Cheers with Peers

Due to the nature of my career path, I'm always mixed with an assortment of people. They say networking is one of the most important aspects of an actor's job but to what degree? How aggressive should the networking be? I'd like to think that you should only push far enough that you're not putting yourself in a position where you're not presenting the most truthful representation of yourself.


October moving into November has been an exciting ride for me. Not only have I been a slew of new people but I've also reinforced some of the recent friendships I came across during the last 48hr Film Festival in San Jose. Not even a year ago Cinequest was in town and I remember whispering to myself that one day I'll be fortunate enough to work with a director whose work was presented in the festival.

Boom, enter Alejandro Adams. A wonderful man, a terrific director and one whose work I do enjoy. You may remember a previous entry I made in regards to his current film, Babnik. I look forward to working with him again soon.

Last weekend in a very interesting turn of events, I was, again fortunate enough to work with a crew I've looked forward to meeting. The folks at EyeQ Films offered me the chance to work with them on a few videos for the Dorito's contest! You'll see the results of our hard work soon. While I could go into detail about what who's and what's, I'll save that for another entry when our vids are actually online. In the meantime, here's a short they entered into the last 48hr Film Festival: The Animals

I guess what I'm trying to say is, when you're building bridges...make sure you build it good and strong.

Causality!

It's funny how often we are driven forward because of causality. For good or worse, your decisions can lead you to situations where you will have to make another decision that affects others or be affected yourself, or witness something you may have otherwise missed. I went to see a show we were performing at SJREP called "Tranced" on friday (opening night).

During rehearsals I got to meet the playwright, Robert Clyman, and found him to be quite an interesting person. I also got to meet the entire cast and they struck me as very warm and receptive. The show itself was wonderful and at the end of the evening I was debating about attending the after party or catching the second to last bus home. I decided on the former. As I navigated through the crowds I bumped into a gentleman standing to the side who turned out to be one of our actress' boyfriend. The short conversation I had with him pushed me to actually want to go to the after party. I figured, hey, "why not, I've been working all week and I need to get back in there to network and meet new people".

The party turned out to be loads of fun. I learned a little bit of the NYC theater scene and some of L.A.'s geography. The drinks were free and so were the finger foods. I helped myself to a plate full of hot wings. As it got closer to 12am I decided it was time to head out. I said my farewells and made it just in time to catch the very last bus.

The weird thing was, when I spotted the bus it wasn't going down the street it normally does. Instead it turned from a corner further down the block. As it turned out the driver had taken the wrong route! Some person on a scooter made it on the bus just as it was pulling away from the curb and told the driver that there were at least ten other people a block earlier waiting for the bus. He called the riders (which included myself and two others) to the front of the bus and handed us all bus passes for the very next day and apologized that we were gonna have to go back and pick the remainder of the group.

At this point I was quite amused that this was happening and thought the free bus pass was well worth the extra ten minutes spent on the bus. Good old causality was watching my back on this trip.

Causality would be right there beside me the very next day...