I Love Grant Wilfley

In case you care, if I haven't mentioned it before, that would be Grant Wilfley Casting, from whom I got a call today about filming The Bounty Thursday and Friday. This is extremely cool. It seems to be a movie about a bounty hunter - which would make sense. I, of course, immediately thought of Mutiny on the Bounty and wondered why on earth anyone would choose to remake it again. But no. Actually, it sounds like a pretty terrible movie. It's got Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler, and while I think she seems like a perfectly nice girl, the fact is that she hasn't had a hit movie since I don't remember when.

But there you are, that's the glory of background work. You come in for your day or two, you prance about or sit still or whatever it is you're supposed to be doing, they feed you, they pay you, and that's all you have to worry about. Unlike the theatre, where reviews make or break the show, movies exist totally separately...I mean, no matter how awful they are, they're still THERE. You get paid. Unless you're one of those stars who goes for a percentage of the gross...THEN you're in trouble if the thing's a flop. But on my level (background people, sad to say, are basically cattle and get herded around...well, at least they don't brand us) it doesn't much matter. One day's work, one day's pay. Lovely.

However, I do have a couple of auditions coming up for REAL work - i.e., the stage. One of them, if I get it, is going to make a small mess of Sarah's birthday party in France, since the performances are August 6th and 7th, Thursday and Friday. This means I'll have to fly to Geneva on a Saturday - but at least I'll get there in time. (You fly to Geneva to get to France - or we do - because our little village is on the edge of Lake Geneva on the French side.) This sounds like an interesting company for me, though - they specialize in using actors over 50. I LIKE this idea. It's an evening of one acts, and they all have roles suitable for me. Yay!

The other one is something called Mahida's Extra Key to Heaven, which seems to have something to do with Iran, but there's the role of Edna, 50's-60's, who is "very sure of herself and of America's place in the world." Or something like that. Whatever. And IT doesn't even start to rehearse until August 18th, which is perfect. AND it pays $450 a week, which is even more perfect. We shall see.

My, I would like to do a proper show. Background is lovely, and it's lucrative, but nothing beats a real show (pardon my snobbery). And background tends to be pretty damn dull. I do try to make it interesting for myself by reacting to things happening around me and inventing a character to play (I don't think anyone gives a shit whether I do or not, but one should try not to fall asleep while filming). I practice reactions, and staying in the scene shot after shot after shot, camera angle after camera angle after camera angle...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Oh, sorry; I dozed off.

Well, we shall see. Tomorrow I'm going to get up, take a shower, and put on my yoga clothes before I even go downstairs...thinking I'm just going to go downstairs and read the papers and THEN come back up, shower and dress is invariably fatal.

Love, Wendy