with them.

this is the photo that got her that interview.

look at those horrible teeth! but who cares about dental work when your beauty is mesmerizing. here she is again -- in 1924, photographed by henry b. goodwin in stockholm.

these photos were taken by arnold genthe for vanity fair in 1925, prior to garbo's arrival in hollywood.

irving thalberg didn't think garbo was pretty at all (remember, she is considered by many to be the most beautiful woman who ever graced the silver screen - and some believe that she is the most beautiful woman who ever lived) but if you consider what he saw when he looked at her -- a heavy set 21 year old frizzy haired swede with bad teeth who could barely speak english -- maybe you could cut him a little slack.

so he had her straighten her hair and get her teeth fixed. on a scouting trip to berlin, louis b. meyer actually looked her over and told her to lose more weight before she attempted to work in hollywood -- this, after she'd already lost enough weight at the onset of her on camera career to become a successful european star -- with the admonishment, "in america, men don't like their women fat." they groomed her for a few choice roles here and there, she made it through the transition to talkies and the rest, as they say, is history.

here's the finished product -- the one that most in the industry agree is the most beautiful woman to ever appear on film. wow -- she really doesn't look all that thrilled about it, now does she?

at the other end of the stick, of course, there's joan frackin' crawford - otherwise known as lucille le sueur.

joan's story is one for the books. she didn't have a svengali/lover at her elbow, telling her what to wear and what not to say. hers is a story of raw discipline, true grit and just plain old hard work on her physical self. i LOVE it! she knew everything that was required of her as a movie actress and as a star, and she handled her mutha-effin' business. period.

one day, joan was having stills taken by a cameraman, her friend johnny arnold, for a picture they were working on at the time. he told her offhandedly that her face was "built" - her bone structure was perfect for the camera but the camera couldn't get to any of it. for that to happen, she had to lose weight. joan took his casual remark to heart and promptly went on a diet of steak and tomatoes for lunch and dinner, and grapefruit for breakfast. in a month, she lost 20 pounds. her face changed so drastically, everyone assumed she got plastic surgery to make her eyes bigger. she didn't. at 5'1" and 149 pounds initially, she was pretty buxom. she dropped all the way down to 108 and never weighed more than 118 pounds for the rest of her career. and now -- to paraphrase paul harvey -- you know the rest of the story.

this is joan before the weight loss. (i'll bet you didn't even know this was joan, did you? i didn't.)

will you just look at that belly and those thighs? now that's hollywood fat.

and this is joan after the weight loss. of course, this new look garnered much more work and ultimately, success.

any questions?

i don't know. maybe i've got it all wrong but i don't think so. to make this transition, you have to plug into your inner svengali. after looking over pictures like this from back in the day, mine is totally on point.

i've got it

i'm not sure exactly when the moment happened but i think i now understand the readjustment that's necessary when acting for the camera and the difference between that and what it takes to readjust on stage. it might have happened in the last class with the last monologue i did - something from the show sports night, as dana. i actually felt a switch click on somewhere in me as i was about to do it. pow, just like that.

i am painfully aware of this transition i'm making, and that so many genuinely talented theater/musical theater artists that i know never do this because of a myriad of reasons, most of them self-inflicted. i know from whence i speak. that was me not too long ago. but it's not me, not anymore. i am so grateful that i'm doing everything that i have to, to get to the other side of this. this is going to be some kind of adventure.

being able to watch myself on camera every week has had a profound effect on me. the truth is, i couldn't see what i was doing wrong - and i was doing soooo much! even my slate - the way i introduced myself was wrong! and to have someone at your elbow that reallly knows what they're doing means everything, everything. trust me - joanna beckson knows what she's doing. God bless her classes.

