Friday, May 15, 2020

As of 2025, please go to stuff.davidaugust.com, my newer blog. See you there!

How to Feel Miserable As an Actor

Thank you for indulging the short stories I posted earlier; I was seeking a creative outlet and hope they entertained.

I did not write these (they seem to be least 10 years old and I can't find the original author), but they still feel relevant today:

HOW TO FEEL MISERABLE AS AN ARTIST
(OR, WHAT NOT TO DO, UNDERLINE ANY THAT CURRENTLY APPLY)
  1. CONSTANTLY COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHER ARTISTS.
  2. TALK TO YOUR FAMILY ABOUT WHAT YOU DO AND EXPECT THEM TO CHEER YOU ON.
  3. BASE THE SUCCESS OF YOUR ENTIRE CAREER ON ONE PROJECT.
  4. STICK WITH WHAT YOU KNOW.
  5. UNDERVALUE YOUR EXPERTISE.
  6. LET MONEY DICTATE WHAT YOU DO.
  7. BOW TO SOCIETAL PRESSURES.
  8. ONLY DO WORK THAT YOUR FAMILY WOULD LOVE.
  9. DO WHATEVER THE CLIENT/CUSTOMER/GALLERY OWNER/PATRON/INVESTOR ASKS.
  10. SET UNACHIEVABLE/OVERWHELMING GOALS. TO BE ACCOMPLISHED BY TOMORROW

Sometimes, pain may be inevitable, but suffering is optional. I'm finding things stressful, but stressed is the new black. Please feel free to let me know how you're doing: you can @ me on Twitter.

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Thursday, November 30, 2017

As of 2025, please go to stuff.davidaugust.com, my newer blog. See you there!

Keep Working

The Muse tests you and me 24/7. She flies over and peers down on us. What she wants to see is that we are dedicated to the journey, to the process, that we are in it for the long haul and in it for keeps.
What she doesn’t want to see is that we are attached to the real-world outcome of one specific project.
The goddess hates that because it shows that we have misapprehended the nature of her alliance with us and of our apprenticeship in her service.
Keep working

(from Keep Working by Steven Pressfield).

To imagine we don't invoke the Muse in our work as actors is to both miss a crux of our task, and expose us to working habits that may not serve us. Why neglect the role of that which lies outside of us and helps infuse our work with its luster? It makes no sense. Our inspiration does not come through pure force of will. But our discipline in doing our part of our work can. I can write at length on the Source of inspiration, though won't here right now.

Just found out you didn't book the role? Do some work. Just wrapped your latest project? Get working. Feeling down? Work. Maybe it is as simple as picking up some text and starting to read it aloud. Maybe it is as sophisticated as breaking down the story for the script you're writing to give yourself material to play, and moving that script to shareable form. Maybe it is somewhere in between, like learning a new speech and getting it ready to perform as a monologue. Whatever ails you, do the work of acting. We are actors: we act.

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Friday, April 15, 2016

As of 2025, please go to stuff.davidaugust.com, my newer blog. See you there!

Money and Fame Are Not the Answer

Yes, they may answer the questions of what to give your landlord, or grocer, and yes it can make certain types of roles easier to book because you've got a demonstrable built-in audience, but you probably didn't become an actor because it is a get-rich-quick scheme or the easiest way to have strangers recognize you and know your name.

Meaning. Meaning is what makes a life closer to a life worth living. Right now I am too busy to write more in depth thoughts here and now, but staying sane is important, and building a good life is more important than building a good career, even as they intertwine. And so I challenge you to take this last weekday of the week, and find something meaningful to pour some of your time, heart and breath into. Do something meaningful to you. Then, have a great weekend (thanks to my friend Heather Fusari for putting me onto the video).

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Friday, March 25, 2016

As of 2025, please go to stuff.davidaugust.com, my newer blog. See you there!

Nose to Spite Face

I'm so glad that [film or tv show] did poorly at the box office/got canceled, because I have written/am attached to something very similar to it...

And what, they were stealing your thunder? No. They weren't. They were the example your business plan could've used to justify people giving you their money to make your thing. A rising tide raises all ships. Cheering the failure of anything in media or entertainment is hard to not put squarely into the category of bitterness.

Sure, we all have shows or projects we aren't personally fans of, or that didn't reach their potential or we otherwise just don't like. But keep your negative comments to yourself. Not only do they make your own projects less possible (self-interest), and they also may offend anyone who touched the project (common politeness) who you may want to hire you, recommend you or fund you, but also: feeding the negative, giving complaints your voice, and maybe even your online platforms and name, make your world worse, make it more sad and less positive (your quality of life).

