Entertainment Bleekly

“Marketability” is a word that comes up often in my work as a career coach.  This is due to the two-faced nature of the life of a professional actor.  Yes, we are artists.  But because we seek to ply our craft in other people’s projects, we also have to be business people.  If you’re marketing plan is to shell out a few hundred dollars on a picture and tell anyone that will listen that you’re a really good actor, well, you might as well save your money and your breath.  That’s no more a good marketing strategy than buying lottery tickets is a good investment plan.

Being business savvy is therefore clearly important.  Part of that savvy is recognizing and developing your own potential.  Which actor is more marketable:

Actor A has excellent presence in contemporary work, especially for film and television.

Actor B is a triple-threat.  She can act, sing and dance.  She’s equally at home in Shakespeare or primetime drama, on a stage or in front of a camera.

They’re both really good actors, but Actor B can successfully work in many, many more mediums and formats than Actor A.  She will therefore get more auditions, and if she’s as good as she’s supposed to be, that means she’ll work all the time.

What undeveloped potential resides in you?  Could you book classical work if you just bothered to spend a few months in an outstanding Shakespeare class?  Would musical theatre doors open for you if you invested in a year of vocal coaching?

Working sometimes is great.  Working all the time is even better.  But nobody’s going to hand it to you on a silver platter– if you want it, you have to go out and get it!

Hello true believers!  I’m exhausted.  Today is my day off from rehearsals on my new show.  To celebrate I got up at 3:45am to make it to a 6:30am call to shoot two groovy scenes for one of New York City’s hit primetime television series.

So much goes into a location primetime television shoot that I could probably fill up several blog posts about it and I have a feeling that’s exactly what’s going to happen.  Right now today, while I can still move my fingers, I want to concentrate on just on the on-set experience.

If you’ve never had the pleasure let me assure you– a shooting set is the absolute furthest thing from an ideal place in which to practice the art of acting.  It’s noisy, crowded, and everything happens at warp speed.  While the makeup professional dabs your face the director is changing your big line and the cinematographer asks you to turn your face into the light and the cameraman nudges your leg over.  The A.D. is ripping up your old spike mark and putting down a new one.  The producer wants to know what’s taking so long and the last two takes were ruined because a helicopter flew over or a Coast Guard boat flew by in the background and ruined the continuity.  The stuntwoman in the water playing the dead body can’t hold her breath any longer and the sun is going to come out from behind that cloud in 30 seconds and ruin the lighting so this is the absolute last take.  If you screw it up, you won’t be back again.

Ready?

Folks, this stuff is really, really hard!  You have to be on your game to succeed in this kind of environment.  I envy the series regulars.  When the environment I just described is your daily workplace I imagine you adjust to it.  For the rest of us, our only hope is to just flat out be the best we can be.  The necessary level of skill and confidence only comes through training– lots and lots of training.

To do less is to not take the profession seriously.

Today I conducted the second part of an exhaustive course at TVI Studios on type as it applies to actors and the acting industry.   From experience, I know this to be a delicate topic with many actors.  We are naturally abhorrent at the idea of drawing boundaries around our work and recoil when somebody suggests that we limit ourselves in such a fashion.

We would like to believe that as trained artists we are capable of a broad range of roles.  And the truth of it is, we are.  Unfortunately, however, most industry professionals (producers, directors, casting directors) aren’t particularly interested in  our range.  These people tend to be very focused on the project they have at hand.  They want to find actors that fit each role perfectly.   Let me give you a personal example of how these two perspectives (ours and theirs) clash:

I used to audition for “The Sopranos” on a fairly regular basis.  The casting directors there liked me and liked my work.  Unfortunately, most of the roles that fit my age range were attitudinal young men with strong “street” looks and accents to match.  The scripts called for either sleeveless leather jackets and slicked-back hair, or for gaudy pinstriped suits and wide ties.  The characters usually threatened people.  Sometimes they subsequently killed them!

Am I capable of performing well in one of these parts?  Absolutely.  The problem I ran into was that every time I went in on one of the above-described roles I would sit in a waiting room full of actors that, quite frankly, were in real life almost exactly like the characters!  (minus, I hope, the homicidal urges).   Who do you think had the competitive edge in those situations?  I’ll give you a hint– “The Sopranos” is not on my resume!