everytime anyone makes a mistake or does something that works, i'm taking notes. what worked? what didn't work? how can what they did work/not work for me? of course, everything matters - wearing primary colors and not patterns, keeping the make-up simple and low key, what i do with my hair. i just didn't realize how much it matters. it's a no brainer to say this, and yet i have to say it: it's a visual medium. they're looking and assessing what they see to figure out whether i'm right or not before i even open my mouth. am i comfortable with that? no. do i like it? no. i could philosophise ad nauseum about what's wrong with thinking that way and what it does to society and all that malarkey. or i can take the classes i need, get my body back so that i look a certain way on camera and get to work.

joan crawford had the right idea. more on that later.

i got it!

this evening in on camera acting class, something clicked.

we were looking at monologues that we'd put on camera during the previous class - a scene from a sit-com, actually - and i watched one person after another do their bit and then listened as the instructor joanna gave her insights and carefully gave balanced critique and made helpful suggestions. it was all very supportive and encouraging, a very safe space to do something new and uncomfortable and strange.

when she got to my take, i got really objective and i took careful notes - but something in me balked in spite of myself. joanna said to stay away from patterns and wear solid colors on camera, and that the camera especially liked solid colors. i thought, okay. i'll wear primary colors to auditions from now on. the red dress i chose was absolutely luminous. it looked orange on camera but it still worked. i had on that bob wig and it actually worked really well, too. the makeup was great, the accessories worked. but something was off.

joanna paused the tape and explained that i was giving what the people in the industry would call a soft read. i was way too subdued. then she told me why i should be bigger and i realized i was afraid to go in that direction, because bigger to me meant theatrical and that was always a bad idea on camera. but according to joanna, that's not entirely true if you're doing comedy or even dramedy. so i thought, okay. i'll try it. why not? the worst she can do is rein me in. and that's what you do - you do the lines, you're given direction, you make the adjustments, you keep going. sounds simple, right? it soooooo isn't.

somehow whatever she said sank in. when it was time for me to do the next monologue, i nailed it. i nailed it so hardcore, she blurted, "great read!" from the back of the room. i felt like something fell into my hands and i really didn't want to let it go. all i could think was, i got it. i got it! that transition that i never thought would happen, the one that would take me from theater to film/tv, has finally taken place.

to be completely honest with you, i stood in my own way for a really long time. let's face it - it's a visual medium. what you look like and whether the camera likes you or not is mostly why anyone seriously considers you for a part. so initially, i didn't think i was pretty enough, or light skinned enough. i knew that my acting abilities were largely irrelevant. there's plenty of people out there on tv every week and in the movies and whatnot, they're lousy actors and they're making bank. they know how to hit their mark and they know how to pose and make the right faces and say their lines "with feeling" - and they know how to work the camera.

i figured it was better to stick with what i did best, what i knew. i was wrong.

after class, i went for a walk to think and think and think. i like this on camera stuff. i'm warming up to the whole process, to letting the camera see my thoughts. and i'm working harder and harder on what i look like, for whatever it's worth. beauty is in the eye of the beholder but i think that if it's the camera's eye that's beholding me - that favors me - i'll be fine.

and yes. my gradual weight loss is totally changing the way the camera sees me. more on that later.

keep it gully

a film audition today. a commercial audition tomorrow. an on-camera acting class tonight. i'm running lines like crazy all the time. for thursday, i'm learning a monologue and two scenes.

we're starting to do scenes and monologues on camera -- and boy do i look weird. but hey, at least i'm losing weight...

what i learned so far in my on-camera acting workshop

this is my first week at joanna beckson studios and i totally love it. we do stuff on camera, then we look at it objectively and dissect it as a group - which is a jillion times harder to do than it sounds. the thing is, it's so easy to make readjustments and work towards breaking bad habits when they're staring at you on a huge monitor.

so far, so good. here's my top ten.

1. awful but true: most casting directors don't look past your slate -- that is, the first ten seconds of your audition, or your introduction. ("hi, my name is...")
2. smile. it matters.
3. if you do smile, make sure it's sincere. if it's not, it will read fake. everything reads on camera. every. little. thing.
   
