Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Tuesday Nights

Every Tuesday night, I hang out at this one restaurant in L.A. on La Brea, just south of Wilshire. We've been doing this for the last 10 months or so, apparently. Drink a lot of beer, eat sushi and sashimi, and order the karaage.

Yesterday, one of the regulars sent out an email to everybody about getting together before this big Asian film festival that opens tomorrow. And sure enough, there was a shitload of folks, most of them in the industry.

One girl, visiting from New Zealand via Hong Kong (meaning she's from NZ but now lives in HK), asked if all these folks were in the entertainment industry. The answer was both yes and no, since some of the ones that do work for movie studios actually do marketing or accounting or work in the legal dept. That's working FOR the entertainment industry, technically. But why haggle, right? I was a dang proofreader and copywriter at one, which I might as well reveal now, since it's a foregone conclusion anyway. It was at Lions Gate Films, which used to be Artisan Entertainment.

I'm not revealing any proprietary secrets or anything so there's no real worry. Plus, they can't fire me since I don't work there anymore. But I digress...

An actor is there to talk with me about copy editing, as he's interested in making some money on the side. So, I promised to chat with him, give him some pointers, maybe even forward his resume to someone in need.

After that was done, I got into chatting with another actor who was all dressed up. I had to ask him why and he said he had an audition for a Michael Bay film. What was the title? Uh..... Transformers! Yes, Transformers, the movie. Pretty wild, eh?

My friend in marketing, oh shoot, I shouldn't really mention it here. But he's doing some focus groups on a big huge movie coming out. Boy, that's lame that I can't mention some things here. It's sensitive material because the results of these focus groups can make or break a release. Anyway, per my policy, I won't jeopardize someone else's career.

We had a few other folks there, but I'll just name them in case you know them: Teddy Zee, Peter Shiao, Stephen Liu, Karin Anna Cheung, Sam Chi, Di Quon, some VJ girl from MTV Asia, a guy who was on "New York Undercover," and many, many others.

I had an audition today for a commercial. Was a little slow, getting around today, but I woke up came time my audition. I ended up missing a print audition because the time and area conflicted. But it's no big deal.

Funny thing was, I auditioned for the same exact commercial -- concept, execution, casting agent -- last year around this time. I even wrote about it, and how I got there late and upset my favorite casting agent. Well, I got there early today and ended up waiting an hour. I'm starting to think that the commercial last year was never shot. Or, maybe it just never aired. Maybe the casting didn't work. So, they're seeing some of the ones that weren't cast. Who knows? But I know one thing. I'm not pissing off that casting agent again.

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