2:58 pm - Saturday, Nov. 10, 2007
As Easy As ACG

I'm going to try and write this quickly, because I'm starting to feel I "over-think" these entries too much...

Had a casting workshop this morning.

It went all right, I guess (A good casting workshop, where everyone shines, always depends on the quality of the scenes given out, and these were all good scenes).

I have a pretty big ego about this stuff, and like to be "Top Dog" when I get up and do my thing.

And my scene today -which I read with the casting person - was pretty good, I thought.

But she'd also given the scene to another actor, and in my estimation, he was better.

I didn't like that.

I'd been tempted to let him go up first, and now I wish I'd gone with that impulse.

I'm worried about the ongoing viability of ACG -- especially since Molly just took over the reins -- with a long Writers strike likely.

Turnout the last number of times I've been there has been very small, and I worry that nobody's going to be motivated to pay for casting workshops when no one's casting anything.

(Every casting person has a story of how they've cast someone years after seeing them at a workshop. But I know I go into these things hoping it won't take that long, that they'll be casting something I'm right for right now...and there'll I'll be, right in front of them.)

For me, one of the big issues reducing the number of workshops I go to each month is, quite simply, that I've now seen someone from pretty much every major casting office in town (At least the ones that do workshops).

I've seen someone from every major casting office in town that does workshops, and casts for something I'd be interested in doing (and having run out of those, I've sometimes gone in to see casting people who do things I'm not particularly interested in doing. The kind of things where, if I booked the job, I probably wouldn't mention it in here).

(And sometimes, since I'm not very organized about this stuff, I've seen some of the same people more than once. Which is basically a waste of money, if you did what you should have done the first time.)

Now, when the monthly schedule comes out, I just sign up for anyone who's listed as a first-timer to ACG.

Anyway...

The other thing that seems to be dying is the AMG (Actor Management Group), the little ACG offshoot group, that meets twice a month to discuss their marketing efforts.

We used to do it on Sunday afternoons, but some people complained that that was their only day off in the week, so we moved it to Saturdays.

I saw this coming a mile away - I thought Sundays were a good day to do it because it was a day pretty much everyone had off (Except me), and sure enough, since it moved to Saturdays, it seems like more and more people have had conflicts.

Anyway, I'm torn about the whole thing; honestly, I was losing interest in AMG meetings, or at least in their ostensible goal (I'm never going to be into "marketing myself" until I feel like there's something to market. Like my first guest-star role, for example).

But if it dies altogether, I'm going to miss the "social-ness" of it.

What I'd like, and I think I'm going to float this idea to the group, for whatever it's worth, is to just have a weekly (Or bi-weekly) get-together. Just have lunch, or dinner, or drinks, and chat about this and that. Have some laughs, blow off some steam, that sort of thing.

Cause really, I need that way more than I need to be made to feel guilty cause I didn't send postcards to 100 casting directors, letting them know I booked a one-line co-star on Monk.

Well, I actually want to write more (I've got a lot of thoughts/concerns about the Writers strike, for example). But I'm closing guest services tonite - which means I'll be there till 2 a.m. - and I don't feel like it's gonna be a happy night for me unless I get some more sleep...

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