Adventures Of Atom Smith

Those of you who know me, know that I’m pretty laid back. It takes a lot to really get to me, and I’ll usually forgive almost anybody. Maybe it’s that Buddhist upbringing, or maybe it is just because I find it more convenient to go with the flow. Regardless, it’s exceptionally rare that anybody annoys me enough to merit any sort of inclusion on “The Shit List.” Only a tiny handful of people have ever managed to annoy me enough that I would decline to work with them. Even then, I typically hope they will have good fortune in their endevours without me, and don’t go out of my way to speak ill of them.

Rachel Wear has managed to annoy me to such heights, that even as I ponder the situation as intensely as I am able, I can’t imagine any way in which I could be in more sour spirits at the present moment. Any further annoyance on her part, and I would have simply been content to ignore her, resulting in a net decrease in my own level of discontentment. It’s as if she has perfected the art. So, I don’t forsee any circumstance in which I will ever work with her, and if anybody ever comes to me asking my opinion of her, I won’t hold my tongue.

She is a student at Colorado Film School, and refers to herself as being with Devil Cat Productions. I met her when I went for an audition at CFS. Usually, I have found working with people at CFS to be a pleasant experience. With this audition, I was just asked to give a monologue. I wasn’t shown a script, given any information about what exactly I was auditioning for, and didn’t have a chance to discuss characters. This is probably the single worst way to run an audition because you can imagine an actor far more brilliant than myself picking a monologue that is unlike a character for which he would be suited, and then not being considered for the role. What’s more, since I am something of a working actor, I really only have an interest in playing interesting characters with interesting dialogue. That’s the only thing that’s useful for my demo reel, really. That’s why I was willing to drive to Colorado Springs to be in a student remake of a scene from Trainspotting. Or, why next weekend I’m playing a flashback scene of a priest from when he was a young alcoholic drug addict. Or why I played an uptight apartment dweller on a quest to have sex with an Amish woman. Consequently, I have absolutely no interest in being in a production I don’t find interesting. Student films don’t pay anything, so being in a production means donating my time and effort, and gas money to a student film maker. It’s a gift. At this point, I really don’t need to be in any more student films. I grace some lucky student films with the gift of my participation because I am a nice person.

I mean, I have had multiple days of shooting on three different features. I’ve worked on projects that were nationally broadcast, and my work is seen weakly via the Stream of Consciousness network. I’m not famous, and I’m no super star, but at this point I am well enough acquainted with enough people ‘in the biz,’ that it’s not exactly an exciting thing to work on some run of the mill student project. I’m not trying to sound like a braggart when I talk about the stuff I’ve worked on, I’m just trying to explain where I’m coming from at this point.

So, I auditioned for Rachel, by doing a monologue, and then leaving. At this point, she really hadn’t come across as particularly friendly or appreciative of my bothering to take time out of my day to come and give the monologue, nor appreciative of the time I had taken out of the previous day to look up an remember said monologue. Then, I don’t hear from her for weeks. Weeks.

Then, I get a call from her about a week ago asking me to be in a project with her for today. I was busy, so I wasn’t able to get back in touch with her immediately. I kept getting home after midnight because I’ve been working on a project of my own, and I didn’t want to call her that late because I expected it would have been rude. She didn’t even leave me with the name of the character she wanted to play, explain the type of project, or tell my a title. A few days later, I get an email with a script and a call sheet. I’m expected at the hospital set to play a Doctor in a PSA at 8:30 on a Sunday morning. I’ve never met anybody else with the audacity to just decide to put me on a call sheet for 8:30 in the morning on a Sunday without having yet confirmed that I’m available, nor having sent me a copy of the script, nor having told me which character I was being asked to play. My efforts were not being looked at as a gift. Even better, it was for some PSA about how you shouldn’t leave babies in dumpsters and I only had one line.

