JOURNAL TRANSCRIPT for EPISODE 6: Workable Beefcake
JULY 12, 2001, THURSDAY
I bought a ‘Billboard’ and ‘Variety’ this morning. In my corporate contracting this summer I haven’t read the trades in a while. Labor strikes in the industry, including SAG-AFTRA have been averted, but no one will dispute that there’s a lot of stockpiled entertainment product, so the Industry is dead for the working-class, much less working-class actors.
A casting director left his office in L.A. recently to spend a year in Florida because he says the only thing he can hear on the phone, quote, “is crickets.” John Coleridge, a director who is also temping with my agency at Terrific told me that story.
Even the temp or contractor market, if you’re trying to enter now, is pretty much closed. My timing, as far as quitting my full-time job to contract was brilliant. Out of work and desperate (by their standards) Industry people are flooding the private sector and I’m on the front lines of this to tell you that some of them are pitiful. They hate that they have to contract, yet they’re like spawning salmon trying to land gigs they can’t handle – complaining that they don’t have clerical skills, they’re hard-headed and can’t follow instructions; they’re too myopic to know the game. I had to learn, straight up, less than two months ago.
And what is the game, according to Karl?
Hollywood is becoming – is – the most corporate and conservative it has ever been and there are no rebels or excitingly creative spirits in this present landscape, ok?
To survive this shit and maintain the presence and living quarters required to stay in this city, Los Angeles, you need to know the corporate workplace and see these CEOs and how they operate and what’s up in the place where your potential ‘audience’ works when they’re not paying to see you.
The only way to do that is to go and work there; stay on top of shit. Being a contractor is a drag plenty of times, depending on the assignment, but it’s not being a hooker and some of these actors I see need to grow up and face reality – and not just actors – the crew, P.A.’s, etc. Who wouldn’t rather be on a film set? You know?
I am on these assignments, at these companies, watching and seeing management styles, politics (hire your own race or sex, mostly), and how they stock supplies, what the people are listening to and watching for entertainment. I filter all that stuff.
I’m very aware that I’ve had to start over and that I couldn’t get 60 cents out of the Industry in the last year. I couldn’t get the props to sit in an office in Hollywood, but I can get thousands from the corporate sector. They’re not scared of me and I’m not wallflower or docile man. I just watch and work and earn and get my network, contacts and access on. I will be back!
As for my work scene, I’ve been assigned to a research dept. at UCLA in Westwood. It was an 8-day assignment, originally. It looks to go 13 days. It’s $20 an hour. It’s an okay assignment made easier with the other two contractors I’m working with, including the director John Coleridge I mentioned earlier. It’s also raised my profile even higher with the Terrific Agency.
Bebbles Stone and I went to day and signed with a real estate agency that gave us a lot of listings, and we should be able to do very well with them. It’s tiring as fuck and Bebbles has been alternately sweet and alternately ire-inducing. I love Stone as tremendously as you can love a person, but lately he is exhausting.
JULY 18, 2001, WEDNESDAY
I’m here at UCLA. My assignment has been extended another week. This dept. cranks out the projects but there’s little that’s coherent or logical in the behind-the-scenes , but they do important work. Instructions change midway through the project. The researchers I’m working with don’t put entire, huge folders away where they should go, nothing is alphabetized, and half of the team I’m working in the room with seem to like each – or not – so no one is on the same page, they just do their part of a task and fuck seeing if it jibes with the other tasks. They’re somewhat socially stunted, and my patience is thinning. I’m taking the tack that this is not my company and if they want to work inefficiently, so be it.
JULY 23, 2001, THURSDAY
Writing from a break in the action at UCLA. Four more days and that should be the end of the assignment. It’s been tough, lost of minutiae and the other guys on the project, except for me and John Coleridge, have been terrific at evading hard work and heavy-lifting. I don’t appreciate that I got stuck with a lot of the grunt work. I think that’s bogus, but so typical of the entitled dudes, especially when there’s disorganization amongst the supervisors. This week will mark 3 ½ weeks since I’ve bene here. I’m going to Las Vegas next Wednesday with my best male friend, Nigel from Hawthorne.
We’re just staying until Friday evening so Nigel can go back to work on Saturday and I can keep looking at rentals with Bebbles. I am so looking forward to the trip and that’s why I’m working this shit job.
JULY 23, 2001, MONDAY
I was just watching some of an “E! True Hollywood Story” and one of the actresses in a major after-hours dustup was my first manager in Beverly Hills. How bizarre. By the time I met her and she signed me, she was also a producer. I know she’s been through some harrowing things, personally, as of our last communication. We stopped working together once I started booking my own opportunities without any help on her part. I’ve seen her in action. She had the confidence, the clothes, and the game. She could have done a lot. She never even bothered to see my show that ran for 6 months at The Tamarind or the West Coast Playhouse. That was definitely a fruitless alliance, although I always overrode her advice. She knew I wasn’t stupid and that I wasn’t malleable beefcake. That’s why our association was a professional bust, although I worked a good deal from December 1997 and all of 1998 without an ounce of her help. I just hit a wall in 1999, I’d been in the weeklies and culture magazines and onstage for most of it and had to turn down General Hospital and film auditions because of the schedule of my play. If a taping goes over, they don’t want to be responsible for you missing your curtain or call time. They didn’t have time to miss me, and I have yet to clear it. I haven’t been able to connect with one creative professional for over 2 years. A definite dry spell.
