Category: Television

Okay so the whole point of this Daily December thing is to just put something new here every day, and not worry about exactly what it is. We’re four — five? Wait. Did I miss a day?

Okay, I just checked and I didn’t miss a day. That’s weird. Time is a flat circle, man, I read about it in The Bearenstein Bears And The King In Yellow.

Anyway, this is a good exercise for me. Just post a thing that I care about, or think is cool for some reason, and don’t worry too much about it being something deep and whatever.

So.

I don’t remember why I started doing “Goodnight, nerds” on Twitter, with a picture from Frinkiac, but now it’s a silly thing I look forward to every night before bed. I actually say to Anne, “I have to go tell the nerds goodnight” before I get into bed.

I usually hit the random button until I come across something from the first eight seasons or so. Occasionally something from the recent seasons shows up that’s really funny on its own, and I’ll grab it just in case, but I like to focus on the classics.

You know, for something dumb that I do to amuse myself, a put a lot of thought into it — well, more thought than you’d expect, I guess.

I don’t watch The Simpsons every week like I used to. We’ve both changed since the 90s, and I think it’s okay to move on and do other things. Shows like Bob’s Burgers and Bojack Horseman are more my speed these days.

I’m performing an audiobook all day today, so I have to get going, but I’m putting this here so I won’t forget: Bojack Horseman is a thing I want to write about in a little more depth when I have some time.

The 404 page at The Outline is pretty great.

It was Friday afternoon. My manager called me and said he was sending me audition sides for a meeting that would happen Monday or Tuesday. He told me about the show and the role, and in spite of everything I have learned in 37 years as an actor, I got excited because it was really fantastic stuff.

I read the sides, and extracted as much as I could about the character from them. See, there’s a preparation thing that I have to do whenever I’m going to perform a role, whether it’s for a job I’ve booked, an audition, something on-camera or a voice job: I read the scene (or the whole script) and I ask a series of questions based on what it tells me. What does this person want? What’s in his way? How does he feel about that? What does he do about how he feels?

Sometimes, a scene makes the answers to those questions really easy to find. It’s there in the dialog, and in the prose that the writer uses to describe the scene. Sometimes, the characters are drawn so clearly, finding those answers is as easy as reading the words on the page. But most of the time, I have to do some work to find the writer’s intention, so that I can take words on a page and turn them into a character that makes the audience feel something. For this particular audition, the character was fairly clear, and though I didn’t get to read the entire script, the audition sides were an interesting scene that told me a lot about who he was, and why he was interacting with the other character in the scene.

I broke the scene into some broad strokes, so that I knew what he wanted. Then I broke down the lines into specific actions that let him deal with what was in his way, and how he felt about those things. To be completely honest, this is my very favorite part of being an actor. I love breaking down a script and then breaking down its scenes and then breaking down those scenes into even more specific actions, so that every single thing I do, every choice I make, is logical and real and grounded in the reality of the character and the world he lives in. (more…)