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Acting isn’t working.

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By that I mean it takes more than auditioning and waiting for the phone to ring if you want to stand out in this industry.

Thanks to Weston McCready for saying this so succinctly in his guest post, below.

Be sure to follow Weston on Twitter @westonmccready and subscribe to his blog.

-Kahlil (at) gigsmacked (dot) com

Weston’s Wisdom:

You will often hear the phrase “Right place, at the right time.” It can happen at any moment in the most unlikeliest of places. It is like getting struck by lightning. Some people find a job by talking to some random stranger who happens to own a company and is hiring. You find that perfect gift for a loved one while standing in line and someone puts it down and leaves and in that moment you were “In the right place, at the right time.” And some actors managed to launch their careers by being in the right place at the right time. But that doesn’t mean you should go through life with blinders on like a driven horse and accept what happens just hoping to one day be “In the right place, at the right time.” You can improve your chances.

What am I talking about? How can this happen? Okay, I’ll give you an example. I am sure most of you know Harrison Ford but do you know how he got the role of Han Solo? Well he was in the audition room…..as a script reader. He would sit there setting up actors for their lines by reading the opposite part in the scene. This ended up leading to Harrison getting an audition for Han Solo. The rest is history. He was “In the right place, at the right time.” He took the job as a reader and so put himself in a better position to meet producers, casting directors and even directors.

If you want to make it as an actor you need to focus on your career and try and put yourself in the right situation for success. There are very few actors who just happen to get discovered off the streets these days. Everyone knows someone. You need to stand out from the pack. So what do you do? Here’s some advice. Ask peers and fellow performers you have worked with, “What are my best attributes? What am I best at in your eyes?” It could be the stage, or comedy. Maybe you play a great straight man/woman. Figure it out. Then focus on that attribute and try to promote it. Make a video and post it on YouTube. Come up with a short play with some fellow actors and see what theater festivals run in your area and get in on the action. Check if casting houses in your region need readers.

If I have said this once, I will say it a thousand times. Talk to people. Network with people in your field. Attend screenings and plays and industry functions. Let people see your face. Get in the action. Improve any chance you might have of being “In the right place, at the right time.”

If you think that by just auditioning and doing nothing else that you will make it, good luck. It may happen. And you might get struck by lightning sitting in a lazy boy of your fifth floor apartment of a 20 story building while watching Chelsea Lately! eating Cheetosin your underwear. Or you can improve your chances and walk to the top of a hill in a thunderstorm holding a lightning rod screaming out lyrics to Ava Maria and your chances will be very conceivable. Although I do not recommend doing this.

I may not be household name or act for a living, but I can promise you every day I plan and ask myself, “what do I have to do to make my break?” I know one day I will be “In the right place, at the right time.” The only question is when.

The Montreal Just For Laughs Festival is pretty amazing.  It feels good to finally be here, doing my thing.  But when I read this article by Bob Greene which originally appeared on CNN.com, it reminded me how fleeting fame is and how important it is to stay grounded and surround yourself with people who don’t care how successful you are. Thankfully, I am surrounded by great people – from my wife, friends and family to my attorneys at Myman-Abell but it never hurts to check yourself.  Now I know why Frank was so fiercely loyal and that is a quality in short supply these days.  I only pray that I can also be remembered this way.

Frank Sinatra’s lesson in loyalty

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Some people are so big during their lives, even death doesn’t seem to entirely take them away.

So it is with Frank Sinatra. He left this earth in May of 1998, yet there is seldom a day when you don’t hear his voice drifting out of a radio, seldom a week when you don’t catch a flash of his face on a television screen, or read a reference to him in a newspaper or a magazine. Sinatra: The word itself signals something. Those three quick syllables: sharp, snappy, staccato. The images the name brings to mind: the Rat Pack, ring-a-ding-ding, very good years, strangers in the night. Many adored him, some despised him; few were indifferent.

