Required Viewing: Captain America - The Winter Soldier

I can't wait to see this movie and I don't know why.  Probably because I know I won't be underwhelmed by how fantastic it is, and I could use a little big budget inspiration. 

At the end of the day, I still want to see a black female superhero on screen.  Not having one is a harsh reminder of how little everything has changed and how far we have to go.  I wonder if they'll have any in the film. The latest version of Superman was so thoroughly rinsed and scoured of black women, they didn't even have any as background talent.

Wait. That's not true. Towards the end of the movie, there was a sister in a parking lot with a TWA, looking towards the sky before she was crushed by a building or something. The camera was on her for all of four seconds.

Progress!

Foreign Movies You Really Should See...

...and yes, they're all french. not that it matters. something in me tends to get giddy over things that intrigue me, and these trailers -- and the blurbs and the buzz that are trailing them in the press -- seem promising. art should excite you, shouldn't it? let's face it: if you and your date don't leave a movie talking about what you've seen, it probably wasn't worth watching.



house of tolerance is about a parisian brothel in the early 20th century. i have no idea what the plot is but here's an interesting tidbit: the soundtrack features the music of the moody blues. now that's ballsy, i'll admit -- especially if they tap into their earlier stuff -- but imagine what they would have had on their hands if they'd used muddy waters stuff instead. or lightnin' hopkins. or big momma thornton. or...



tomboy is about a prepubescent girl that pretends to be a boy. i'd love to see a movie about this. i was a tomboy -- and i still am, pretty much. it wasn't intentional. i was just being myself.

when do you ever see movies about this subject matter? i'm very curious to see how it's handled.



the artist -- a silent movie, shot in black and white, set in the 20s, and filled with foreign actors that most americans aren't familiar with in the least -- is getting a massive push from the bigwigs. it's about two artists and the trajectory of their careers as silent cinema diminishes in popularity and talkies become all the rage.

it's easy to forget that with movies, images are supposed to tell you the story -- not words. watching a modern-day silent movie that harkens back to hollywood's golden era should be a refreshing change of pace.

i wonder: outside of the usual major metropolitan areas, can most people in this country see these films? not that they'd want to but wouldn't it be nice to have the option?

for your viewing pleasure

now that october is upon us, it's time for halloween: stocking up on candy for the kiddies that may stop by or the neighborhood thugs that will invariably bang on the door; pulling together a costume from out of your own closet so you won't have to get something generic and pricey from ricky's; haunted houses that really scare you; and scary movies that sometimes freak you out way after the fact.

halloween is one of the nights i almost always stay home if i'm in new york city. everything seems so safe these days, even in the ghetto. but it's still new york city, no matter how sanitized everything is. i mean, honestly. if you want the suburbs, move to long island.

there are a lot of scary movies out there -- this is a list of 50 of the (supposedly) most popular ones of all time -- but nothing is more frightening to most folks than the truth. with that in mind, here's a few documentaries to consider when it's time to make some kettlecorn and dim the lights.

ah, yes -- h.h. holmes: america's first serial killer. at first glance, he looks a little too much like daniel day-lewis' bill the butcher, blue eyes and all. the bestseller the devil in the white city entwines his gorey antics with daniel h. burnham, the architect of the chicago world's fair. i don't know what creeped me out more -- the elaborate hotel he built to efficiently murder travelers or the fact that he tortured, killed and dissected small animals as a child.



this one is pretty disturbing -- the iceman interviews. with an expressionless face, infamous mob hitman richard kuklinski recounts one murder after another in this unaffected monotone that should guarantee at least one solid nightmare after viewing. you know what's really creepy? this guy spent his last few years of freedom with his wife and three children in a new jersey suburb.



...and of course, no halloween eve should end without ed gein: the ghoul of plainfield. if you don't know who this is, you are the unibomber, living in a cave, cut off from society and all that rot. can you believe ed died in 1984? i mean, wow. that's kind of recent...

watch out -- this one is hella graphic. (sure, it's halloween when you'll see this so you're expecting gore of some kind. i'm jus' sayin'...)




any creepy documentaries on your list? please recommend a few. i'm always looking for more...