But, I’m a nice guy. Despite having been booked all day Saturday, and also booked this evening, by a lucky fucking coincidence I had nothing planned for this morning. Except sleep. And, I had been planning on working later last night on the script for my project currently in development, but had to be down unusually early for me to have a shot at being anywhere by 8:30 in the morning. Now, I brought this situation up with several people who’s opinions I greatly respect. Every one of them was genuine surprised that I intended to show up. I was apparently expected, and I didn’t want to leave an aspiring film maker out in the cold, so to speak. I tried calling Rachel Wear with Devil Cat productions a few times, asking her to call me back, so that I could talk to her and confirm things. She never called me back. Now, she had initially called me almost a month after my monologue reading. I called her back in less than a week. Consequently, as near as I can figure it, that makes me about four times as prompt as her. She has yet to return my calls to her from several days ago.

So, in spite of her not having called me back to confirm things, I woke up early this morning, drove all the way across town in cold, foggy, rainy weather with made the going annoyingly slow. I arrived at the location (a large hospital), parked, and called the number that the contact sheet said to call when I arrived. I walked around in the cold rain, looking for any obvious signs of a production, and was told “I’ll call you right back.” So, I continued walking around in the cold for a few minutes, got a call back, and was told that my part had been recast, and I wasn’t needed. I was naturally miffed at this point, but I asked where the location was anyway, so that I could poke my head in, say hello, and shake a few hands. At this point, I was more than annoyed with Rachel, but I expected she might have some crew that would be good to say hello to. Quite possibly some people I’ve worked with before who I am already friends with that I would have liked to say hello to. Also, I intended to, if there was a few moments of downtime, take Rachel aside and privately explain to her my perspective, in hopes that she could learn from it without having to put anybody in the awkward position of acting as a middleman for that conversation. I was told something to the effect of, “I’m sorry, the director says she’s very busy, and has told me not to tell you were we are shooting.” I didn’t write down the exact conversation. So, I tried, as politely and and respectfully, and directly as I could to explain my perspective on the course of events to the young woman with whom I had been speaking because Rachel Wear was “too busy.” I gave her my time and trouble, and she wouldn’t even let somebody tell me come in out of the rain. Maybe it’s a good things I never actually made it on set. I’d have been tempted to just spit in her face by way of an explanation of my perspective.

I’ve been busy lately, so I haven’t updated, so I’ll post about a whole bunch of things in one hyper-mega-uberpost in multiple topics. Enjoy.

I’ll start with some positive press I recently recieved. It was for my last Freak Train, and you can read the Freak Train blog post at http://myspace.com/freaktraindenver and reading the blog post called “April’s Freak Train and 365!” If you aren’t a member, you may not be able to read the post, so I include the relevant excerpt here:

Slot 1: Saint Lazarus Points Out the Saints: Will Rosecrans signed up for this play that night and, asking for all the lights out, ducked behind a platform with his script and a flashlight and created a radio show of it. Brilliant.

yeah… Somebody thinks I’m brilliant. One down, something like five billion nine hundred ninety nine million and some odd to go…

Westminster Wife Show (Part Deux) — Last week, the guys from Westminster Wife Show called me back and I got to do another day of shooting with them, and also I got to know the crew a bit better than the day I was an extra. New Frontiers Media Group is apparently not just a front for TEN. They are said to be a substantial group with their fingers in all sorts of productions. Also, the day of shooting that I did last week involved no nudity. Lastly, the crew was actually quite good, and clearly was trying to do good work. So, it looks like my brief impression of the production that I got while I was an extra was quite biased and unfair, and I’m actually quite looking forward to seeing the final movie. (I may or may not share it with family…) I actually made a point of calling one of the guys on the crew today to inquire about getting some of the raw footage from what we shot so that I can use it in my demo reel. Hopefully, that can get pulled off.

