Adventures Of Atom Smith

So, that part I finally got? The one I couldn’t discuss? It got written out. So, I’m going to be a P.A. for twelve hours tonight from 6:00 am, until 6:00 pm. Now, normally I would have no problem with this schedule, except that the property manager came by the house yesterday and said the owner might be here today at 9:00 am. Yeah, a 9:00 am, and a 12 hour gig starting at 6:00 pm on the same day. Explain a good plan sleep schedule for last night that makes that work. ::grumble::

I called my dad and I asked, “hey, is it cool if I crash at your place tomorrow morning?”

Also, it seems my allergies have exploded. I mean, just crazy. Those of you who know me well know I am not much of a pill popper. Excepting cough drops, the last time I took medicine was the great headache of 2003. I took some aspirin for that one. Now, I’m on allergy meds and tylenol. This did not help my ability to get a good nights sleep for today’s estimated 23 hours of uptime. (Awake by 8:00 am to prep for 9:00 am, followed by shooting until 6:00 am plus travel and toothbrushing time for bed around 7:00 am…)

So, I saw the last performance Mall Mart the Musical last night at Curious Theatre Company. I had a good time. I’m not really much of one for musical theater, so if I liked it, you know it was at least a bit unusual. Of course, I was supposed to have somebody come with me, who bailed at the last minute, which was annoying. I also had a very chatty perfect stranger sitting next to me. I guess that made up for not having a friend to chat with during intermission. Also, I was sitting near the band, so I couldn’t hear some of the songs very well, especially during solos.

After the show, I was supposed to have been hanging out with the friend who had bailed on me at the last minute, so I just went home and was bored for a while. Started searching for some information on Mall Mart to see if it was going to be playing anywhere else, and apparently ran across the MySpace pages of a couple of the performers. One of whom, according to her blog, seemed to hate the writing of Mall Mart. Maybe it was actually a good thing that I was sitting to close to the musicians?

I want to see Mall Mart turned into a movie. I never see musical movies, so this is very odd for me.

The thing I can’t talk about thanks to NDA, I didn’t get. They never called me back, so I finally called the person I shouldn’t name to see what was up. Apparently, they can still use me in an auxilliary role I shouldn’t discuss for one day of shooting. So, for reasons I can’t discuss, I think I am still quite an emotion I’m not certain is covered by the NDA but I won’t specify.

Denver’s 48 hour film festival is coming up. The man known as The Markle sent me an email about it. Team registration starts tomorrow. Markle used to be in Mouth Off. He also emailed Dave, so we may have the start of a team. I also emailed Jon, the director of intercourse, PA, to see if he is interested. If he can bring a crew and Markle and I can assemble a team of in front of the camera type people, we may have an ueberteamforwinning. Feel free to contact for more informationses.

I hate flag-thumpers. You know, like radical Bible-thumpers, but they use patriotic themes to try and convince people that anybody who doesn’t shout that America is the best country in the world, and is by definition infallible, is a satan worshipping commie terrorist sympathizer poopie head.

Had an audition this evening in Denver. Had to sign an NDA, so I’m not going to say much more about it.

Feel good. The producer did say that I nearly made her wet herself from laughing. That may be a good thing.

Ah, Freak Train… Last Monday was Memorial day, which naturally occurs on the last Monday of the month. This makes it the one holiday Freak Train is guaranteed to overlap with every year. So, full of barbecue, I headed to the Bug. So full, in fact, that I had no particular interest in performing. Alas, the life of a performer is no so simple as that. You see, when I got there, I was the 13th Freak. This is the one person arbitrarily selected by a number picked the previous month to perform without having bothered to sign up.