“Type” is about identifying the most marketable version or versions of yourself, and then concentrating your marketing efforts towards those roles.  It’s about understanding that industry professionals are more interested in solving their immediate problems than in heaping praise upon you for your broad range.

I help my TVI members and our program students identify and aggressively market for their type every day.  If this is an issue you have yet to address in your own career please contact me so I can help you too.

Sorry for the grammatical error in the title, true believers.  I hope it makes sense anyway.

As the summer’s first month concludes I’m starting to see a real difference in the happiness and satisfaction of those that are taking advantage of the usual industry slowdown at this time, and those that seem to be taken advantage by it instead.

As I wrote a few months back, this is the perfect time of year to take a look at the big picture and address whatever isn’t working.  You don’t need to be pounding out those auditions, cold mailings, open calls, and other such daily and weekly activities designed to get you opportunities.  Quite simply, there’s very few opportunities available.   Your time can be better spent.

Rather than spin your wheels and suffer the frustration that inevitably results, this is a good time to do any of the following:

1.) Improve your marketing materials.  Especially if you’re not auditioning as frequently as you like.

2.) Take an acting class.  Especially if you rarely get callbacks.

3.) Take an audition technique class.  Especially if you get callbacks but rarely book.

4.) Network with casting directors and agents.  Especially if you book lots of work on your own and feel like you have gone as far as you can go without the help of industry people.

5.) Save up some money– especially if you can never afford to take a class, or network with agents and casting directors!

The people that are doing these things (the titular “dos”) are feeling good these days.  They have specific goals for the summer that are being addressed, and by achieving these goals they will be more competitive when the fall casting season rolls around.  They’re accelerating their careers.

Those that ignore this kind of advice are languishing through the industry’s slowest time of year, doing nothing to improve their situation.

I wish you all a wonderful holiday weekend!  Be sure to catch the baseball action– lots of good divisional rivalries are yours to enjoy.  I’ll see you next week.

It’s amazing how much can happen in a week!  I’ve just found out that I’ve booked not one but two jobs.  The first is another theater gig, this time one that will allow me to commute every day.  The second is a co-star role on an episode of one of NYC’s popular primetime television series.

I’m beginning to wake up to a certain mentality that some folks have when they walk in the door here.  Part of my realization is that, to varying degrees, even the most reasonable of us can be guilty of this particular mentality.  It’s based on an assumption that goes like this– “anybody can eventually become a sucessful actor!  But only the really awesome people can become successful quickly.  So if I’m going to hire a career coach to help me, shouldn’t the point be to increase my awesomeness so that I become successful really fast?  Otherwise, what’s the point?”

It’s a tough assumption to deal with for somebody like me that is constantly preaching patience.  I have to admit that on the surface this assumption actually makes sense.  The problem with it, and why it is so difficult to turn aside, is that only people with thorough industry knowledge can recognize the inherent fallacy.

The truth is, as an actor you are a risk commodity.  High-profile (and top-dollar) vendors– feature films, television, Broadway– are only interested in working with commodities (actors) that carry with them a minimum of risk, if any at all.  If you’re just starting out you are a high-risk proposition.  There’s no way around it– you have no experience, little or no training, no name recognition.  You are the dictionary definition of “high risk.”  The only vendors that will want to hire you, therefore, are those that have no choice but to take big risks.

As times goes by and you establish a track record of booked work and build a network of industry contacts the risk associated with hiring you goes down.

The primetime television job I have just booked is with a casting director that has known me for over two years, ever since I took an eight-week audition class with him.  He has called me in frequently.  I have always earned a callback.  Twice I have been put “on-hold” only to not book the role.  Now, finally, I have broken through.  What the heck took so long if the casting director clearly really liked me?  The answers vary, but part of the equation is unquestionably the risk associated with hiring me as interpreted by this casting director’s bosses– the producers of the show who make final hiring decisions.

The good news is that, as this will be my second primetime television credit, my “riskiness” will go down in the eyes of future television casting directors and producers for whom I will audition!