Sure, maybe thus and such a project falls sort of its potential, and misses the mark artistically. Learn from it and hope they make their money back so everyone has a chance, including you and your friends, to make more stuff. I saw one too many people on my social media feeds today cheering projects' failures, failures that translate into other people's lost jobs, lost income and artistic heartbreak. Be nice.

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this posted by David August at 4:34 PM - 2 comments -  

Thursday, February 20, 2014

As of 2025, please go to stuff.davidaugust.com, my newer blog. See you there!

Die Trying

Don't take life too seriously, no one survives it. And I'm serious. We all have a limited time here.

In our work, our characters may "die well" or "die badly" and in our imagination we probably prefer the heroic death, or the tragic it's-so-sad-they-never-got-to-do-thus-and-such (but really won't it be nice to live all those dreams before dying) death, or tell-so-and-so-I-loved-them (but really why didn't I tell them, after all what left is there to lose at the end) death. Whatever it is. In reality: how we live, the choices we make and the things we do are more important than the last instant.

Keep striving. The point is to keep acting. Not just in the continue to audition, book, work and repeat sense. Keep doing things. Ideally the right things in the right way, but maybe even better if we make an allowance that we'll make mistakes, that you're not perfect but that you keep attempting, keep pursuing, kept at "it" whatever it is. Keep breathing, keep putting yourself out there, into the world, keep following up and following through.

We don't have any more control over our own death than we did over our own birth. But everything in between is ours. And what we do from now until we are taken out of this world has our discretion in it, our choices, and it can have our dreams, our potential realized. When we get to the pearly gates, won't it be better to have continued with our best efforts until that very moment, to have died trying? Do yourself the favor: die trying. What else were you planning to do?

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Monday, August 19, 2013

As of 2025, please go to stuff.davidaugust.com, my newer blog. See you there!

Kirk Douglas On Rejection

I was excited about my first acting venture. My agent sent me to the apartment of Mae West. Most young people today don't remember her. She was a diva who traveled all over the world in a stage show with six adoring males. At the appointed time, 7:00 in the evening, I went to her apartment and was ushered into the living room. I found about ten good-looking guys also waiting for the audition. Mae West sashayed down the staircase. She was, surprisingly, a small woman walking on dangerously high heels. She looked around at the applicants. I was the first one to be rejected.
I withstood many more rejections, but finally I got a part in the play The Wind is Ninety. The New York Times critic said, "Kirk Douglas was nothing short of superb." That night in bed I poked my wife in her ribs, "Nothing! Why did he say 'nothing'? Why didn't he just say, Kirk Douglas was superb?" It takes me a long time to get over rejection

(from On Rejection).

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Friday, March 08, 2013

As of 2025, please go to stuff.davidaugust.com, my newer blog. See you there!

Refuse to Accept Shame

The artist, then, combines courage with a fierce willingness to refuse to accept shame

(from 3 Ways Content Creators Can Power Through the Pain of Rejection).

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Friday, February 22, 2013

As of 2025, please go to stuff.davidaugust.com, my newer blog. See you there!

Disappointment and Ancient History

I read once that actors do well to learn how to process disappointment quickly. That when something disappointing happens, it is worth knowing how to grieve and get over it in seconds instead of hours or days. This is not always realistic, possible or even focusing on the crux: it isn't how fast you work though disappointment that is key, it is protecting the future from being ruined by disappointment that counts.

Whatever happens in life, professionally or otherwise, there will be things that don't turn out how you want them to, or things stop being like you liked them to be. Change happens, expectations get broken. A role you wanted but don't book, a work relationship that doesn't "go" or ends, a great gig that falls apart or goes into turn-around. Things happen.

Sometimes it's no big deal, that's not what I'm talking about. Sometimes it feels like getting punched in the gut, that things have fallen apart. One step forward, 12 steps back. It is no fun, but things sometimes don't go as we'd have them go. This is life.

Letting yourself off the hook for any part you played, or think you played, can be the hardest part. It gives a sense of control to see ourselves as having a hand in a setback. "If only I'd..." "I should have..." Second guessing and blaming yourself is easy.

Whether or not the cause of disappointment is your fault at all, in any way, if there is no way to change it now, it is ancient history. Or may as well be. Learn the lesson if there is one to learn, so you can do better next time. Then, in every way you can: let it go. Release it. Breathe. Let. It. Go.