...between...

nablopomo's theme for the month of october is between. of course, that could mean anything. my immediate thought is of indian summer -- that strange expanse in between fall and winter that can bring stunningly beautiful sunny breezy blue sky days or an absolute water-logged slosh fest. or both! in nyc, you get the full visual spectrum of the changing seasons. a constant sunny blue sky year round sounds like fun but it seems abnormal, somehow. kind of like dealing with someone who grins at you all the time. after awhile, wouldn't you think there was something wrong with that?

all those women in that movie a boy and his dog with their pasty faces and painted on overly rosy cheeks and lipstick. full of sunshine, totally disturbing and strange. i guess that's why some people have a fear of clowns. that fear is called coulrophobia, by the way.  geez. i guess there really is a name for everything.

if you haven't seen a boy and his dog, it's worth watching. here's the promo. it stars a very young (and very pretty) don johnson.

...no, i haven't seen "the help" -- yet...

the buzz about the help has been growing to a decidedly two toned fever pitch -- at least on the black hand side. the reviews, from armand white's entertaining empathy to valerie boyd's the help: a feel-good movie for white people have been interesting, to say the least. what some black bloggers have said is especially insightful. the book has sold well over 3 million copies so far and it's been translated into 35 languages. because of the the success of the book, the movie will certainly find box office gold. if it's anywhere near as lopsided as everyone says it is, those sales statistics are pretty frightening because that means this southern white socialite's ignorant pap about who we are as black women is being shmeared all over the world.

that's got a super high creep factor for me -- something you'd know a lot about if you're black and you've ever turned on the tv in a foreign country and seen sanford and son or good times running ad nauseum, complete with an elaborate foreign "negro" voiceovers.

i'm going to see the help -- and yes, i'll probably read the book -- for a myriad of reasons. the first one is pretty obvious: as a professional actor, i'm a part of the entertainment industry. it would behoove me to see and hear what's out there, especially as it relates to me as a person of color. most of the artists that i know in this industry of any genre that are on top of their game are all about paying attention to everything that's going on, whether it's a top 40 album or an off-broadway show. it's all the same industry, it's all entertainment.

i also have a big fear of being an ignorant actor -- someone that doesn't really know anything at all about the world they work in, much less the world itself. i want to be able to intelligently discuss and dissect ideas amongst my thinking peers. i don't want to be uninformed. i don't understand how any thinking person can criticize any work of art that they haven't seen or read. when that happens, what's really being attacked is the idea of what that art represents and not the work itself. that's not good enough, not for me.

and last but not least, i really need to be able to give a very straight answer to anyone i'll inevitably meet who will see this movie and may perhaps subconsciously view it as a documentary and not a work of fiction. i don't need to see a documentary about the help. my grandmother worked as a maid for years. all my life, i learned what it was really like, straight from her. i sometimes rode an early morning city bus to school with domestics. the stories they told haphazardly were unforgettable. even now, i am surrounded by elders who continue to set me straight, with the truth.

apparently, viola davis agrees with me. her mother was a maid. so was her grandmother.

haven't we had enough contemporary race relations movies with long suffering black maids that's told from a white perspective? wait, what? you don't remember the long walk home, with whoopi goldberg?

while i fully understand the concept of artistic and/or creative license, i often wonder what these these films would be like if we as black folk created them, or at least had more of a hand in their development. what do you think the help would be like if a (southern) black woman wrote it? or adapted the screenplay? or directed it?

i've included a well-informed response to the film from the association of black women historians. please pass it along. you probably know someone that really needs to read it.

An Open Statement to the Fans of The Help:

On behalf of the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH), this statement provides historical context to address widespread stereotyping presented in both the film and novel version of The Help. The book has sold over three million copies, and heavy promotion of the movie will ensure its success at the box office. Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers. We are specifically concerned about the representations of black life and the lack of attention given to sexual harassment and civil rights activism.

During the 1960s, the era covered in The Help, legal segregation and economic inequalities limited black women's employment opportunities. Up to 90 per cent of working black women in the South labored as domestic servants in white homes. The Help’s representation of these women is a disappointing resurrection of Mammy—a mythical stereotype of black women who were compelled, either by slavery or segregation, to serve white families. Portrayed as asexual, loyal, and contented caretakers of whites, the caricature of Mammy allowed mainstream America to ignore the systemic racism that bound black women to back-breaking, low paying jobs where employers routinely exploited them. The popularity of this most recent iteration is troubling because it reveals a contemporary nostalgia for the days when a black woman could only hope to clean the White House rather than reside in it.