4. the camera adds 10 to 20 pounds on you. (really.)
5. film/tv/commercials are a visual medium. how you look is everything. it won't matter that you're a great actor if they don't get past those first ten seconds.
   
6. the camera sees your thoughts. (this is my favorite one!) think the thought and your eyes and face will contribute the appropriate expression on their own. of course, this is the exact opposite of "making faces".
   
7. when you look into the camera, you are engaging the camera. when you look down, you are disconnecting. don't disconnect - unless that's a pertinent acting choice, of course.
8. the best colors to wear to an audition are green or blue. the camera likes these colors on most people, but you should know what your colors are - and be sure to dress appropriately.
9. know who you look like and what type you're playing, and use that familiarity when you audition.
   
10. and last but not least - trust the camera. (this is especially hard for me. i don't trust easily.)
    

snapshotty

as danny and i were leaving the sag/wgae theater on west 57th street the other day, we passed by a gossip girl shoot on west 57th street right in front of the russian tea room. lots of cameras and lights and stuff. and then there were a TON of paparazzi on the edge of it all, leaning in and angling here and there, taking pictures. i thought, oh wow -- this is the reason why i always keep my camera in my purse! and i thought about pulling it out. but then i got a glimpse of these two -- zac efron and the other white girl that everyone is always going on about that's usually paired with him -- and i was genuinely surprised at how pretty he was.

i mean really, really pretty. like, michael york pretty, when he was in the three musketeers. no. more like, rob lowe pretty, when he was in his early twenties. okay -- nobody's that pretty. that was otherworldly. he looked like a chick pretending to be a dude. then again there was christopher walken, when he was in the deer hunter. and maybe al pacino when he was in the panic in needle park -- a movie that shall now and forever remain in my all time favorite top five. he had quite a few beautiful moments in that film.

yeah, zac was really pretty and really uninteresting. no presence, no heat. and the girl with him -- what is her name? eh, i can't remember. --gave off NO sparks at all. i don't know what i was expecting but i'm fairly certain that it was way more than zip.

danny and i had just seen a preview of the latest julia roberts vehicle duplicity, co-starring clive owen. and no, it wasn't that good. it was i'm-stuck-on-this-plane-and-i-can't-sleep-so-i-guess-i'll-watch-this good. but before the movie started, we had a really interesting talk about her and film stars who insist on doing broadway and why they probably shouldn't. his acting teacher (who passed away recently) coached ms. roberts through her broadway debut and had really interesting remarks about her acting talent.

he said that the camera really loved her and that usually in film, that's 90% of the battle. a good director can get you through the rest. it's their medium, anyway. he also said that she was in way over her head with the broadway play and didn't understand why she was insisting on doing it. she's used to a 20 million dollar paycheck, so it definitely wasn't the money.

once upon a time, the hollywood movie studios brought you to the west coast to star in the broadway show you just did in new york city. and then they kept you under contract in their little circle, put you up in a cute little bungalow and groomed you -- with acting lessons, stylists, photographers, make-up artists, you name it. eventually, they farmed you out to other studios, built up your resume, your reputation. and then poof, you were a star.

there are moments where you see that kind of thing happening nowadays -- john leguizamo comes to mind and so does sara ramirez -- but it's not the flow of things. nowadays, you can finesse your way through it if you're pretty enough. even if you're a guy. especially if you're a guy.

maybe i should have taken a picture, anyway.

the dark knight

here it is -- as if you haven't seen it elsewhere on the internet! -- the first 5 minutes of the dark knight. enjoy.