Now, generally speaking, the 13th Freak is given some guidance about what to perform, and some items to use and whatnot. Geree (the host) however decided to give me absolutely nothing, except to put me suddenly on the spot by telling me to ask for suggestions from the audience, since she knows I am a member of an improv troupe. They were “Lindsay Lohan,” “Florida,” and “spelunking.” The result was the single crudest performance of my life. The people who went before me opened the door for crude humor. It’s not like I was the first one to do any. I don’t specifically recall if the joke about getting a handjob from somebody who has shit in their hands came before or after my slot, but I do recall that the girl who talked about her mother getting a vibrator and how a vibrator should be washed before be used nasally came before me. However, I still feel that my routine was a particular kind of crude because it managed to be both sexually crude, and also make use of really terrible stereotypes. Yes, friends, I spent five minutes on stage as a Cuban immigrant to south Florida who spent his time spelunking in Lindsay Lohan’s fiddly bits, for the purpose of charting them because “you can fit four or five immigrants living in an apartment the size of a celebrity coochi.” If I ever try to re-use that character, for the love of coochi, please shoot me. Apparently, I was in a sour mood from not having wanted to perform in the first place.

About half the audience left after intermission, and the second half only had about half the usual number of performers. I guess it was an off-night all around. The guy after me (and the last before that intermission) rambled for five minutes about how he has a dog that is sometimes noisy. It was sort of the highlight of the night because he didn’t manage to offend anybody. At least not that anybody noticed. Nobody actually payed much attention to him, so we weren’t quite sure what he had been talking about.

Had an audition this morning. Wasn’t great. I was running late, because I couldn’t find the place, and I stumbled through my monologue. Also, it’s for a musical, and I don’t sing. Meh, should hear back within a few days. Also, heard about a project apparently related to “America’s Next Producer,” which is being made here in Denver. I’m going to try and schedule an audition. Wouldn’t surprise me if there is an NDA associated with that one, so I may wind up not mentioning it again on the off chance it goes well.

Finally uploaded the baby buffalo pictures to my picture gallery…
http://www.forkforge.org/forkgallery/

Haven’t updated in a good while…

Auditioned for another student movie last week. Got an email saying that they are redoing the auditions in June. Not callbacks, they are just redoing the auditions. That makes the first audition just an annoying waste of time.

Went to Wyoming, camped in Yellowstone. Took pictures. Installed Gallery so you can look at the pictures. I’ll be adding some more pictures over time. Ashley and John, with whom I was camping, both took pictures, but I haven’t gotten them yet. I’ll probably also add all the pictures currently in my facebook profile and pictures from my trip to Europe a while back once I make time for it.

Visit the gallery here!

Got an email from a fellow at the Bug Theatre about bringing improv to the Bug. Haven’t had a chance to talk to him about it, but we’ll see what happens. (That’s the theatre where they have Freak Train.)

I know Intercourse, PA still isn’t up. It will be.

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…”

I recently responded to a craigslist post which mentioned a company looking for ideas for a cooking show. I hadn’t mentioned it on the blog because even I can’t imagine there is much of an audience looking forward to reading every pointless little detail of every email I send.

I got a reply back from “Taste This Production, Inc.” about the email that I had sent, asking for me to call and discuss the possibility of making a TV show. So, I called, and then was told that the producer would send me an information packet to review. Since they hadn’t yet asked for money, I figured it might not be a scam.

I recieved the information packet. Apparently, they were not only vaguely interested in making something, but ready to proceed with making a pilot. Of course, they hadn’t seen a photo of me, hadn’t seen a demo tape, hadn’t seen a recipe, hadn’t seen my cooking, or anything else. Reading a little further in the information packet, and I found the clincher — they were really interested in making the pilot, but I would have to pay $5000 of the costs. ::sigh:: I had actually managed to convince myself they might be completely legit. Oh well. So, no cooking show for me any time soon. May have to try and talk to an aspiring director at CFS and try to actually shoot a pilot of a cooking show. You know, for not five thousand dollars.

Freak Train was last night. Finally figured out something to do.