It’s an incremental approach.  Perhaps not the most exciting, but it’s worked wonders for me.  And it’s why the pursuit of a professional acting career takes so long, even when you have somebody awesome like me to assist you.

I hope you had a chance to catch the Tony Awards broadcast this past Sunday night. I sat down expecting a fairly pedestrian evening but instead was treated to a truly memorable show that reminded me of why I went into acting in the first place.

I was particularly struck by the breadth of what is currently being offered on the Great White Way, from cutting edge new musicals like “In the Heights” to defining revivals of classic dramatic fare ala Patrick Stewart’s turn in “Macbeth” at BAM. People ask me all the time if there is room for them in showbiz. Sunday night’s Tony Awards demonstrated that the theatre needs as many voices as it can find.

I recently had a callback for a role in a musical. Although the part was non-singing I still had to sing a few bars at the audition, which made me quite nervous. I’m not a singer and haven’t sung since college– no training, no experience, nada! Despite this, I prepped as best I could and ended up having not only a good audition but also a great callback.

The experience left me wondering if perhaps I should dust off my old songbook and get myself into some voice lessons. Watching the Tony Awards reinforced this desire. I haven’t forgotten my high school days when I was fortunate enough to play big parts in the school musicals, and how much fun I had. Perhaps I owe it to myself to find out if I can make that success translate into, and enhance, my current professional successes.

The venture will neither be cheap nor easy– voice lessons are expensive and I will need to test myself by going out on lots of auditions once my instructurs deem me ready. But my agents remind me all the time that lots of opportunities are available in musical theatre, and if a big push now might get me into the realm of consistent bookings in another year or two I think it’s well worth a shot!

As I approach an age milestone that I wouldn’t dream of revealing here I can’t help but reflect on who I was as a younger man and the hopes and dreams I had for myself. Would the Matthew DeCapua of five or ten years ago be disappointed to meet the Matthew DeCapua of today?

Naturally, when we initially consider acting we imagine ourselves as successful. Even if fame and fortune aren’t part of our optimistic fantasy, we certainly don’t picture ourselves struggling not only to make ends meet but also to find a venue for our unique and important talents (happily, I am definitely closer to “successful” than I am to the other end of the spectrum!)

With age, it is said, comes wisdom. While I might not be rich or famous I am certainly accomplished, and I am also definitely much, much wiser. Professionally speaking, every year is a little better than the one that preceded it. I keep putting in the work, and I keep seeing growth and results. And thank goodness too– if this were not the case, I think I can truthfully say that by this point I would have had to abandon ship.

As times goes by I read about more and more actors that struggled throughout their youthful days only to at last arrive into uncontested vocational success later in life. I am convinced that I have put myself in line to be one of these actors, and I like it this way. We tend to appreciate things more when we’ve had to earn them.

Come Monday, June 16th, I will move into the co-op apartment I bought in mid-May (I’ve been renovating). I’m a homeowner now! I feel quite fortunate to be living a piece of the American Dream. Also, however, this major step up gives me more comfort and security as I contemplate my future as a professional actor in New York City. There’s no question about it whatsoever now– I am in this for the long haul.

And I’m proud to be in a stronger position to help anyone that resonates with this long-term view of professional advancement.

Incidentally, I invite you to check out TVI Actors Studios’ new blog, “Inside the TVI Actors Studio.”  The URL is

http://insidetviactorsstudio.com/

I will contribute to that site, where you can learn about the accomplishments of myself, my colleagues and those that we strive to assist.  And I will continue to post my weekly industry musings here.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a post with a baseball theme!

The Yankees have made the playoffs every year since 1995 (that’s twelve consecutive seasons). This year, however, as they presently sit a game below .500, many analysts have already counted them out of October play. The team currently consists of a mix of mostly aging position players and very young pitchers, and for every step forward they’ve taken a step back.

Ambition is something every actor must have. We believe in ourselves and we believe we deserve a shot at the top jobs within whichever sector or sectors of the industry we wish to engage. We’re talented, we’re smart, we’re armed with the awesome knowledge gleaned from Entertainment Bleekly and other sources like it. And yet, we struggle. Early on, we struggle mightily. It’s frustrating and it’s not fair.

