Category: blog

Today, I had an audition over at Paramount for a pilot where the character I’m reading for is turning 30, and regrets some decisions that he made when he was a teenager. So he wishes for a chance to go back and have a “do-over”.
I am not making this up, and the show is not called “The Wil Wheaton Story”.
I had lots of fun doing it, because the show is a comedy, and the character is, and again, I’m not making this up, very ironic, sarcastic, and acerbic.
Now I’m wondering if I should sue them for stealing my move?
Anyway, since I was there, I stopped at the “Nemesis” set, and got an eyeful of some amazingly scary aliens, and got to say hello to Patrick and Brent, and John Logan.
I also wanted to wish Patrick and Brent good luck in the 4 Man Bobsled event at the olympics, in which they’ve decided to compete, as late entries.
You know, every time I go to Paramount, I am overwhelmed by this weird conflicting melange of emotions: nostalgia, happiness, and melencholy being the most prominent ones…for as much as I didn’t like it when I was younger (mostly due to my age), I really miss that place…and being on Stage 16, which was our “Swing Stage” (a stage that can be changed from week to week to be a planet, or alien spaceship, or holodeck set), really flooded back the memories. If only I had been listening to “Strangelove” or “Head on the Door” on a walkman, the circle would have been complete.
I also got a call from my friend Seth Wiley, who directed me in “The Good Things“, and he told me that I was mentioned over at LaidOffLand.com. I thought that this quote was really cool:“Wil Wheaton should be named like the Grand Chancellor of the Internet. For his assistance, I’ve named him The El Supremo of LaidOffLand.”
That brought a big smile to my face. 🙂

So I had this idea, that I thought was nice and sweet.
Turns out it was a really bad idea, and I’ve really turned some people off.
I’m super sorry.
To those of you who also thought it was a good idea, and contributed, thank you. We’ll be having a nice dinner. To those of you who felt the need to attack me about it, I appreciate your honesty, even if your words stung a bit.
I’m totally at a loss for words.
I just…well…I’m sorry, everyone.

Despite what the title says, there is not a small space that you can crawl into and take over my body…not yet, at least.
It refers to the title of this really wonderful story that was written about me and WWDN by this guy Tod Goldberg (BAHHH!!! Who’s next?!).
Big thanks to Joyce who emailed me about it…makes me want to finish SpongeBob Vega$pants.

Today was a ridculously long day. Anne and I are working on our friend’s movie (she’s the hair dresser and I’m one of the actors), and we’re shooting it really, really far away from where we live…so we drove something like 160 miles total today. We also had to juggle where the kids were going to go before and after school, and what we’d do with Ferris for the day. We are going to have to repeat this for the next 8 days, and I have a very strong, and new-found respect for families with 2 working parents, who have to deal with this sort of thing every single day.
The shoot went really well, today. All the actors are wonderful! They’re all from the theatre, so they know what the hell they’re doing, which is not something that usually happens on low budget movies. The whole crew is really wonderful, too, and we’re all having fun, and getting good work done, too.
Tomorrow afternoon, I have my second callback for the producers for this MOW. If you’ve got some mojo to spare at 4:30 PST tomorrow, send it my way, and I’ll be forever grateful.

Awesome!

Guess what?! I just checked the results of the 2002 Bloggies(TM) , and I swept my nominations!!!
I am so proud, and so humbled, and so excited!! I share awards with websites like Slashdot, FARK, MeFi, and Little, Yellow, Different!
I have worked really hard to make this website not totally suck, and I love it that so many people enjoy coming here (90,000 of you a month, eating up close to 25 gigs a month), and I am so giddy that you cast your votes for me, and WWDN. There is so much more that I want to do with this site, and, not ever being content to rest on my laurels for too long, I will be building some really cool stuff over the next couple of months.
I want to thank some people, since I don’t know when I’ll ever get to give and “acceptance” speech again…but first, I’d like to call attention to the plight of the…haha. Just kidding.
I would like to thank my wife, for enduring the website-as-other-woman, and my step-kids for hearing, “Not now, I’m working on my website”, but still asking me to play with them the next day.
Loren, Josh, Ben, Ashley, and Logjamming Hosting, for helping me get this thing going in the first place, and extra-special thanks to Loren and Roughy for really helping out with some techincal issues.
Jim and .drow for some bigtime behind the scenes help.
A huge debt of gratitude is owed to Noah Grey, who wrote Greymatter, the weblog program that I originally used, and Amy, who helped me fix Greymatter and get all my old entries exported into MoveableType, which I am currently using. I also have to give recognition to Ev, and Blogger, which was so easy to use, and so reliable, I was able to continue this weblog, even while I was having hellaproblems with GM and then MT.
Finally, I want to thank the entire community of people who read and contribute to WWDN. Whether you’ve been here from the beginning, or if you’ve just found us recently, you guys have added a great deal to this lame little website. I consistently get emails praising the thoughtful discourse we have here, and the fact that most of the people who read and post to WWDN are smart, thoughtful people, who will argue issues, not personalities, and I am proud to say that we’ve had some great arguments here over the last 6 months or so, without a single stupid flamewar.
For those of you keeping score at home, here’s the categories that WWDN won:

• Best Merchandise of a Weblog
• Best Tagline of a Weblog
• Most Humorous Weblog
• Best American Weblog
• Best New Weblog

and…

• Weblog of the Year, 2002

I am humbled, shocked, awed, excited, and extremely grateful.
Thank you.
/me does the happy dance

This week has been the busiest week I’ve had in months. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, at all. I like to be extremely busy. Matter of fact, I go absolutely nuts when I don’t have anything to do…so nuts that I make work for myself…like WWDN, for example. 🙂
I had 2 really big auditions this week, and I major deadline at work. I talked with my boss, and she said that I still can’t talk about G4 at all…but I can say that I’m doing some really cool work there, that I’m already very proud of, and I can’t wait until you all can see it.
Many people have this complete misconception about actors. They think that actors just have their agents call someone up, and then that actor is magically placed into a role, or into a movie. The way things really do happen is quite different. It sort of breaks down like this: After a role is created, the writer, and producer usually sit down, and talk about “types”, like “we want a Paul Rubens type” or “we need a brooding, mysterious, handsome man for this role”. They then think of all their friends and relations who don’t come close to any of these “types”, and try to make that square peg fit a round hole. Then they hire a casting director, and the casting director goes through his or her list of actors who he or she likes to work with, and the casting director brings those people in for auditions.
Sometimes, managers and agents hear about roles, and they submit their clients to the casting director, but, more often then not, the casting director doesn’t want to hear from an agent or manager, because the casting director would like to work with the people they already know.
This trend can benefit actors, because there are lots of casting directors who have good relationships with agents, and they’ll call those agents up, asking for a type to fill a role, and the agent can then tell the CD that he has a client who fits the type, etcetera, etcetera. This works out great for relatively unknown actors, but if you’re sort of known, like I am, it can hurt me.
There’s also this thing about not being wrong. The entire entertainment industry is extremely insecure, because everyone knows that they’re playing to a very fickle public, who can be in love with someone one week, and hate them the next (see “Mariah Carey”). So casting people get it in their minds that they “know” a person, and they don’t like to be wrong about that. They’re not adverse to “discovering” someone, but they are (sadly, understandably) reluctant to take a chance on someone, because, more often than not, the casting person gets burned.
So this process goes on for a few weeks, and, ultimately, it’s weeded down to me and one other guy, and they hire Jimmy Kimmel’s cousin.
Kidding.
Here’s why I tell you all of this: I recently added management to my team. I was really reluctant to do this, because I’ve had managers before, and they’ve never really managed to make any major difference in my career, as far as getting auditions or work goes. Basically, I haven’t been able to find a manager who works as hard as I do for me, and who cares about my career as much as I do.
Until now, that is.
One brief thing about managers, that you have to know, so this makes sense: Managers really should be an extra set of hands for an actor. They should be able to make calls when the agent isn’t able to get to somone, or is being told “no” by a casting person.
I think I’m a pretty good actor, and I know that I’m very dedicated to my craft. But that’s really not enough these days. For example, it really helps to be related to Jimmy Kimmel, or have a nice rack. As I’ve said before, many months ago, there has been this misconception within Hollywood that I was still 14, or still on Star Trek, or whatever. Casting people knew me as a strong dramatic actor, but not as a comedic one. They knew me as a child, but not as an adult. Basically, they knew me as Wesley or Gordie, and that was it.
This is where a good manager comes in.
My agents, who are simply amazing, awesome, hard-working bad asses, have struggled mightily the last year or so to convince casting people that I wasn’t that kid anymore, and to just give me a chance to change their mind, and the casting people were always saying “no”. Until two weeks ago, that was the end of it…but this time, things were really different, thanks to my new additions to my team.
My agent submitted me for a role in a very big MOW, that will end up being what they call “an event”. That’s just slightly bigger than “a very special” episode, I’m told. The casting director calls back, gives my agent a few reasons why she won’t see me, and that’s that. But this time, my agent calls my manger, explains the situation, and my manager gets on the phone to the casting director, does his thing, and I have an audition three days later, because the casting director decided to trust my manager and take a chance on me.
I have a final producers and network call back on Thursday for this role. I think there’s 3, maybe 4 of us left, out of the entire entertainment industry, within our type, going on this call back. How cool is that?! I went from “no way” to producers and network call back. I’ve been doing the happy dance all week.
Then, this morning, I got a call from one of my managers (there’s 3 of them, and they all work together. I’m sure this is terribly interesting to everyone. But it’s my damn website, so get off my back.). She had called a very important casting director at a major studio, and talked him into seeing me. He had told my agent that I was a great dramatic actor, but that he didn’t know about me for comedy. So my manager talks to him, gets him to give me a chance to change his mind, and he relents. I go into the audition, and I did a really good job with the material. As a bonus, I really liked the guy, and he really liked me (we know some of the same comedy people, it turns out). My manger was calling me after she’d gotten off the phone with him, where he raved about me, about how funny and nice I was, and told her that he was bringing me back to producers for his show.
I think it’s just awesome that these casting directors gave me the chance to show them what I can do, and I’m so thrilled that I brought my “A” game, and didn’t let them down.
I’m really excited about all of this…I think my years of suffering as the constant runner-up are going to come to an end, and pay off, finally.
Besides, Kimmel can only have so many cousins, right? 🙂