The Markle was in a student production called “Gumshoe” recently. It was “premiering” at a student film festival at Front Range Community College, so I decided to check it out. Unfortunately, it was just about the first thing played, and I was running late so I missed it. However, it seemed I was extremely lucky because they were giving away DVD’s of the show, with “everything” on them. And “definitely Gumshoe is totally like on there.” So, I excitedly got the DVD home, and tried to find Gumshoe. The only little quirk is that the DVD only had six clips on it, and none of the was Gumshoe. So, I still haven’t seen it. If you see it pop up online, let me know. Also, I got to see like seven different skin cancer PSA’s. That sort of surprised me. I also saw the worst demo reel I have ever seen in my entire life. Seriously. I know you are supposed to be nice to student work, but I just really want to say that one of the demo reels I saw was absolutely the worst I have ever seen in my entire life. The other demo reel I remember was merely bad, but not so memorably so.

An email forward is going around lately declaring May 15th a day when you shouldn’t pump any gas. Maybe Atom Smith needs to have an episode about “Atom Smith and the concept of an inelastic fucking good?” Hey, let’s all buy gas the 14th or 16th and not reduce actual demand for gas and all by having (for example) a day of no driving. That’ll teach the bastard oil industry. You all realise that per-week sales figures won’t even show this “protest” right? ::sigh::

The comment period for Real-ID ended yesterday. You all send comments to DHS, right?

Intercourse, PA’s probable premiere is Thursday – directions and everything are a few posts down.

A friend of mine and I have an idea for a reality TV show. Need to figure out how one pitches such a thing.

Craigslist is filled with scammers. Tip for the day: If they have stuff available “In your area” but don’t know where you are, it’s a scam. Doubly so if they try to use poorly executed high pressure sales tactics, “If you are serious about this, you need to call me right away…”

Okay, so, haven’t blogged much recently.  Not too much going on, but a lot of little things.  So, a mad dash through random topic follows:

Mouth Off.  Still no word about when/how we hope to return from hiatus.

Amish Sex Movie.  It has been renamed from “Sowing The Seed” to “Intercourse, PA.”  I also had my first rehearsal last week.  It was a good time.  I got to meat my costar, who seems like a really nice guy, so I think that this will go fairly well.

Standup.  I have my first actual scheduled and confirmed standup gig coming up.  It’s on my handy dandy calendar at the right.  It’s April 19th, G-rated, probably about a five minute set.  I’m writing some new material.  Also standup related, there is a Mercury Café open mic night tomorrow.  I’ll probably check that out.  I may not perform, as I have never seen the open mic night there, and I’m not even sure how one signs up, which may need to be done in advance.  But, I may well perform at the Merc at some later date.

Radio.  Radio Avenue is doing a taping on Sunday, May 6th.  I may well try to do something for them, too.  From what I understand, they tend to sort of scramble at the last minute when preparing, in order to make sure the humor is as fresh as possible, especially for political jokes, etc.

Writing.  Work continues on Laser Kickboxing on Mars.  No, I’m not going to tell you the plot.  You would need like 87 million on disclosure agreements, a pound of flesh, and your grandfather would already have to know the plot before I could even consider explaining it to you.  But, active progress has resumed on writing this feature length screenplay.  It’s still at partial-first draft stage.

Atom Smith.  With the various other things going on, I deprioritised Atom Smith.  He isn’t forgotten, but he needs a bit more work before I go crazy and start releasing stuff.

Video Games.  Wow, I have started to play them enough that I think I’m wasting too much time.  On the other hand, Rise Of Legends is a wicked cool game.  It’s not targeted toward the hardcore strategist in the way that Rise Of Nations is, but the steampunk world of the Vinci is an amusing playground.  The biggest downside:  The voice acting is frankly terrible.  I understand that schedules are always too tight, and it’s hard to get everything done.  I’m not necessarily saying that the actors are incapable of voice acting.  I’m just saying that they didn’t do any of it on this project.  I think hearing this game has instilled a deathly fear in my for working on Atom Smith now.  I’ll be constantly thinking, “What if it turns out almost as bad as the voice work in Rise Of Legends!?”