ABB

The week after a busy week of auditions is that time when you hope and pray that you booked something, or, in the very least, you get a callback. After all, with 5 auditions, ideally you want to be booking a minimum of one of them.

One out of five, you ask? Yes, one of out five. The 20 percent rule. Actually, when I was non-union, I had a 30 percent rule and I generally met that very consistently, year after year. When it comes to print, I've been somewhere around 40 percent. Last year, I booked one job for every two I went out for. Yup, 50%.

That's a great feeling and the type of attitude you need when you walk into that room full of actors: this job is probably mine.

Other actors always complain to me that they're not going out enough or that they book jobs so that entitles them to go out on more auditions. Well, it doesn't always work that way, at least not with me. I remember once booking 3 jobs in a row, back to back. Yeah, I thought I was hot stuff. Send me out, I'm going to book it. Well, I didn't get an audition for several weeks. Lost that feeling just like that. Then, after I did audition, I didn't book a job for several months.

I used to have this ideal that I needed to book a job every month. Not anymore, however, since I've become SAG. But you know, real troopers out there know that at every audition, it's like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. And it's our job to make it fit. Because we just can't wait for the right job to come around that fits us just perfectly so that we can be lazy and just be ourself. No, that's a lame and retarded way to pursue this business.

Real actors book. And book and book and book. You see Glengarry Glen Ross? Remember Alec Baldwin's monologue? ABC. Always Be Closing.

Well my motto is ABB. Always Be Booking. Or else something's not right. And I either need to think about quitting this business or getting my ass fired up and improving my skills.

A few years ago, I spent a week in Australia touring with the Barbra Streisand tour management team. If you want to see someone who has driven herself to succeed, that's Babs. No casting director in New York in their right mind would ever think of casting that face and that nose and that hair and that odd voice. Not unless she made it happen.

Look at me, calling her Babs. Hmm, maybe I AM gay....