JULY 24, 2001, TUESDAY
Here in Westwood Village at UCLA, waiting for work. I’m being very quiet and not fraternizing with the rest of the contractors except for John. We go to TOGOs for lunch every day and strategize and talk Industry shop and laugh a lot. I’m sure my being quiet here doesn’t endear me to the rest of the contractors but this is stressful work, an entire L.A. County project, and I don’t want to be stressed any further or indulge in general Industry talk or trite Q & A sessions. I take comfort in being quiet. I need that stillness.
At home, either one of me and Stone’s contractors’ checks has been late, every week, without fail. That gets and it’s annoying. Bebbles was in a pissy mood with me last night and at one point he wondered aloud whether I love him. I cut that short. That’s too ridiculous a topic to discuss. He knows it. We’ve given each other everything. My response? “We’ll talk about it later.” Ha! He knows I do.
JULY 28, 2001, SATURDAY
The UCLA research gig is over! Hallelujah! It all ended on a decent note and one of the research leads catered a $200 lunch for our team and we told childhood stories around the table. Mine got huge laughs and my supervisor, Dionne, told me , “You are funny! You tell great stories. I laughed so much!” I was just glad the shit was over!
When I went to the Terrific Agency after the assignment to turn in my timesheet and give my availability, it would be great to have an assignment lined up within the next week and a half, Corrine – one of the agents – tried to be vague about it. She said, “I don’t have those kinds of powers.” She then put her hands up, in that way that agents do when they try to look like they’re deferring to your request, as if to halt your, perhaps, visible irritation. I’ve made that agency some serious money and I expect some synergy.
JULY 30, 2001, MONDAY
From the L.A. Times by writer Meg James:
“Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. reported Friday that it lost $61.3 million in the second quarter because of two major box-office flops.
MGM blamed the Martin Lawrence-Danny DeVito film, “What’s the Worst That Could Happen?” and “Josie and the Pussycats,” a co-production with Universal Studios, for the slide. On a per-share basis, the loss was 26 cents. MGM had a $6.3-million profit in the year-ago period.” [end]
I submitted for both of those films. Everything works out for a reason.
Sitting her in the apartment getting ready for the Vegas vacation with Nigel in two days. We’re good friends, so the trip will be a nice break from L.A.
The UCLA job is over, as I said, and I’m so thrilled that I do not have to go back to that office. That was easily the worst assignment I’ve worked so far for the Terrific Agency. They called me today and offered two days as a proofreader, but I’m serious about having this week off and I turned it down.
I’m confident that I will be more than okay in life. Stress will be reduced and Bebbles is assuring me in a lot of ways. I hate that some key friendships, over the last 5 years, have suffered.
Friendships, especially among actors, are infinitely easier when there’s no water under the bridge. Things happen for you at different times and intentions get lost in the competition and time will help us and I do hope we can one day enjoy a stress-free drink, because some of us have hurt each other. The difference with me is that I never envied my peers I came up with and they only lost me when they waited for Hollywood and money. I feel like those inevitable disappointments got heaped on me.
The Depeche Mode ‘Exciter Tour’ is coming to L.A. I think Dave Gahan is very interesting and has a great performing style. Their poster, standing with shades on under palm trees with dried berms is awesome. Whiskey!
AUGUST 2, 2001, THURSDAY
Here in my room on the strip in Las Vegas. Nigel mostly came to sleep and rest. He’s in his own room and we meet for meals, then go do our things. I’ve missed Stone something fierce in the quiet night hours. My life in Los Angeles is very complex and that has been shadowing me the last 24 hours our so. Stone and I want to move and we got a loan for that, praise God and my sister, Ellie who gave it to us.
There’s a lot to think about and handle back in L.A. I need to remind myself to give it to God. If anything, this trip has reminded me completely of how much I love and need Stone. We get into so many arguments lately because we are so constantly trying to keep our heads above water. It’s going to have to be easier on us from now on. That’s needs to be our new goal. It’s a lot more in-depth than I can put into this journal entry. It’s okay, though. We’re strong and we love each other and we’ll prevail.
Corrine, the allegedly powerless agent from Terrific called me in Vegas from Los Angeles and said that the marketing firm called and wants me for another 3 days next week. Riley specifically requested me and raised my rate. Something tells me this is about another recall for some restaurant chain merch. I’ll probably be working with Riley, and we work well together. I’m going back to the corporate well.
[end]