In New York, especially, his voice remains omnipresent. His “New York, New York” might as well be the city’s official anthem. Many times when I’ve visited Manhattan I have walked past what was said to be Sinatra’s favorite restaurant: an unprepossessing-enough-looking Italian place on West 56th Street called Patsy’s. This, Sinatra legend has it, is the spot where he could relax, where he felt most at home.

I’d never gone inside. I had imagined it as a peak-of-the-mountain place, a restaurant where only the most savvy would congregate, men and women who were at the pinnacle of their games, who had long ago learned and mastered all the angles. After all, this was where Sinatra had his regular table, wasn’t it? How could mere mortals have a shot at fitting in?

This trip, I came in for dinner. And learned a lesson.

Sinatra, in his chairman-of-the-board years, in his sell-out-every-seat-in-the-concert-hall decades, did, in fact, gravitate to this place. But it wasn’t because he was the biggest name in entertainment. It was because at one point in his life, he feared that he might be finished.

“My grandfather was the first member of our family to know him,” said Salvatore J. Scognamillo, the current chef and co-owner of Patsy’s.

The grandfather — Pasquale “Patsy” Scognamillo — had co-owned a restaurant nearby called the Sorrento during the first years of the 1940s. The young Sinatra was brought in one day by his boss, bandleader Tommy Dorsey. “I’ve got this skinny kid from Hoboken,” Dorsey reportedly told Patsy Scognamillo. “Fatten him up.”

Sinatra swiftly became an international singing idol whose voice and face made women and girls scream and faint; riots broke out at his concerts. Patsy, meanwhile, left the Sorrento and opened Patsy’s. Both men — the crooner and the cook — were doing well for themselves.

But in the early 1950s, Sinatra’s career crashed. He was no longer a kid. His records stopped selling. His romance with Ava Gardner was on the rocks. His record company dropped him. The winner suddenly was being widely seen as a loser, washed up.

People who follow the Sinatra story know about the eventual comeback: how he landed a role in the movie “From Here to Eternity” and won an Academy Award, how his career zoomed again, how he became the living symbol of success and swagger.

Yet in those down years, no one could have anticipated the rebirth. Sinatra was a has-been, yesterday’s news.

“He would come in to the restaurant alone for lunch,” Sal Scognamillo said to me. I could tell that this was a thrice-told family tale — or a thrice-times-thrice-told tale. That didn’t make it any less compelling.

“My grandfather would sit with him,” Sal said. “There would be people eating lunch who would avoid making eye contact with Sinatra — people who used to know him when he was on top. Sinatra would nod toward them and say to my grandfather: ‘My fair-weather friends.’”

One November, on the day before Thanksgiving, Sinatra asked Patsy if he would make him a solo reservation for the next day. “He said he would be coming in for Thanksgiving dinner by himself,” Sal said. “He said, ‘Give me anything but turkey.’ He didn’t want to think about the holiday, but he didn’t want to be alone.”

The restaurant was scheduled to be closed on Thanksgiving. But Patsy didn’t tell Sinatra that; he told him that he’d make the reservation for 3 p.m. He didn’t want Sinatra to know that he was opening especially for him, so he invited the families of the restaurant’s staff to come in for dinner, too. He cooked for Sinatra, on that solitary holiday, and it wasn’t until years later that Sinatra found out.

That’s where the loyalty came from. That’s why Sinatra never stopped coming to the restaurant. In later years, when Patsy’s would be jammed with diners hoping to get a glimpse of him, few understood why the most famous singer in the world would single out one place as his constant favorite.

It was no big secret to the Scognamillo family. They all knew. A person recalls how he is treated not when he is on top of the world, undefeated, but when he is at his lowest, thinking he will never again see the sun.

“Up those stairs, that’s where Sinatra used to have his table,” I heard a man say to his date as they entered the restaurant. He’s still packing them in, 13 years after his death.

‘Who remembers a kindness that comes when kindnesses are in short supply? Who most treasures being made to feel welcome when every door seems to be slamming shut?