Both versions of The Help also misrepresent African American speech and culture. Set in the South, the appropriate regional accent gives way to a child-like, over-exaggerated “black” dialect. In the film, for example, the primary character, Aibileen, reassures a young white child that, “You is smat, you is kind, you is important.” In the book, black women refer to the Lord as the “Law,” an irreverent depiction of black vernacular. For centuries, black women and men have drawn strength from their community institutions. The black family, in particular provided support and the validation of personhood necessary to stand against adversity. We do not recognize the black community described in The Help where most of the black male characters are depicted as drunkards, abusive, or absent. Such distorted images are misleading and do not represent the historical realities of black masculinity and manhood.

Furthermore, African American domestic workers often suffered sexual harassment as well as physical and verbal abuse in the homes of white employers. For example, a recently discovered letter written by Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks indicates that she, like many black domestic workers, lived under the threat and sometimes reality of sexual assault. The film, on the other hand, makes light of black women’s fears and vulnerabilities turning them into moments of comic relief.

Similarly, the film is woefully silent on the rich and vibrant history of black Civil Rights activists in Mississippi. Granted, the assassination of Medgar Evers, the first Mississippi based field secretary of the NAACP, gets some attention. However, Evers’ assassination sends Jackson’s black community frantically scurrying into the streets in utter chaos and disorganized confusion—a far cry from the courage demonstrated by the black men and women who continued his fight. Portraying the most dangerous racists in 1960s Mississippi as a group of attractive, well dressed, society women, while ignoring the reign of terror perpetuated by the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council, limits racial injustice to individual acts of meanness.

We respect the stellar performances of the African American actresses in this film. Indeed, this statement is in no way a criticism of their talent. It is, however, an attempt to provide context for this popular rendition of black life in the Jim Crow South. In the end, The Help is not a story about the millions of hardworking and dignified black women who labored in white homes to support their families and communities. Rather, it is the coming-of-age story of a white protagonist, who uses myths about the lives of black women to make sense of her own. The Association of Black Women Historians finds it unacceptable for either this book or this film to strip black women’s lives of historical accuracy for the sake of entertainment.

Ida E. Jones is National Director of ABWH and Assistant Curator at Howard University. Daina Ramey Berry, Tiffany M. Gill, and Kali Nicole Gross are Lifetime Members of ABWH and Associate Professors at the University of Texas at Austin. Janice Sumler-Edmond is a Lifetime Member of ABWH and is a Professor at Huston-Tillotson University.

Suggested Reading:

Fiction:

Like one of the Family: Conversations from A Domestic’s Life, Alice Childress

The Book of the Night Women by Marlon James

Blanche on the Lam by Barbara Neeley

The Street by Ann Petry

A Million Nightingales by Susan Straight

Non-Fiction:

Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household by Thavolia Glymph

To Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors by Tera Hunter

Labor of Love Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family -- from Slavery to the Present by Jacqueline Jones

Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics and the Great Migration by Elizabeth Clark-Lewis

Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

Any questions, comments, or interview requests can be sent to: ABWHTheHelp@gmail.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

popcorn, anyone?

summer is coming, believe it or not -- and that means watching (usually) visually bombastic, (sometimes) mindnumbingly cool, (almost always) fun hollywood pap. and why not? film was meant to be a great escape. it's when you think you know where it's taking you that makes it even more fun than you assumed it was going to be.

this is the stuff i'm looking forward to seeing, in all of it's seemingly innocuous glory.

of course, something in me can't help but pay very close attention as to whether or not any actors of color are in supporting roles. because yes, it matters. statistics have proven time and again that when other cultures and perspectives are included in the storyline by simply having that person of color on screen as a non-stereotype, the powers that be are inadvertently teaching everyone how to get along. and then there's that bottom line, again -- i mean, seriously. don't you want everybody's money?




well, now. thor has idris elba in a co-starring role. 'nuff said. and yes -- for that reason alone, i'll be seeing this one first.

