Adventures Of Atom Smith

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!?”

I was an extra for a movie today. It was interesting. I ran across a notice online which explained that it was a mockumentary. One of those comedic fake documentaries. The movie was the Westminster Wife Show. According to the notice:

*Must be 18
*Must be available Tuesday 4/3 afternoon/evening
*Must be comfortable with female nudity
*Must be reliable
*Must sign talent release forms

I like how they were careful to put the part about female nudity precisely in the center of the requirements in order to avoid makinmg a big deal about it. I think they may have come up with the one about being “reliable” (whatever that means for a gig where you have to show up one time at two in the afternoon…), solely so that the nudity line item was buried further in the middle of the list. Since they billed it as a mockumentary, I assumed that it would be mostly comedy, with the possibility of a nipple slip or something happening once or twice during the shooting.

The email address for the production was a single use email address at hotmail.com, rather than personname@productioncompany.com. When I got there, I signed a release for “Colorado Satellite Broadcasting,” which was apparently the name of the production company. When I asked what sort of distribution was planned for the film, I was rather vaguely told that it was intended for an “On Demand” video service.

Now, the clever among you have already come to some sort of suspicion about the exact nature of this film just from what I’ve said so far. Kristen, on the other hand probably doesn’t want to know, and ought to just skip the rest of this post.

That’s right, I was an extra for a “saucy” Pay Per View film. And, by “film,” I mean cheaply made video production. Colorado Satellite Broadcasting is apparently some sort of shell/puppet organization which doesn’t have its own website. It has to do with New Frontiers Media Corporation. Of course, New Frontiers operates under a different trademark when they distribute their content. I quote from the New Frontiers website: “TEN, The Erotic Networks, is a leader in the electronic distribution of adult oriented entertainment.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. I wouldn’t have tried.

The Westminster Wife Show is a competition which features events like changing clothes in front of a camera, topless laundry sorting, and topless beer carrying. All in good fun, I suppose, but they had some of us record brief interviews about how much we liked the “Show withing the film” before we got far enough into the day to realize that there isn’t any plot. This should actually prove rather funny with people talking about how they feel that the show has done so much to help the community, immediately followed by a scene where a topless woman sprays beer all over herself. In order to ensure a minimization of boredom, I didn’t bother to maintain any character consistency in my several mini interviews. At one point I was a Westminster native, later a crazy Russian, and then an Irishman. There were many boobies, but I spent a bit of time plating pizza and helping the crew because the boobies were phenominally boring. Good luck to the editor.

I heard back from Madcap about Sunday’s audition. Got a nice form email saying that they had picked some other folks. Oh well. Not a terrible thing. The theater is fairly close to where I live, and it would pay. Even so, my improv style is a bit different from their’s. I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way, but I’ve never been a big fan of loud stock music or props and they use both. Now I just need to find something to do that I would like even better.

I know this blog has several readers. Leave a comment, dammit. This blog is all about me trying to make myself feel important by getting other people to read about stuff that I do. Comments help with the feeling important part.

It’s nothing like The Italian Job. It involves neither Mini Coopers now Charleze Theron. It also doesn’t pay. Such are student films. But, I like the concept, and I think it’ll be a good piece to get on my reel. I’m not sure exactly how long the movie is supposed to be. The script is seven pages at the moment, but the director said that he is okay with some improvisation during the shooting. So, the final script may wind up being effectively padded by some unscripted banter. I’m guessing something like ten minutes, but I haven’t even time myself reading the script.

The audition day was a sort of comedy of errors. For one thing, it randomly snowed. The evening before was quite nice. Today, the day after, all the snow has melted. But, yesderday it was snowing like heck the entire day. The McDonald’s I stopped at to get something to eat during the drive down to Denver in the snow ran out of Chicken McNuggets. I ordered them, paid at the first window, and pulled up to the second window, and then was told they were out. At Kinko’s, their online printing system refused to believe that a JPG could be printed without all sorts of special instructions, and then never made it through to the people. That whole thing was incredibly annoying. Then, when I finally made it to the audition, the gal running reception was shown where the water bottles were, and kindly offerred me one. The minor oversight in her preparation was that nobody told her where the Men’s room was. This is sort of a mean trick. Best of all, the Men’s room I eventually found was apparently closed for cleaning.

The audition itself went well enough. I did a monologue adapted from Extracts from Adam’s Diary by Mark Twain. It was about the creation of Eve. Since it had biblical and relations between the sexes themes, it seemed appropriate for this particular audition. While I was rehearsing it in the wee hours of the morning before the audition, I was reading it to myself in various voices in order to improve my ability to remember it. One of the voices that I read it in was vaguely Woody-Allen-esque. It wasn’t the best Woody Allen impression in the world, but it was apparently recogniseable. Anyhow, I found that voice more amusing than the others that I had used, so it is the one that I went with during the audition.

The film itself is a short odd-couple buddy comedy about two college room mates who respond to a sex for hire ad and travel to Iowa in order to attempt to impregnate Amish women. Based on a true story. I have got the part of Jon, who is the sort of lead / straight-laced buddy.