Heat, dust and horse shit

I was standing in the middle of a hot, dusty, dirt street. All around me crew members were going about their jobs setting up the next shot. My shot. My scene. And I took in every second, as they adjusted the huge lights, set up three cameras to shoot the scene, got horses into place, informed the background actors where they would be standing or walking, etc. An AD said that I could go sit in a chair off to the side while they did all this setting up, but I wanted to drink in every moment of watching this fantasy come to life. Especially since I had spent a good deal of the day in my trailer, waiting.

I wish I could share pictures, but as on many sets, taking pictures is forbidden (except by the publicity people). And I understand - they want to keep an air of mystery about the project until it's released in theaters or shown on TV.

Now that my time working on Westworld is finished, I'm back to working on my own projects and auditioning. I know I've talked about this before, but it's so important to keep being creative in between our paid acting jobs.

Of course I'm hoping there will be a few more acting jobs before the end of the year. I just had an audition for "Parks and Recreation," but didn't get it. That's a part of our business - dealing with rejection - doing our best and then not getting the role is definitely not the fun part of this business, but it's something we all must deal with.

After two weeks of being a "working actor," it's a drag to go back to looking for work. One of the many things I love about this business is that when I'm working I forget about almost everything else in my life - laundry, bills, bad dates, and all the mundane errands that we usually have to do. We even get our meals on the set - especially if we're working 12-14 hours a day on a big-budget project.

It's that all-consuming aspect to acting that allows us to get deeply into the role. And the role doesn't have to be some deep, dark, intense character - we can even be consumed by funny characters. Of course not every character or role is going to fill us with passion. But as I noted in the first paragraph, sometimes just being a part of a great production is enough to fill us with good vibes.

Cheers,

Michael