Chinese New Year

I've been calling it Chinese New Year for so long that I don't know how to reference it any other way, but anyway, Happy Chinese New Year, everybody, especially all you casting directors out there. Please, don't go on strike!!

If you haven't heard, the casting directors want to be recognized as a union by all the movie studios and production companies. This usually means that they want to negotiate as a collective group for those all-important residuals. The Writers Guild has them, Directors Guild too and, of course, SAG pioneered them, so, why not the casting folks? I dunno. Can't argue for or against it. I just don't want the makeup folks and the caterers thinking they're getting a piece of the ever-diminishing pie, too.

Changing the subject, I went to an audition yesterday for a print job. Saturday castings are pretty rare, but they do happen. This was for Philip Morris, the cigarette company. I've been to this casting place twice before, both for Nokia print jobs. The first one had a potential payout of 75 big ones!! I say "potential" because they pay you a $500 fee for the shoot and then if they decide to use your image, they pay you an additional $7,000. I went to the callback for that, was put on hold for 2 weeks, causing some stress in my work schedule, then was released with a "thanks, we really liked you, but we decided to go in another direction."

The last Nokia job I auditioned for would've paid about $3500. Considerably less, but this apparently was just for the Miami market. Anyway, I went in and the Nokia folks must've remembered me because they put me on hold immediately but didn't require me to come in for a callback. I started to get pretty excited at this point, since I figured I was a shoe-in. So, I get this call from my agent, and she says, "They said, thanks, we really, really liked you, but we decided to go in another direction."

So, according to my calculations, that casting place alone is running a potential deficit of $10,500. This Philip Morris job pays about $1500, but I don't care if they have me come back 3 times. I'm not going to book it.

Call it superstition, or just bad feng shui, there are some places where I don't book jobs. However, there are some places where I book an unusually high percentage also. I won't name those places out of fear of jinxing my luck there, but that is sometimes the case.

Lately, I've been thinking about my superstitions and the idea of luck. Not too deeply, mind you, since I'm merely just an actor here. But I'd have to say that I've been on a bad luck streak for the past 7 or 8 months.

Yes, despite wearing my favorite Legg's pantyhose under my jeans and praying to Snoopy just before going to an audition, I just can't seem to get out of my rut!

A girl offered to test the feng shui on my place recently. I'm thinking of taking her up on it. But I am sort of perplexed about it. For one thing, even though I haven't worked for a while, I actually haven't NEEDED to work for a while also. In fact, yesterday, I just got a pretty good-sized check for a non-union commercial I did over 4 years ago. Four years ago! They've been sending me checks every year, always unexpected, and always when I needed it most. And if you've read my first two posts, you'll know that I'm playing it cool with the finances until April when my next unemployment checks start rolling in. I also got another cable use fee for Ford. So, even though I'm not rolling in the dough, it's not like I'm begging for loose change either.

I just talked to an actor friend who worked on the series finale of NYPD Blue for an outrageous amount of money. He had a slow period, too, for a while. He's the one who told me about praying to Snoopy.