"Jake" didn't get in!

unbelievable but true -- the film i was in called Jake Gets Paid didn't get accepted to Sundance Film Festival. well, thankfully they're not the only game in town. there are festivals everywhere, not just colorado. if you know of one, tell the director ed durante all about it at jakegetspaid@gmail.com.

panning for gold

last night i went out to dinner at pastis with joan. we had a lot of catching up to do. ah, joan. when i say her name, a flood of memories from my earliest years in new york city come rushing back to me, all at once. she was one of the first people i met in the city. i liked her right away and i don't know why. she was pretty and smart and cool and funny. gobs of insight. west indian by way of the bronx. big family. her long-time boyfriend eric person (that she eventually married) was a musician. although she was in publishing, she wanted to be an actress. clearly, we had a lot in common.

the years floated by. with every bit of progress, joan was somehow a part of it. over steak frittes, she reminded me of when she came to boston when i did RENT and i popped the strap on these amazing shoes she let me wear. and then there was the work i threw at her, at random. one of them was a short off-off broadway stint that i couldn't finish. she stepped in and closed the run. she saw my one person show. i gave her sheet music. "you were good to me," she said. truth be told, actresses don't do things like help each other. especially black ones. but i never concerned myself with that kind of backstabbing piffle. i knew i'd never get anywhere by stepping on people and using them. i figured, what's mine is mine. so why not tell someone about some audition or whatever. why not? no one can take anything away from me that God wants me to have. God is sovereign -- not some casting person on the other side of the table. if God doesn't want me to have it, i don't want it.

after the divorce, as joan settled into her new place in east harlem with her son, she thought of me and decided to take me out to dinner, to catch up and reconnect.

i'm glad she did.

of course, everything was running fast in our conversation. fast and strong. that's the kind of thing that happens when you're with someone that you know, and the love and respect are ever-present. when someone doesn't have an agenda with you, when they aren't denigrating you or one-upping you or playing games with you. when you're just talking -- free and open and easy. it's actually a relief, to be that way. no wonder i've always liked joan.

i caught her up on my family, my career and my love life before the steak hit the table. there was her babysitter to relieve uptown, so unfortunately, there wasn't much time. nevertheless i gleaned so much from what she said. and of course, with those pearls of wisdom came a great deal of sweet relief. but i'm getting ahead of myself, i think.

it's so easy to get stuck here, doing the same things over and over in the name of your career or progress or whatever. making the rounds and going to auditions is something you have to do strategically. you can't just do it ad nauseum -- not without strong results. but then again, auditioning is one of those things that you can do and do and do and keep doing, whether anything ever happens or not. because something could happen. and so you keep doing it. and i suppose that makes it hard to walk away -- there is always the idea looming that the next audition is The One. it's like panning for gold. you're an eternal optimist. but after the divorce, joan makes the rounds again and discovers that those early 40-something trying-to-look-30-something black dolls were now in their early 50s. they never stopped to have a life -- to get married, have kids or whatever. they never stopped auditioning and hustling to the callbacks and scheming towards the next job. they never stopped panning for gold.

i stopped that hustle with Harlem Song. i hit a wall and i realized, i didn't want to do any more regional theater. i didn't want to do any more off-off broadway for the glory of a great new york times review and no money. and club dates made me sick. i wanted to get paid. and that meant transitioning into movies and television. what did i do in the meantime? i wrote songs. i played guitar for fun. i treated working out like it was my part time job. i spent optimum time in day spas. i got my teeth fixed. i worked a day job. and somewhere in there, i landed a ton of callbacks, three commercials and a movie.

all of a sudden, i was so grateful. for everything. i was so grateful to be in the place that i'm in right now. i'm not out there, grasping at sheet music, standing in line and waiting to sing 16 bars. i don't even think i want that anymore. that's when i realized: something happened. i don't know what it was, but something happened. i took a turn somewhere in there and the next thing i knew, everything headed in another direction. and as if all of that weren't enough, i have a friend that's the coolest guy in the world. go figure.

for joan, it was her little boy. she says having him changed everything. it forced her to live on a certain level, get organized and reconfigure her life. auditioning was no longer a priority.

i think we're thinking along the same lines: we want to create and produce something for film and/or tv. have a comfortable life filled with creativity and family and ideas while the checks come in.

we're still panning for gold. we're just not standing in the same stream, doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for different results.

hm. the next time her son is with his father for the weekend, i think i'll show joan my screenplay.