another one?

here's the trailer for the green lantern -- another hollywood big budget popcorn masterpiece. frankly, i'm shocked that it isn't in 3-d.

i have no idea why i don't love ryan reynolds as much everyone else does. this movie probably won't change my mind but the special effects look awe-inspiring -- and there'll probably be enough sassy one-liners to hold my interest if the script sucks.

did you know that the green lantern from the non-comic books -- the one in the cartoons who hung out in the justice league in the 80s -- was a black man named john stewart? when it was time to make the movie, fans of the chartreuse superhero were left bitching, uh, i mean wondering why they put a white guy in the on-screen role. or so says my permanent boyfriend, who knows such things because lives deep in the geek forest, in a mancave filled with comic books and beer. oh, but don't believe him -- this trailer tells the entire history of the green lantern, in so much high brow supernerdy detail, it's actually a little weird.



here's a thought: if they're really going to troll through every comic book ever written to make movies, when are they going to bring black lightning to the masses?

this looks promising...

...and by promising, i mean not crappy. who wouldn't want to see where it all began? here's the new x men:first class trailer. enjoy.

my movie watching progress so far...

This is the IMDB Top 250 movie list. I thought it would make me a less ignorant film actor if I watched more movies, so I figured this list would be a good start. I’ve seen everything that’s in bold letters. Wow. I really don’t have too far to go with this one. Time to crank Netflix a little harder. If I do, I’ll be done with this list before the end of the summer.

