STRAIGHT UP AND HONEST - THANK YOU AMY POEHLER!
Hello my friends...
Vancouver Casting's own gifted and ever lovely Casting Director, Murdine passed this along to me. She felt these were words you would all appreciate hearing, and I couldn't agree more. (thanks Mur!)
Bottom line? Please don't take the process too seriously. Lighten up. Enjoy. Throw away any desperation. You'll have more fun (so will everyone around you!) and the river that is your beautiful life will have a chance to Flow!
And now, a few words from Amy.
"Good or bad, the reality is most people become 'famous' or get 'great jobs' after a very, very long tenure shovelling shit and not because they handed their script to someone on the street. People still think they will be discovered in the malt shop, even though no one can tell you what a malt is anymore. Everyone wants to believe they will be the regular guy from Sioux City who becomes a reluctant movie star despite his best attempts to remain a sensitive tattoo artist. People don't want to hear about the fifteen years of waiting tables and doing small shows with your friends until one of them gets a little more famous and they convince people to hire you and then you get paid and you work hard and spend time getting better and making more connections and friends. Booooring. It's much more interesting to believe that every person who makes it in show business just wrote a check to their mother when they were eighteen for a million dollars with an instruction to "cash in a year".
I was never great in auditions. When I was nervous I would often under prepare and act too cool for school. I would try to reject them before they rejected me, which was confusing since I had decided to audition and acted angry to be there. I remember one particular time I auditioned for the Coen brothers. I realized I was doing a pretty shitty job and I overcompensated by also acting like a dick. The Coen brothers were very nice. I think. I have blocked it all out.