In the wee small hours of the morning, only the lonely.’

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CNN contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose books include “Late Edition: A Love Story” and “Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen.”

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-Kahlil (at) gigsmacked (dot) com

The Montreal Just For Laughs Festival is the largest and most respected comedy festival in the world.  It has long been a dream of mine to perform Basic Training there and after selling out several major festivals around the world, I thought this one would be a great opportunity.  On July 14-22 I will be performing my show at the Montreal Just For Laughs Festival.  How long did it take me to get my foot in the door?

2002 – I sent a tape in.  no response

2003 – I sent a tape in, called 17 times. no response, no return phone call

2004 – I performed my show at the Montreal Fringe Festival, received an Honourable Mention from Just For Laughs due to the fact that my show was not considered a comedy.

2005 – Called and emailed several times to get my show staged at Just For Laughs. No response.

2006 – Called and emailed – no response

2007 – Made contact, then the trail went cold.  Tried to follow up.  No response.

2008 – Called and emailed – no response

2009 – Called and emailed – no response

2010 – Called and emailed – got a response

2011 – Performing at Montreal Just For Laughs.

I look at this list and I don’t see 9 years of rejection, I see 9 years of opportunity.

Embrace the rejection and use it.

-Kahlil (at) gigsmacked (dot) com

So, what’s your real job?

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I hate that question.
Most of the time I lie.

I don’t tell them I’m an actor.

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I’m an astronaut.

I work in a cardboard factory.

I pimp parakeets.

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It’s not because I’m not proud of what I do. . I say anything to keep from feeling the need to justify my career to someone who doesn’t really care and has most likely already forgotten my name. If it’s somebody I know or an acquaintance of the family I still glaze over it. Not many people understand what it really takes to survive in a business that isn’t defined by a steady paycheck, a degree, or some sort of false seniority.

Ever get tired of feeling like you need to tell people that you have a ‘plan b’ so you appear more ‘mature’?

I’ve often wondered why the same attitude isn’t directed towards people who play the lottery. Think about it. Millions of dollars are spent on lottery tickets every year. People hoping to ‘hit it big’ because their numbers match. They gamble with their money, we gamble with our talent. So what?  According to recent studies I have a better chance of winning three Oscars
than you have of winning the lottery.

Maybe having a ‘real’ job is the problem, not the solution. I know some honest and
hardworking people with real jobs – I used to be one of them - believe me, they’re not for everybody.

Three things to remember:

-You can’t hide from what you’re meant to be. Ignore it or embrace it, but do it with heart.

-If you didn’t have to work for it, it won’t last.

-Don’t share your dreams with people who can’t make them a reality. I’ve learned that even
with a successful show that continues to sell tickets all over the globe a lot of people are coming to see how good I’m not. Doesn’t bother me- my dreams are locked away.

Stick to your guns and follow your dreams. The next time somebody asks what your ‘real’ job is, tell them let’s race-you buy lottery tickets and I’ll see you at the
Oscars.

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Kahlil (at) gigsmacked (dot) com

I was raised by strong women.  Most of the men I admire were raised by strong women.  Life is realized in the womb of a woman.  Stands to reason we shouldn’t treat them like shit.

But women are marginalized in our society in ways that are criminal.  I’m not just talking about the billions of women

who are sold into slavery via the sex trade or trafficking.  The book Half the Sky exposes that subject better than I could, so don’t take my word for it – buy the book.

I know this is a blog about the entertainment biz, but nowhere else are women more discriminated against than in the entertainment industry. From actresses to execs to assistants, a fair shake seems to be a pipe dream unless you show some skin or stuff your face with botox.  But why?  And will it ever change?  I have no idea.  I’m a guy.  But Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook has a very interesting view on the subject and it clarified things for me, how about you?  Check out the video below from her recent appearance at the TED Conference and tell me what you think.

Kahlil (at) gigsmacked (dot) com