1. The Shawshank Redemption
2. The Godfather
3. Inception
4. The Godfather: Part II
5. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
6. Pulp Fiction
7. Schindler’s List
8. Toy Story 3
9. 12 Angry Men
10. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
11. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back
12. The Dark Knight
13. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
14. Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope
15. Seven Samurai
16. Casablanca
17. Goodfellas
18. Fight Club
19. City of God
20. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
21. Raiders of the Lost Ark
22. Rear Window
23. Psycho
24. The Usual Suspects
25. Once Upon a Time in the West
26. The Silence of the Lambs
27. The Matrix
28. Se7en
29. Memento
30. It’s a Wonderful Life
31. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
32. Sunset Blvd.
33. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
34. North by Northwest
35. The Professional
36. Citizen Kane
37. Apocalypse Now
38. Forrest Gump
39. American Beauty
40. American History X
41. Taxi Driver
42. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
43. Vertigo
44. Lawrence of Arabia
45. Alien
46. Amélie
47. Saving Private Ryan
48. WALL·E
49. The Shining
50. A Clockwork Orange
51. Paths of Glory
52. The Departed
53. The Pianist
54. To Kill a Mockingbird
55. Aliens
56. Spirited Away
57. The Lives of Others
58. M*
59. *Double Indemnity
60. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
61. Chinatown
62. Requiem for a Dream
63. L.A. Confidential
64. Reservoir Dogs
65. The Third Man
66. Das Boot
67. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
68. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
69. City Lights
70. Pan’s Labyrinth
71. The Bridge on the River Kwai
72. Raging Bull
73. The Prestige
74. Back to the Future
75. Inglourious Basterds
76. 2001: A Space Odyssey
77. Life Is Beautiful
78. Modern Times
79. Singin’ in the Rain
80. Some Like It Hot
81. Amadeus
82. Downfall
83. Full Metal Jacket
84. Up
85. Cinema Paradiso
86. Braveheart
87. The Maltese Falcon
88. Once Upon a Time in America
89. All About Eve
90. Rashômon
91. The Green Mile
92. Metropolis
93. Gran Torino
94. The Elephant Man
95. The Great Dictator
96. Sin City
97. The Apartment
98. Rebecca
99. Gladiator
100. The Sting
101. The Great Escape
102. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
103. Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi
104. Slumdog Millionaire
105. Unforgiven
106. Bicycle Thieves
107. Jaws
108. Avatar
109. Batman Begins
110. Die Hard
111. Blade Runner
112. On the Waterfront
113. Oldboy
114. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
115. Hotel Rwanda
116. No Country for Old Men
117. Touch of Evil
118. The Seventh Seal
119. Fargo
120. Princess Mononoke
121. For a Few Dollars More
122. The Wizard of Oz
123. Heat
124. District 9
125. Strangers on a Train
126. Cool Hand Luke
127. Donnie Darko
128. High Noon
129. The Sixth Sense
130. The Deer Hunter
131. Notorious
132. There Will Be Blood
133. Snatch
134. Annie Hall
135. Kill Bill: Vol. 1
136. The General
137. The Big Lebowski
138. The Manchurian Candidate
139. Platoon
140. Yojimbo
141. Ran
142. Into the Wild
143. Ben-Hur
144. The Wrestler
145. The Big Sleep
146. The Lion King
147. Million Dollar Baby
148. Toy Story
149. Witness for the Prosecution
150. It Happened One Night
151. Life of Brian
152. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
153. The Bourne Ultimatum
154. Finding Nemo
155. Wild Strawberries
156. Trainspotting
157. Gone with the Wind
158. The Terminator
159. Stand by Me
160. Groundhog Day
161. Scarface
162. The Graduate
163. The Thing
164. Kick-Ass
165. Amores Perros
166. Dog Day Afternoon
167. Star Trek
168. Ratatouille
169. Gandhi
170. V for Vendetta
171. The Wages of Fear
172. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
173. Twelve Monkeys
174. The Secret in Their Eyes
175. The Grapes of Wrath
176. How to Train Your Dragon
177. Casino
178. The Gold Rush
179. 8½
180. Grave of the Fireflies
181. Diabolique
182. The Night of the Hunter
183. Judgment at Nuremberg
184. The Incredibles
185. The Princess Bride
186. The Killing
187. The Wild Bunch
188. Kind Hearts and Coronets
189. Children of Men
190. The Exorcist
191. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
192. In Bruges
193. The Best Years of Our Lives
194. The Kid
195. Dial M for Murder
196. Nights of Cabiria
197. The Hustler
198. Good Will Hunting
199. Rosemary’s Baby
200. Ed Wood
201. Harvey
202. Big Fish
203. King Kong
204. Let the Right One In
205. A Streetcar Named Desire
206. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
207. Sleuth
208. Rocky
209. Magnolia
210. Letters from Iwo Jima
211. Kill Bill: Vol. 2
212. Shadow of a Doubt
213. Mystic River
214. Stalag 17
215. Network
216. Brief Encounter
217. The African Queen
218. Rope
219. Crash
220. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
221. Bonnie and Clyde
222. The Battle of Algiers
223. Planet of the Apes
224. Duck Soup
225. The 400 Blows
226. Manhattan
227. Patton
228. La strada
229. Toy Story
230. The Conversation
231. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
232. Barry Lyndon
233. Changeling
234. The Truman Show
235. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
236. Little Miss Sunshine
237. Anatomy of a Murder
238. The Nightmare Before Christmas
239. All Quiet on the Western Front
240. The Adventures of Robin Hood
241. Mulholland Dr.
242. Spartacus
243. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
244. Monsters, Inc.
245. My Neighbor Totoro
246. Ikiru
247. Shaun of the Dead
248. Rain Man
249. The Philadelphia Story
250. Arsenic and Old Lace

See more progress on: watch the IMDB Top 250 movies

a post script

okay, i have to say this.

i write about the auditions i do because i do a zillion of them and blogging still seems like a great way to document the process. what this blog should be is a hot shot of reality for anyone who doesn't know what it's like to do this acting thing, for real. more often than not, i've learned the hard way that most people have this really convoluted idea of what being an actor is. you say you're an actor and they think of some movie star or some tv personality or some stooge on some sit-com, and and they think about how these bozos are all over the place all the time and why aren't i famous or on tv or in some tyler perry movie or something.

i remember when i moved to new york city and all these people i knew down south assumed that of course i'd be doing showtime at the apollo, so i could be on tv and wave at my momma. and whenever i'd talk to them, they'd ask me when i was going to be on the show and why hadn't i done it yet. that's what they knew. that's all they saw for me. that was their vision of what i should be doing in new york city. i had other ideas -- because like every actor, i've got my own goals and desires for my career and my life-- just like any other career anywhere else. every actor is different. and everybody doesn't want what i want.

that's why some people are perfectly happy whiling away their entire lives in the chorus of a broadway show. that's all they want.