Queen Esther Gets Paid

a few days ago, i got a call from ed durante, the director of the indie black black comedy jake gets paid. this was my first substantial film role to date -- although i have some blactress buddies that think my moment in that grand farce marcy x (a medium/semi-close up shot of me, in a kente cloth headwrap no less, yelling "get that bitch off the stage!" in reference to a pink chanel-suit wearing lisa kudrow) was a pretty good one. ed sounded a little giddy, as usual. he decided to have one last rough cut showing of the film before he submitted it to sundance, to get some feedback. that's got to be a crazy trajectory, drumming up support to get your film seen there. because it's not about independent film anymore. and it doesn't necessarily matter how good your film is. he had put it up for "public" consumption somewhere on nyu's campus (his alma mater) on the same night as sekou sundiata's memorial, so i figured i was destined to not see it before the rest of the world did. but here was ed's phone call. i couldn't say no.

ed pulled that shoot off in april by scheduling everything on the weekends. in retrospect, i can't believe he did it. wait a minute -- what am i saying? film is a collaborative effort. we did it -- the cast, the crew, all of us. we really did.

he said 7pm, so i'm thinking he'll click the light switch off at 6:55pm and of course when i show up at about 6:20pm or something i'm the very first person there, which is embarassing and wierd. i got to thinking, maybe i should give up on this whole "punctual" thing i've got going. it's totally working for me but not really. ed was at his rosy effervescent best -- wisecracking and wine-sipping his way through it as he rearranged furniture with his brother paris and answered the door and greeted the guests and poured the vino. there were a dozen of us or so. it was very much a listening room.

i have to say, i really liked the movie. it looks so warm and lush. and there are moments that feel immediate and familiar because of the camera angles, the rhythm in conversation and some fairly straightforward funny moments. there were moments when i wouldn't look at my face but i didn't look as fat as i thought i would, so all i could really feel was sweet relief. i didn't know that ed would bookend the movie with my songs. that was a beautiful surprise.

the first was "stand by your man" which rang out stark and weary as the main character Liza, a brunette white girl, runs out of the bedroom towards the camera completely naked in slow motion a la peckinpah (at least that's who i thought of when i saw it) with her black boyfriend jake's freshly removed condom. the next shot has her in the tub, emptying the contents of said condom into her vagina and tilting her hips upward, in an obvious effort to impregnate herself, all the while chatting casually with the boyfriend through the closed/locked door, who thinks she's simply washing up. obviously a psycho, right? there's more but i really don't want to give it away...
later when it was time to ask questions and toss up opinions, i remembered out loud an article i read somewhere about desperate modern women who say they don't want to get married or have kids but who poke tiny pinholes in their condoms and diaphrams or stop taking the pill, or whatever, to entrap whoever they're with. conception by deception. it's supposedly on the upswing in urban areas, especially new york city -- but no one had ever heard of such a thing. how cool was ed, to tap into something so topical.

he ends with the song "get it right this time" which totally worked. it was almost as though the lyrics were saying what jake was really thinking.

i remember walking to the subway and thinking, okay, i'm over the hump. i've done three national commercials, i've done a supporting role in a film. i've finally got on-camera stuff that shows that i can act. now what i need is a role on the "law and order" franchise and my transition to film/tv/commercials will be complete -- relatively speaking, naturally.

bang! bang! bang! - alt theater blackgrrl makes good on camera, part three

my friend renee got cast in a short film awhile back. sometimes when we hung out, she'd let fly with all of these tidbits about what the process was like. she thought that i should meet ed durante the director of the short film because he seemed to be as much of an anomaly as me. and strangely, he was. after we'd met, renee showed me his reel of short films. i thought that much of what i saw was filled with beautiful imagery that was compelling and, well, interesting. clearly, he knew how to tell a story with visuals. that alone was enough to put him a cut above a lot of people who called themselves filmmakers. i was intrigued. okay, i thought. he knows how to do what he does -- no small feat there. now what does he want to say?