Do not let its hold continue. Work to let it go. Emotionally this isn't always something you can do just because you want to. Disappointment can't be turned off like a light switch. Things that hurt hurt. We care, as we should, about our work. Dashed expectations don't evaporate just because it would be nice. But their impact on the future can be contained. At least to some extent.

No matter how angry you are, at yourself or the situation or both, no matter how much you hurt, whatever the disappointment, do not let it touch the future. The next moment is a blank slate. It may not be possible to shield the next moment, minute, hour or day from a setback that just happened, but it is deeply worth doing it as much as you possibly can.

How does one protect the next from the disappointing last? With some difficulty, to be sure, but I think it is done in part by continuing to do what needs doing. Didn't book the role? Ok, go to work your day job anyway. Didn't get the meeting? Ok. Not fun. Go grocery shopping just the same. Lost out on a great opportunity of any sort even possibly through your own mistake? Ok. But still: do the right thing, right now, in the right way. Anyway.

Sometimes taking action, doing it anyway, acting because it still needs doing, may avoid some disappointments in and of itself. We are actors. We act. The unchangeable past from just an instant ago may as well be from the ancient past, a thousand years ago. If something can be fixed, or retrieved, by all means set it right. If not, work on what can be done, what is in your control.

At least that is what it seems like to me. Learning lessons, hard though they may be, and living through grief is not easy, nor fun. But it may be all there is left to do. So I'm off to look at my to do list, eat some dinner, meet a friend, look forward to the future possibilities and somewhere, in the gaps between: grieve for what could have been but won't be. Have a great weekend.

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this posted by David August at 6:14 PM - 2 comments -  

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

As of 2025, please go to stuff.davidaugust.com, my newer blog. See you there!

Self-Doubt is Par

I still have those voices, in your head "I'm no good" ...and I fight that.

-Gary Oldman

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Monday, November 08, 2010

As of 2025, please go to stuff.davidaugust.com, my newer blog. See you there!

Don't Help People Say No

...I know that many marketers [actors] work hard on behalf of the rejection committee. We sabotage our college applications or email pitches or websites [or auditions], predicting in advance that we're not going to make it, not good enough, not worthy. So we set out to save them the trouble of having to think hard about the no.
If someone wants to say no, let them. But no need to help them get to no before they get the chance. Let them do their job

(from Seth Godin).

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Thursday, January 24, 2008

As of 2025, please go to stuff.davidaugust.com, my newer blog. See you there!

Handling Rejection

Bob Fraser, in mourning Heath Ledger and Brad Renfro, cautions actors to handle rejection properly:
DO NOT try to deal with the inevitable rejection you will face in your career, by using any of these 5 VERY BAD WAYS:
  1. Lying to yourself.
  2. Lying to others.
  3. Listening to other people's lies.
  4. Being lazy.
  5. Destroying your product.
If you catch yourself doing any of these things - STOP IMMEDIATELY!
(from Bob Fraser's MySpace blog).

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Friday, August 17, 2007

As of 2025, please go to stuff.davidaugust.com, my newer blog. See you there!

What 'They' Want

The outcome of the audition is usually not affected by the performance of the actors who are auditioning - but only by what the producer really wants.
What ‘they’ are looking for is something that is completely out of your control.
(from Bob Fraser’s new acting career course, Nail It! – Mastering the Hypnotic Audition, which will be available soon.)

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Monday, February 05, 2007

As of 2025, please go to stuff.davidaugust.com, my newer blog. See you there!

Casting Isn't Personal

I had lunch with a family of friends a few weeks ago. Two of the kids are actors. The mom told this wonderful story about how she explained casting to her the oldest of the actor kids, when he started feeling let down about not being cast (because, of course, early in kid actors' lives, most don't even realize there's a difference between auditioning and booking, since it's all a chance to play make-believe). She said that she put a deck of cards face down on the table and asked her son to select one. He did. Why did you pick that one? she asked. I had to make a choice, and that's the one I picked. She said, Good. That's casting
(from The Actors Voice).

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Sunday, October 01, 2006

As of 2025, please go to stuff.davidaugust.com, my newer blog. See you there!

Why Agents Say No (Sometimes)

Alan Nusbaum discusses why agents sometimes pass on talent they have called in to interview, and the importance of striking a balance between too much confidence and too little.

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