A Working Actor's Lament (Chapter 62)
1 Of 9729...I Am On My Way
After a harrowing weekend of driving about 350 miles around town, I arrived home on Sunday night and logged into MySpace. I was sure there would be a message from one of my 225 friends; "Just a quick hello", "Check out my new photos", "Are you single and horny?". Okay, that last one was a friend request from Sally in Wichita, Kansas who just happened to stumble across my page. She seemed friendly enough, no?
After deleting Sally (and weeping that there were no new messages), I started to check out the bulletins posted to my page. There was one that grabbed my eye, smacked it around, and popped it back in the socket. A casting director friend had been posting the numbers from a breakdown she had listed this past Thursday at 5:30 PM. Luckily, there was a role that I could send my P&R for:
Jeffrey: Male, early 40s, Caucasian. Frank's son. Overly cautious, fearful, sulky, a buzz-kill worrywart who is uncomfortable with his father's situation. He loves his family, but he's not the best communicator. (Think: Richard Schiff, Timothy Busfield, David Sutcliffe, Kevin Pollak.) LARGE SUPPORTING.
For the past two days, she was posting numbers from the submissions that have been coming across her computer monitor. This was the final one. Three days after posting, she was done taking submissions. The final tally?
Total submissions: 9729
Roles with most submissions: Paul: 2495 and Gretchen: 2592
Roles with fewest submissions: That Wilson Woman: 4, Ella: 26, and June: 30
Number of girls between the ages of 6 and 14 with the names Taylor, Hailey, or Madison: infinite (okay, okay, more like 300 or so, but whatever)
Number of agencies and management companies submitting: 399, plus Actors Access
Sure, looking over the data could make an actor want to give up acting, sell all his worldly possessions, move out of his apartment and live on the streets of Hollywood begging vacationers for any spare change so he could buy a bottle of Jack Daniels praying to find happiness in the final swig. But I digress.
No, that was not going to be me. I submitted for Jeffrey, and those numbers were not up there. Between the roles of Paul and Gretchen there were 5087 submissions out of 9729...52% of the head shots were already out of competition. Those are good odds. Plus, if you take out the other numbers the casting director posted from the total left and divide that by the other 11 roles in the breakdown, that was an average of 389 submissions per role. My odds were looking better and better.
Going back to look at the breakdowns, I realized that the characters of Paul and Gretchen were in their 20's and the roles that received the least submissions were characters in their 80's. Being that I am pushing 40 years old, it hit me that most of my competition had probably began to thin out from frustration of not being in their 20's anymore. It showed me that I am now in the demographic of actors who are giving up and finding other ways to make a living. It validated that if I stay persistent, I am going to finally get that break that I have been trying to get for over 15 years. Yes, my odds were getting better and better. I was going to make it.
It looks like I will be putting that bottle of Jack Daniels back on the shelf for another day...or another actor. I mean, who am I to deprive someone their happiness?
After a harrowing weekend of driving about 350 miles around town, I arrived home on Sunday night and logged into MySpace. I was sure there would be a message from one of my 225 friends; "Just a quick hello", "Check out my new photos", "Are you single and horny?". Okay, that last one was a friend request from Sally in Wichita, Kansas who just happened to stumble across my page. She seemed friendly enough, no?After deleting Sally (and weeping that there were no new messages), I started to check out the bulletins posted to my page. There was one that grabbed my eye, smacked it around, and popped it back in the socket. A casting director friend had been posting the numbers from a breakdown she had listed this past Thursday at 5:30 PM. Luckily, there was a role that I could send my P&R for:
Jeffrey: Male, early 40s, Caucasian. Frank's son. Overly cautious, fearful, sulky, a buzz-kill worrywart who is uncomfortable with his father's situation. He loves his family, but he's not the best communicator. (Think: Richard Schiff, Timothy Busfield, David Sutcliffe, Kevin Pollak.) LARGE SUPPORTING.
For the past two days, she was posting numbers from the submissions that have been coming across her computer monitor. This was the final one. Three days after posting, she was done taking submissions. The final tally?
Total submissions: 9729
Roles with most submissions: Paul: 2495 and Gretchen: 2592
Roles with fewest submissions: That Wilson Woman: 4, Ella: 26, and June: 30
Number of girls between the ages of 6 and 14 with the names Taylor, Hailey, or Madison: infinite (okay, okay, more like 300 or so, but whatever)
Number of agencies and management companies submitting: 399, plus Actors Access
Sure, looking over the data could make an actor want to give up acting, sell all his worldly possessions, move out of his apartment and live on the streets of Hollywood begging vacationers for any spare change so he could buy a bottle of Jack Daniels praying to find happiness in the final swig. But I digress.
No, that was not going to be me. I submitted for Jeffrey, and those numbers were not up there. Between the roles of Paul and Gretchen there were 5087 submissions out of 9729...52% of the head shots were already out of competition. Those are good odds. Plus, if you take out the other numbers the casting director posted from the total left and divide that by the other 11 roles in the breakdown, that was an average of 389 submissions per role. My odds were looking better and better.
Going back to look at the breakdowns, I realized that the characters of Paul and Gretchen were in their 20's and the roles that received the least submissions were characters in their 80's. Being that I am pushing 40 years old, it hit me that most of my competition had probably began to thin out from frustration of not being in their 20's anymore. It showed me that I am now in the demographic of actors who are giving up and finding other ways to make a living. It validated that if I stay persistent, I am going to finally get that break that I have been trying to get for over 15 years. Yes, my odds were getting better and better. I was going to make it.
It looks like I will be putting that bottle of Jack Daniels back on the shelf for another day...or another actor. I mean, who am I to deprive someone their happiness?
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home