Never Apologize, And Never Explain...

...It's A Sign of Weakness. -- Capt. Brittles, "She Wore A Yellow Ribbon"

I think I may have screwed up my agent opportunity without even realizing it. What you don't know can hurt you in this business.

Headshots are my weak point in this business. I have a hard time seeing which are really great, marketable headshots and which are not. I believe my mistake was in thinking I could ask my potential agent to help me pick which of my new headshots I should use. I believed that he would know better than I would which would be marketable, and therefore it was okay to ask for his help, to show him more options in case there was a really good picture in there that I wouldn't have thought to use. But perhaps in admitting that I didn't feel comfortable picking the pictures because of my lack of knowledge, perhaps by asking him to look through more than 5 or 6, I've demonstrated that I am a needy actor, that I need to have my hand held, and I am not at a professional level yet, and therefore he has changed his mind about working with me. Perhaps by requesting to show him my headshots online instead of driving the two hours to his office for another face to face meeting, I have proven myself in a negative way, that I'm not a team player in some way. I don't know.

Or it could be that he has simply been too busy to return my call so far. I suppose the best thing to do now is wait a few more days and then attempt to contact him again.

I am also thinking about what to do if I have shown him that I am not professional, if there's a way to change his opinion back again. I know that would take time to do, and the only plan I can come up with is to send him postcards the same as I would with a Casting Director: "This is the project I worked on recently", show him that I am working. Maybe if he sees I am working on a regular basis, which I hope to being doing fairly soon, I will be able to prove that I have learned how to be a professional.

And I have a new fear: By writing about my mistakes here, perhaps I am showing weakness, uncertainty, neediness, all of which are death in the Hollywood industry. And with my blog getting greater exposure, I don't know who is reading it, perhaps an important casting director, an important director or producer, a big name actor, or even the next student director, or independent director that I will audition for...there is no way for me to know who will read this.

But at the same time, I created this blog so that I could write about my learning experiences, my mistakes, and I don't like the idea of writing as if I'm already perfect at everything, as if I'm certain of everything I'm doing, leaving out the experiences that have helped me grow.

I just got Bob Fraser's new e-book (on CD-Rom) Nail It!: Mastering The Hypnotic Audition in the mail today. (Which is partly what prompted what I've written above.) It's a really great book about the business side of auditioning--for example, did you know that... "An audition is really ... A Job Interview ... A Sales Pitch ... A Product Demonstration ... A Networking Opportunity ... and probably most importantly ... A Business Meeting."

Bob really has great advice about understanding and working the business side of an audition, which is more important than displaying talent. He also gives a healthy dose of solid self-improvement suggestions. And having been on both sides of the casting table for 50 years, I think he has a wealth of accurate knowledge to share.

In other news, I've got an audition for another student film on Saturday, but I think this one is a long shot. I'm auditioning for the romantic lead in a musical. I'm qualified in that I have swing dancing experience, but I'm one of those people who only goes swing dancing every 2 or 3 years. So for the audition I need to bring a dance to show them, as well as a 50's style song to sing. The singing I'm not too worried about. But the dancing...I'm learning the Shim Sham. I started yesterday, and I've actually almost got it down, it's not nearly as hard as I thought it would be to learn. BUT actually having it look like a polished performance, in a swing dancer's style, by Saturday? I've got that same fantastical high that I did regarding the Karaoke Idol video we did, where in my mind, I'll be brilliant, spectacular, and they'll cast me as the romantic lead without a second thought. But realistically, I'm probably not nearly as experienced a swing dancer as they want, and my Shim Sham probably won't look as good as I am fantasizing it will simply because I don't have the experience and I've only just learned it. Nor do I necessarily have the look to play a romantic lead. Still, they invited me to audition (for a second time at that, I couldn't make the original audition date), so I'm gonna give it my best shot!

And maybe just for the fun of it, I will make a video of my Shim Sham dance and the song I'm singing and post it here for you all, show off all my hard work in all of it's... reality.