the bottom line is that although there are a million and one variables that stand in the way of you and whatever you're auditioning for -- like, hello! there are absolutely NO black people in the cast of this show! -- get this, loud and clear: it doesn't matter if you have talent, or if you do a great audition, or if you're a massive star with the kind of charisma that can pull anyone's attention. it just doesn't matter. if it did -- if they gave the role to the person with the most talent and charisma, irregardless of race or body type -- there would hardly be any white people on broadway, at all.

there. i said it.

clearly, i didn't go to the spiderman audition so they could cast me as peter parker's girlfriend. but if they were to cast me in the show, what role would i get? think about it. they take ALL of their casting cues from the movie. aside from macy gray's 10 second cameo, did you see any black women with lines in spiderman the movie? were you hard-pressed to find any black people who were background talent? and this movie franchise is set in new york city -- arguably the world's biggest melting pot. so where were we? and if this is the case, then why would you expect them to put me in it? because miracles happen everyday?

i've got a lot of ideas that i'm growing, because i'm not very good at waiting for the phone to ring. while i'm growing things, i audition because auditioning is a skill that you have to hone constantly if you want to be good at it. and you have to be good at it and stay good at it, if you eventually want to get cast in anything. and that's only the tip of the iceberg. you have to be in a constant state of readiness -- vocally ready, and with all sorts of material prepared (if you can sing); physically together and ready for action (because what your body looks like matters); monologues all set to go for shakespeare and beyond. the more you can do, the more likely you'll work. and all of this requires coaching and lessons and workshops and workout sessions and study and so on. and all of that requires money.

don't worry. if anything happens, you'll hear it here first. but i'm not holding my breath. i'm actually hard at work.

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 Gets Paid -- The final edit

i went to the tisch school of the arts screening room to see the final edit of jake gets paid, the movie i shot with ed durante in april. it was a nine day shoot -- every saturday and sunday that month -- and it was tight. there were moments when it felt like a massive impossibility but we all got through it. the finished product needs work here and there (they haven't fixed the sound, for example) but all in all, it was astonishingly good. especially the new ending, which kind of blew me away.

it's not that i ever doubted ed. it's obvious that he knows what he's doing. it's just that with film, you don't know what you have until you've edited it and it's up on the screen. while you're actually doing it, everything is all over the place. there's just no predicting it. it's pretty clear that ed is ambitious and aggressive with all this. he's going to follow through with the festival circuit and push as hard as he has to, to make something happen. it's his first feature. (and mine.)

with theater, you can read the script and know what you've got. and when all else fails, great acting can save bad direction. not so with film. it's all about the direction -- ed's vision, his ideas, they're all up there.

the fun part is, my nieces leslie and monique came out to see it, and leslie brought her husband ernest. leslie and ernest sat behind my friend and i, and i got to talk to them before the movie started to fill them in on my life and make faces at them and stuff after everything was underway. fun. and ralph was there. and stephen. and john and judtsna. it's like i got this moment to catch every one up on at least some part of what i've been up to this year. quite gratifying.

Jake Gets Paid

here's the trailer from my first feature film, Jake Gets Paid. it's my first real role. you know what i mean: more than five lines. not background work. not "extra" work. it's me, in a supporting role that has me saying and doing things all the way through the flick. that's never happened before. i'm filled with sweet relief that it's happening now.

i was antsy about what i'd look like because i'm not as skinny as i was last year and my hair is totally natural and i'm not necessarily a film actor (yet). but when i saw the rough cut, i realized that my hair looks way better than i dared to imagine it would. and when i relaxed, the camera seemed to like me. now i'm very comfortable on camera, thank God -- which is probably why i keep getting called back for almost every commercial that will see me.

what's especially cool is that the director ed durante is using two of my songs, in the very beginning and the very end of the movie.




ed and his editor sen are close to a final edit, so they want some viable feedback. they're going to show it at tisch school of the arts (ed's alma mater) next week. i can't wait to see what it looks like and how it feels. and yes -- when all is said and done, i'm really glad that i did it.

busy signal

prego commercial audition today.
on camera audition for an indie movie tonight.
guitar class tomorrow.
more netflix.
busygrrl.