but i digress.

where did the initial introduction take place? there are so many moments that blur together, like some strange syrupy goo: the video shoot for renee's dance project, where a hardworking focused ed (surprisingly) gave it his all, with beautiful visuals and real direction; the sit-down dinner at ed's girlfriend's place, wherein we showed up later than expected because we expected something a little more casual, much to ed's bemusement and (slight) chagrin; ed, telling me that i was really onto something with my whole "black americana" thing and how we should make a video of the song "stand by your man"; ed, looking at my photos on myspace.com and telling me how bad he thought they were; and of course there was the burlesque show at the slipper room, wherein during the go-go section of the show, ed's righteous black friends asked rather indignantly how long to we have to watch these flabby white girls jiggle around, anyway? what a fun night that was. i distinctly remember that ed freaked himself out when he realized he was turned on by little brooklyn's clown moment.

i'm not sure when it happened but somewhere in there, ed and i connected. and then we bonded. renee's project brought us together and i figured another one would probably happen along, but i had absolutely no idea what it might be. and besides -- i wasn't sure ed would work with me because i didn't have a lot of film experience. there were a few el-lay moments when he'd go on a little too long about what someone looked like on camera that he wanted to work with, not knowing or caring whether they could actually act. as an actor that can act, that bothered me. but whatever. for some strange reason, he called me in to read for his first feature length film and for some strange reason, i auditioned well and for some strange reason, he kept calling me back until he finally offered me a part.

the first problem, it seemed, was that we would shoot on the weekends in april, which meant that my hair had to be consistent. so my first question was, do i have to straighten it? needless to say, ed is progressive enough as a black man to find black women attractive in their natural state -- so we agreed that my hair would stay the way it was. i was warming up to the fact that my character seemed to be such a smarmy high-brow back-stabbing two-faced hedonist. all that detail right below the surface seemed drama-ready -- and after giving the script a thorough read, i realized that really, that was the whole idea.

film is a funny thing. you can read a play and know if it's good but you don't really know what you've got with film until you're looking at the final edit. (and i mean final.) to be honest, it's hard for me to trust anyone. and here i was, trusting ed. he knew what he was asking, of all of us.

before i left his apartment, i remember him telling me, "this is going to be a crazy adventure and you're going to hate me by the time this is over, but you're going to be glad that you did this." and i think he said something or another about making me a star. i can't remember. i was too busy thinking about the crazy adventure and the hate and the happiness.

i remember walking down the street thinking, ed may be nuts -- but he is talented. and he is my kind of nuts. so this just might work...

hey! is that thing loaded or what? - alt-theater blackgrrl makes good on camera, part two

the real reason why i never bothered to audition for film or tv before was because what you looked like seemed to matter way more than whether or not you could actually act. frankly, i didn't think that i was light-skinned enough or conventionally pretty enough to seriously pursue it. i didn't believe that most film actors were especially talented because most of them had never done any theater. film is not an actor's medium, contrary to popular belief. theater is. to my way of thinking, an actor that's never done any theater is like a surgeon that's never actually operated on anybody. and truth be told, when film actors did do theater, they almost always sucked at it.

and another thing. film people -- directors, editors, producers, the whole lot -- were freaking annoying. they walked around like they were breathing some rarified air that the rest of us knew nothing of, for the sake of a genre and the fame that somehow elevated all of them. i would go into these auditions and they would say, what have you been in and they would look at my resume like it was a blank piece of paper because i didn't have any film work on it. well. a lot of them just flat-out didn't know what they were doing. it was disturbing: all of these people, wallowing in gobs of money, running around hob-nobbing, and for what. wouldn't i always be too old, too young, too black, too patently unattractive, too strong, too...something to these people? why should i have to convince them of anything? wouldn't success make me beautiful (ie bankable) in their eyes? it certainly seemed to work that way for everyone else.