They were doing some of the plays for “365 Plays / 365 Days” last night. If you don’t know what that is, then you aren’t one of the cool kids. Five of the slots were pre-scheduled, but two were kept open for last minute signups. I decided to sign up for first slot. So, I was given a one page play. At first, I had rather intended to recruit folks from the crowd to assist me with the play, but I ultimately decided against doing so. You see, some of the guys for the pre-scheduled slots had brought costumes and set pieces and whatnot. So, I realised that even with several random audience members, I would be hard pressed to compete. My inspiration was to go in the exact opposite direction. Rather than trying to compete with costumes and set pieces, I would try to do my play as minimally as possible. The most minimal version of the production I could imagine was just me, in the dark. In the style of a radio play. I borrowed a flashlight so that I could read my lines in the dark, explained to the lighting guy that I needed it completely dark, and performed my play while hiding behind a staircase so that most of the audience couldn’t see the flashlight.

There were only two speaking characters, plus my decision to add a narrator to introduce the radio play and read the stage directions, and a fourth voice for the horrible screaming coming from “off stage.” So, with only four voices, I apparently didn’t have too much trouble keeping them apart. People seemed to get it, which was nice. Anyhow, It has forcibly convinced me that Atom Smith might just work if I bother to write it. Yargh.

The student film festival takes place at the Kenneth King Center Building in the “Concert Hall” at CU Denver on Thursday, May 10th. I am told that it starts at 7:00 pm.

This is the website for the location:
http://www.kennethkingcenter.org

Here is a “Map and Directions” page which has a PDF which notes a lot with free parking:
http://thunder1.cudenver.edu/CAM/kingcenter/KCMap.html

It’s at the Auraria campus, which is basically at Colfax between I-25 and Speer. Unfortunately, the film festival does not announce the final playlist in advance, so I won’t know for sure if Intercourse, PA is actually going to be shown. After my conversation with the director, I can say that it is apparently likely. Either way, I am also told that admission is free. With any luck, most of the films won’t suck too terribly, and it’ll be a fun time.

Just finished shooting the Amish sex movie today.  All in all, I have to say it was a good shoot.  The crew was very organised and hoopy.  We started on Friday with the opening scene at the director’s apartment.  The shoot was done with two cameras, which seems to have worked very well.  Everybody was really on the ball.  Yesterday, we shot the bulk of things at the Lakewood historical heritage somethingerother on Wadsworth, which stood in for an isolated Amish community.  We even shot one of the scenes next to a perfect classic red barn which looks exactly like you imagine a red barn ought to.  There were a few items here and there which gave away the fact that it wasn’t actually run by Amish, like the occasional padlock and the like, but I doubt anybody watching the final product will notice.  Besides, the Amish never actually refer to themselves as being Amish, so I guess they can’t be held accountable for a few modern conveniences.  One of the scenes we shot yesterday is the “streamlined scene,” a.k.a. scene 3.  Jon has already edited it, and said that it turned out well, so I’m hoping the rest of what we shot works out similarly.  The streamlined scene contained a bit of improvisation between me and my co-lead, so I was worried that editing it would be just a mess, but Jon said it wasn’t too bad.  If I recall correctly, there was only one camera for that scene because the other camera was in the barn with the Amish folks when we did it, which I expect would have made editing a little less convenient than if there were two cameras on the improv parts.  Anyhow, the streamlined scene will probably wind up being a good chunk of my demo reel, so I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Then, today we shot the remaining two scenes in the car.  Driving there, and then the very last scene which takes place as we drive back home.  These were shot all with one camera just mounted on the hood, with no auxilliary angles of the dialog.  So, the whole last scene may just wind up being a single long shot.  If not, then the only cut aways will be exterior shots of the car.

The film will be submitted the a film school shindig which takes place on May 10th.  Unfortunately, the bastards running it don’t release a show list ahead of time, so I won’t have any idea if the film actually made it into the show until I get there, which seems unconscionably stupid and arrogant on the part of the organizers.