Category: blog

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is it too much to ask for a little professional courtesy?

Posted on By Wil

This is entirely unrelated to my last post. As far as I know, the show I auditioned for a week and a half ago hasn’t done callbacks or finalized a cast.

Okay. So.

Casting for a TV show asked me to keep some dates open, because they said they wanted to cast me in their show.

Neat! I kept the days open, including rescheduling on other work that conflicted.

So they call us a few times to ensure I’m available … and then they just fucking disappear. They drop off the face of the Earth, and don’t make any effort to return our calls or get in touch.

A few days before the days I kept open arrive, I call the other job, which I had rescheduled, and tell them I’m available after all.

I start work on the other job. It’s really fun and I’m enjoying the process.

My manager and I are talking about something unrelated, and I ask him what the status of the TV show is. Like, did they push production by a week or two? Did they change their mind? What’s should I plan for the next few weeks? He hasn’t heard from them in a week, and since it’s two days into the week they asked me to keep open, we correctly presume the job isn’t happening this week. He calls them, and they tell him, “oh we cast the role with someone else,” and that’s it.

These motherfuckers repeatedly asked me to keep this week open, because they said they wanted to work with me, and then when they decide to cast someone else, they don’t even have the fucking courtesy and professionalism to get in touch with us and let us know that they don’t want to work with me after all. What if I had passed on this job this week? What if I lost the paycheck and the ephemeral, theoretical boost to my career that

It’s so fucking rude, so fucking inconsiderate, so fucking CONTEMPTUOUS of me and my team, I will *never* work for this show. I am nobody’s Plan B, and I have too much self-respect to give these fucking people the time of day if they ever deign to reach out to us again.

You know, Casting, it takes literally one minute to get on the phone or send an email and let us know what you’re doing. Roles go to other people all the time, and it isn’t a big deal. What IS a big deal is giving me and my team the impression that we’re going to work together, and then just fucking ghosting us when you changed your mind.

Actors are people, too, and we deserve the bare minimum of respect when YOU reach out to US about working on YOUR show. Sure, we don’t expect feedback on auditions (it would be nice, but we know you’re seeing 20 actors for each role, and maybe you don’t have time to deal with all of them AND make the deal with the person you cast) BUT! When YOU call ME and ask me to clear my calendar so I’m available for you, and then you just fucking ghost me, you are an unprofessional ass, and I don’t like you very much.

I used to take this shit personally, but I don’t any more. This isn’t about me. This is about an industry that is so far up its own ass, the people who cast actors have stopped caring about us as human beings, and treat us like disposable, interchangeable widgets they can pick up and throw away whenever they feel like it. It’s bullshit, and my heart goes out to all the actors who are starting out right now, and have to deal with this shit every day.

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for ten minutes today, i’m going to be an actor

Posted on By Wil

Today, I have my first audition in … a year? 18 months? Something like that. It’s in 2 hours, and I’ve been preparing the scenes all day. It’s been super fun to break the sides down, try out different intentions and doable actions, and despite my best efforts, now I kind of want to do this role, because I think it would be fun. I won’t book it (I never do), but I’m surprisingly excited just to go into the room, flex my actor muscles for a minute or so, and then come home and get back to my regular life.

I usually go into a room with my scenes prepared, my take on the character, and the professionalism you’d expect from a 40-year veteran actor (holy shit that’s a long time). I have to emotionally separate myself from the outcome, because that kind of thinking gets in the way of my ability to perform, and interpret material.

But I’m not gonna lie: I’d love to work on this movie. The script is adorable and sweet and a lot of fun. It’s a movie for young people, and can I just tell you how strange it feels to know that I’m going in for a role of a teacher/mentor/cool adult in a project that’s really about the kids this character takes care of.

Maybe this will be the first time in over 15 years that I book a job from an audition. The timing is about right, in terms of swings of the bat and actually getting on base. Most actors have between 20 and 30 auditions for each job they book. I average about 4 auditions a year, which affords me lots of time to write and live my life, but makes it VERY unlikely that I’ll be cast in anything. Everything you’ve seen me in since Criminal Minds has been something that I was offered, or asked to do. So in about 15 years, I’ve had about 60 auditions and booked zero of them. I am *way* due to get a hit.

And I have to go into [major studio] today, and forget all of that. I have to forget how unlikely it is that I’ll book the job, or how fun it would be to play this charactern and how much I’d love to be part of something that’s fun and positive and inspiring to kids. I have to throw all that away, pretend none of it exists, and just do my best job interpreting the material, and bringing it to life.

“Just.”

If I’m lucky, what I do will be what they want. But if I’m not the person they want for this role, it’s not going to wreck my day the way it has 60 times over the last decade and a half, because I’ve done a lot of emotional heavy lifting and a lot of vital psychological work to separate my self-esteem and my personal sense of worth, from my success or failure in auditions. Like, I’ll be disappointed when I don’t book this job, but it’s not going to destroy me and make me question my entire life and career choices the way it did as recently as six months ago. It’s profoundly weird to know this.