it didn't help that i had befriended one too many film majors when i was in college who would sit around and and argue endlessly about who was brilliant, who wasn't and why. hardly anyone was making any art -- and if they were, it was derivative and boring and encrusted with scholastic excess. i suppose it was way more interesting to trash everyone else's work than come up with something original. or at least cool.

by the time i decided to take acting seriously, i already knew rejection -- the hard way.

i was called a white girl in grade school like that was my name and roundly ostrasized because not only did i know how to read but i actually enjoyed it. thanks to intellectual pursuits that included reading dictionaries and encyclopedias for fun along with the clothes that my mother lovingly made for me turned me into a garden variety wierdo in the african american community and made me the object of ridicule amongst my peers for most of my youth. somewhere in there, when i was 8 or so, my mother accidentally dropped a straightening comb on my neck. i told myself that there was nothing wrong with my hair in its natural state when everything in my world told me otherwise. afterwards, i promised myself that when i grew up, my hair would be natural. i never fully understood why i had to straighten it to be considered pretty but that's a whole other conversation.

so i had already endured a lifetime of "no" by the time i hit puberty. what i endured in my early years in new york city was nothing in comparison. it was luncheon and an afternoon nap in a field of wildflowers and daffodils. it was a walk in the freakin' park.

circumstances of my youth may have convinced me that i was fugly, but no one ever disputed my intelligence or my talent -- expecially the people who ridiculed me in the first place. i put all of it behind me and i kept going and going and going...

just as i'd hit a wall with alt-theater/off-broadway, everything shifted gradually towards tv/film and commercials. the first step was bravo's the it factor. i did it because i had little or no camera experience and i had no money or time for on camera classes. i needed to learn how to be comfortable in front of a camera and i figured having a crew follow me around for six months or so would compel me to break some bad habits. it worked. i got my SAG card when i got RENT but i finally used it when i got a part in Marci X that didn't end up on the cutting room floor.

the next step was auditioning like crazy. but there were obstacles. to find them, i had to be objective about my physical self. i quickly learned that how things look in a camera's eye can be very different from my own. i had to see things differently. there were some concessions i wasn't willing to make -- like straightening my hair, for example -- but now that i got rid of those annoying tics that seemed to happen if i was on camera for too long, i had to work hard to lose the chunk that made me look heavier than i actually was and get my teeth fixed, an extremely expensive proposition. most importantly, i had to learn how to audition on camera well. this would take time, but i was up for the challenge.

i had a million auditions and callbacks before i got anything. but finally, something happened: in october, i got my first national commercial, for ocean spray. two weeks ago, i got another national commercial, for prego. and somewhere in there, i met filmmaker ed durante, and his feature length project "jake gets paid" happened.

how did i meet ed durante? now that's a long story...

what are you going to do, shoot me? - alt-theater blackgrrl makes good on camera, part one

a few years ago, it seemed that i couldn't sit through a movie preview without seeing someone that i knew onscreen. i'd think back and remember which off-off broadway play or musical we'd done and when, and in my head i'd feel a strange sense of pride and glee for them, that they'd gone hollywood and "made it"-- not fame, really. just steady work. and to my way of thinking, that was making it. mazeltov.

but then one day i turned on the television and they were there, too. almost every commercial break meant having to sit and watch someone i knew hawking cookies or room sanitizer or God knows what all -- which was hysterical, if you really stop to think about it. i even recognized a few here and there with roles on sit coms and tv series. eventually, a passing conversation with an actor-acquaintance who gave me a ball park idea as to how much they were probably making made my jaw drop. was i missing the boat here?