Brian Cashman, general manager of the New York Yankees, faced a tough decision this past year. He could either trade away the organization’s several talented young rookie pitchers to acquire a single ace veteran pitcher, or he could hold onto his young guns and cultivate them for future play. He chose the latter.

Although the team is struggling now I have to admire the long view that Brian Cashman took. It was brave of him– as the team continues to underperform expectations he faces a daily battle for his job. A battle he may yet lose. Despite this, he maintains that he made the right choice and that the team will be better for it, even if it means not going to the playoffs this year.

I encounter on a daily basis ambitious young actors that want it all but want it right now. They often become quite discouraged and wary when I tell them the path to where they want to go is not short. I fear their reasoning may sometimes be, if I can’t promise them a quick route to success, what good am I?

If a man like Brian Cashman is willing to risk his several-millions-per-year job on a conservative, long-term approach to success, shouldn’t the rest of us pause to notice? Brian Cashman knows that success in baseball, even at the highest level, is rarely a single player away. That ace veteran pitcher wouldn’t have made all those listless aging veteran position players swing their bats any better.  And if that ace had been acquired, and then become injured or otherwise ineffective, several talented young arms would have been lost for nothing.

We must recognize our talents and be patient as we develop them. We must treat the industry seriously and not fool ourselves into thinking that a single bold initiative will deliver us into the promised land of major booked work.

Well guess what you lucky thespians?  Uncle Matt is back from Florida and ready to start with the blogging again.  I hope you’ve all been busy and prosperous while I was away.  If you have a story or a question to share or ask please don’t be shy about using the “comments” section.  I love to hear from all y’all!

I’ll keep it short but important today.  Anytime an actor goes out of town for any significant length of time there is a real possibility of career damage due to atrophy.  All of a sudden we’re not auditioning, we’re probably not able to easily send postcard updates, and that means our contacts can dry up if we’re not careful.  Some tips to prevent this:

1.)  Before you go to start your out-of-town job send out a big mailing to announce your booking.  This can be a simple postcard affair or, if you’re savvy with such things, a flashy pamphlet with info about the show and venue.

2.) Also before you go, make up a batch of postcards announcing that opening night was awesome and the reviews are great.  Take these with you and mail them out the Monday after opening weekend.  Don’t bring blank postcards with you unless you have a laptop and printer to support the mailing.  Otherwise, you are almost guaranteed not to find the proper equipment, and nobody likes writing out 100 postcards by hand.

3.) Start submitting yourself electronically for auditions 4-7 days before you will actually be back in town.  If you wait until you’re back you’ll find that most of the auditions are a week or more away– it’s like extending your absence.

4.) If you are fortunate enough to have representation keep in touch with them while you’re away.  If your agent booked you into the show you don’t really have to do this– they know you’re away and are probably enjoying the weekly commission checks.  But if you have other agents that are not involved in your job (commercial agents while doing a play out of town, for example) don’t let them forget about you.  Every few weeks shoot them an email and let them know the show is going well and remind them of when you will be back.

5.) When you do finally come back do a postcard mailing immediately to your entire list.  By “immediately” I mean “before you unpack your suitcases.”  Call all of your agents and remind them you’re back in town (if they prefer emails send emails, if you’re nervous about calling do it at night when the office is closed so you can just leave a voicemail).

6.) Be sure to send thank-you cards to the major players that made your out-of-town job possible!  The producer, director and casting director will appreciate it and might be more inclined to think of you when suitable roles come up again in the future.

Today we bid adieu to one of Hollywood’s most legendary and epic leading men.  I urge you all to take this opportunity to read some of the many obituaries on Charlton Heston.  While its always sad to see a prominent member of our ranks dwindle, even if the man’s politics left something to be desired in the eyes of many of us, the sudden flush of new information on Heston’s life can provide valuable clues about the way the industry works (or worked), and thus help us as we pursue our own careers.

One fact I find quite interesting is that the mighty screen icon made his post-college professional debut at a regional theatre in North Carolina after finding the New York market too difficult to penetrate.  He later did return to New York City and finally was able to book work and build momentum.

Where we start is usually not where we end up!