ETA: I just got home.

I posted some videos on my Instagram story, if you want to see how it went, but … I had SO MUCH FUN! I loved the material, and every single person in the room was so welcoming and present and friendly, they created an environment where I could do my best work.

And I think I did my best work! I made some clear and deliberate choices, and I had a lot of fun bringing this character to life with them. I did two scenes, which show the two (profoundly opposite) poles of this character. I got some direction and made an adjustment on one of the scenes, and had even MORE fun with the direction than I had on my own.

Overall, it was a fantastic and fulfilling experience, and though it remains EXTREMELY unlikely that I’ll be cast, I feel super great about what I did today.

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Here it is! The limited, collectible, hardback printing of Dead Trees Give No Shelter is now available.

Posted on By Wil

Remember when I told you that I was doing a very limited, collectible hardback printing of Dead Trees Give No Shelter?

Well, it’s ready to go on sale RIGHT NOW! There are just 200 of these, and when they’re gone, they’re gone. I’ve priced them accordingly, at $100, which I know is a lot, but I’m offering a discount for today only, as my very small way of saying thank you to everyone who has supported me and my work for all these years.

It’s been awhile since I did my own little indie print run like this. In fact, I think I have to go all the way back to the initial release of The Happiest Days of Our Lives to find the last time I handled printing and order processing and printing all on my own. It’s a fair amount of work, but it’s tremendously satisfying to see where in the world my words are going to go live.

I’ll start taking orders right away, but just know that it’ll be a couple of days before I’m actually able to ship these, since I’m just one person doing it all myself. (And because I’m doing this all by myself, I’m not able to autograph or number these. HOWEVER! If you come see me at a convention from now until the heat death of the universe, I’ll be thrilled to sign your copy for you, at no charge.)

I’m really excited for everyone who wants one of these to finally get to have one. The design and artwork in this edition is just beautiful, and it feels very special to me. Oh, and if you care about this sort of thing (and I hope that you do) this is printed in America, in a union shop.

Buy Dead Trees Give No Shelter – Limited Edition Collector’s Hardback.

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i exist

Posted on By Wil

About a year ago, my Internet friend, Ross, told me about an app that some friends of his developed. It’s called Exist.io, and it aggregates all the fitness and diet and exercise and mood trackers we have in our lives, so we can get a clear overview of how our choices affect our existence.

I was primarily interested in discovering how certain habits and inconveniences affected my daily life, and Exist will let me see correlations that I wasn’t necessarily making on my own. For example, I figured that sitting in traffic (that most Los Angeles of pass times) would have a uniformly negative impact on how I felt at the end of the day. I mean, I fucking hate traffic, so I presumed more traffic would equal more bad days. But after a year, I observed that it has no measurable impact, at all.

What I did learn, though, was surprising to me. The single most consistent factor in how I feel about myself and my day, on the 5-point scale, is how productive I am. If I fuck off for a whole day, I feel shitty about myself. If I’m not being creative, or doing something that makes me feel useful, I feel shitty about myself. When I do things that are productive, like writing, or getting a lot of adulting done around the house, I feel better about myself. So my newest challenge is to figure out a way to feel worthy and good about myself, even on the days when I can’t or just choose not to be productive.

You may notice that I didn’t post here once in June. Part of that is feeling like I didn’t really have anything important to say, but a really, really big part of it is feeling like I’ve lived my life in public since 2000, and I kind of need my own personal space. It’s scary to feel that way, because I’m struggling with this sense that my acting career is over, and though I’ve written two manuscripts in the last year, neither one will be released for quite some time, so I feel like my writing career is moving much more slowly than I want. I’m afraid that, if I pull myself out of the public too much, I will immediately fade out of whatever relevance I have, my entire professional career will die, and I’ll be forgotten before the end of the year. Being middle-aged and recovering from childhood trauma is THE BEST THING AND DOESN’T SUCK AT ALL!

Krusty the Clown groan

Anyway.

Because I’ve been feeling unproductive and moderately to completely worthless, I haven’t been posting anything here (there is a LOUD and INCESSANT voice in my head that keeps telling me nobody cares about me, and nobody misses me when I don’t write here, and that voice sounds an awful lot like my dad). But I’ve been writing a little bit on my Facebook, and I answer asks almost daily on my Tumblr. A few things have come up that I feel good about, and at least one of those things feels worth sharing today.

So here’s something from Tumblr that I hope some of you find useful:

Ask: Hi! I just went 48 hours without a drink and I’m really proud of myself and wanted to tell someone. Thanks for being so open about your sobriety, it’s a big inspiration for me and I’m sure for many others.

Answer: Hey way to go! Do you plan to stay sober? If no, accept my admiration and go on with your life!

If yes, may I offer some thoughts based on my experience? A couple of big things I lived through that would have been nice to know about in advance?