when i had this epiphany, i had been doing theater in nyc professionally for about 10 years. i don't dance, so i knew that the broadway chorus wasn't anything for me to consider. once i understood that the great white way tends to favor heavy-set black female performers, i began to lean towards a much less conventional approach. eventually the breakthrough happened when i made the original cast in the national tour of RENT on a cattle call -- no representation, no manager, no lawyer, no nothing. but for several years before that happened, when i got here from down south and everyone pretty much ignored me, there was no work. so i developed my own ideas -- in alt-music and alt-theater. with the two one person shows that i wrote and performed, i proved that i was an originator. with the various roles in george c wolfe's "harlem song," i proved that not only could i could carry the lead in a broadway caliber musical but that i could originate work on a grander scale.

after one evening's performance, my mentor the director jeff cohen met me at the stage door. somewhere in the conversation that ensued, he said, "you'd better enjoy this moment, because this probably won't happen again for you for another 10 years." he was right, of course. downtown rags described me as an "alt-diva." casting directors said that i was "quirky." the general vibe was that i was "unconventional" -- simply put, that i wasn't the black girl that they thought i should be, the black girl that they could easily recognize from their deepest imaginings or the most innocuous media saturation or even around the way. the fact of the matter was, i was unlike anything they'd ever seen. or heard.

more often than not, my uniqueness was percieved of as a threat. why? because i wasn't behaving like a stereotype. because for some, the unfamiliar and the unknown are things to be afraid of, especially where black people are concerned -- and especially with black women. because i wasn't sitting around trying to figure out which black girl to turn myself into, to get the job. i wasn't desperate -- and to be honest, that must have made me look like an uppity negress. but because i actually am an uppity negress, i really didn't care. and i still don't.

i was just being myself. was that so wrong?

i almost forgot!

here's the good news of the moment: i got cast in a truly indie feature length film called Jake Gets Paid. i'm calling it "truly indie" because the director Ed Durante wants to shoot 12 pages a day for 7 days, every weekend in april -- starting saturday march 31st -- from 8am to 3pm. coffee, bagels. no pay.

it's an interesting role. i'll definitely have a significant amount of camera time -- and that is what i wanted when i started to seriously pursue film/tv. here's the deal: as a vocalist and a theater performer, i don't have much of a reel -- so when someone offers me a film role, it would kind of behoove me to take it. the thing is, you can't necessarily read a script and tell if a movie is going to be worthwhile. you have to trust the director and his vision and his process -- and hope that it comes out well in the end. on the one hand, if the director has a reputation, you have something to hang your hope on. but even that's no guarantee. on the other hand, if it's just this well-intentioned enthusiastic and probably even talented guy standing there with a bunch of short films to his credit going, trust me -- well, that's a whole other ball of wax. just ask alan arkin.

mr. durante says it's going to be tight and he promised me that i'll hate him when it's over but in the end he says it'll be worth it. thankfully, i get to keep my hair very natural: no wigs, no extensions, no nothing. that fills me with sweet relief. one thing, though -- i'm getting my body back and since he'll probably be shooting this movie out of sequence, there'll probably be some scenes that'll have me looking chubbier than others. that'll be funny. chubby me in one scene, lean me in the next one. ha.

let the adventure begin.

prego. it's in there!

i thought i looked like crap. i wasn't exactly in love with the wig i wore. i didn't think that i was dressed casually enough. and i was so sure that what i did on camera was sub-par, i practically ran out when it was over. yet in spite of all those things, my agent called this afternoon and told me that i got a callback for the commercial i auditioned for last week anyway -- the national for prego.

i'd like to say "wow" and get happy about being one step closer to my second national commercial -- but at this point, i know better. it's only a callback. even if i actually get the part, i can't get excited about it. getting the part is like starting all over again with this process. getting it doesn't mean i'll shoot it. shooting it doesn't mean that it'll air. having it air doesn't mean that it'll run for very long. the bottom line is that in film and television, there are no guarantees -- especially after you get the part.

my agent was right when he told me to forget about that ocean spray commercial i got last fall. he was right. i shot it in october and it has yet to air. they could send me holding checks for the next three years and not use it at all.

still and all, it's a callback. i've been getting a lot of them lately. let's see how this one goes.