The first few days weren’t the hardest for me, probably because my body was detoxing lingering alcohol-related stuff. But right around the seventh day, I started to get cravings, and it was tough for a few days there. I was on the phone with Hardwick (who was like a sponsor to me, though I didn’t to a program) almost every day, asking lots of questions, like “is this normal?” and “will this end?” The answer was yes, and sure enough about ten or so days after I had my last drink, I went for weeks without any serious craving.

Then.

Oh shit.

Then, around the fourth week, I had this day where all I wanted to do all day long was drink all the beers in the world, and I couldn’t figure out why. On that day, “one day at a time” became “one hour at a time”. I got through it with the support of Chris and Anne, but it was really challenging.

Around that time, I became aware of all these feelings and emotions and painful memories that I had been numbing with alcohol. They were like FINALLY YOU CAN DEAL WITH US! And that was a whole thing. I went to the therapist a lot around that time, and I read a lot of books that helped me understand and begin to heal the trauma I had been self medicating away.

So the two things I guess I hope you’ll take away from this are:

  1.  It’s totally normal to have INTENSE cravings, and they will pass. I used a LOT of seltzer water, LaCroix, and the occasional caffeine-free soda to satisfy the habit I had of having a drink every night. Having those cravings doesn’t mean you’re weak or anything like that. It’s just habit and biology. After about 45 days, the cravings (which were rare and usually mild) stopped. That was, like 1200 days ago, so I am proof that the intense cravings can and will stop. Oh, but when Anne’s having a great IPA and I’m like, “Man, I wish I could have that,” I remind myself that the reason I stopped drinking was my inability to have one and stop. I’m not going back there, so I make a choice not to drink every day.
  2. It’s totally normal for some profound emotional things to surface, and you should expect it. You’re going to have this overwhelming clarity and perspective on your life that you didn’t have when you were drinking. If this happens to you, you may want to be prepared with a therapist appointment.
  3. Oh, and one last thing that I just remembered is that I kept (and keep) a private diary/journal about my experiences, where I am relentlessly honest with myself. That made a HUGE difference for me, and most of my sober friends tell me that they wish they’d done. It’s profoundly helpful to read back and see my progress, while I contextualize things that I didn’t realize were super correlated.

It’s been almost 3.5 years since I took my last drink, and I don’t regret it at all. Maybe that’s your path, or maybe it isn’t. Whatever path you choose to walk, know that these last 48 hours are a real and good and fantastic thing. I’m super happy for you and I hope that you are living your best life!

I occasionally miss having a beer, or a cocktail in a swanky speakeasy, but I do not regret, for a single second, stopping drinking. Before I quit, I was drinking two or three drinks a day, and waking up with some degree of a headache almost daily. I was getting bloated, and the self-medicating wasn’t helping me deal with the childhood trauma I was successfully avoiding. The best part of getting sober, for me, was finding the clarity and perspective that I needed to get out of some toxic relationships that were being maintained out of guilt and inertia, and to start reclaiming my sense of self, so I can find out what my dream is for myself, after spending my entire life doing what other people wanted and expected from me.

I’m in a nonzero amount of existential and emotional pain as I work through this stuff. I’m uncovering things daily that make me feel sad, or angry, or frustrated, or some combination of all three. I cry a lot for the child I was, and the childhood I missed. I spend a lot of time forgiving the teenager and twentysomething I was, knowing now that he was doing the best he could do, without the unconditional love and support a teenager needs to navigate through their world. Some days, I score 5 (great) in Exist. Other days, I hurt a lot and I score 2 or 3 (bad to okay). But I score every day, honestly, and I’ve been able to use that data to help myself heal and move toward living my best life.

I just looked at Exist, and I see that, in the last 90 days, I scored 48% of them as 5, 40% as 4, and 10% as 3. That’s really, really great to know, and though it shouldn’t be, it’s surprising. Since Friday, for some reason, I’ve been wearing the heavy lead apron of Depression and feeling like I’m drowning. It really does feel like it’s been forever, and it’s so healthy and helpful to realize that I’ve been feeling between bad and okay for only a couple of days. It’s a reminder that Depression lies, and the bad days are not forever.

If it matters, you can consider this an unpaid endorsement of Exist.io. It’s made it possible for me to use science and real, measurable data to understand myself, and it’s been a significant part of my self care routine. If your brain has anything in common with my brain (and I’m so sorry if it does), maybe it’ll be helpful for you, as well.

Happy July, everyone.

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“I’m full.”

Posted on By Wil

A few months ago, I started telling Anne, “I’m full,” when we are out with friends, my brain has had enough social interaction, and I’ve crossed a threshold from having fun to feeling overwhelmed. When I get full, it’s time for me to leave, and I don’t beat myself up for that, or force myself to continue being overwhelmed because I feel like I shouldn’t stop having fun, or I’m worried that my friends will be offended that I have to leave. (They won’t be. Good friends who are worth having in my life care about me and understand my limits.)

Self care is so important, you guys. Take care of yourselves and put your own mask on before you assist another passenger.

It’s okay to have a great time with your friends, or with your partner, then then feel like you’re done and it’s time to go spend some time alone to recharge.