Ready? On set? Look out!

"So you wanna be in pictures, huh kid? Have a seat on my couch and we'll see what we can work out," says the director to the actor. . . Ah, the “casting couch” is familiar lore of the movie business, but there’s more than one way to get screwed if you want to work in movies, and more than one way to have a good time. Know first that the Twin Cities are theater towns. Actors go to Los Angeles to be in movies; they come here to work in theater. I don’t know anyone who makes their living here acting in films, but there are quite a few who do in theater. Still, there is a lot of film work here, and getting it might be a nice financial boost to a theater income because you often make more in a day on a film shoot than you do in a week on stage. On the other hand, many locally produced film shoots are “low” or “no” budget, so you can also end up working really long days for no money at all. But money isn’t the only attraction to working in film locally. I think all actors fantasize about getting that big break in a movie and being discovered. We’ve seen it happen too: John Carroll Lynch was a Guthrie regular when he was cast in Fargo and Amy Adams got her big break in Sugar and Spice while she was working at Chanhassen. The larger budget films that shoot locally also give actors a chance to rub shoulders and sometimes share the big screen with stars. In my modest collection of local film jobs, I’ve gotten to do scenes with Matt Dillon (fun), Ray Liotta (not so much), and I was kneed in the balls by Kristie Alley (on a film shoot). Yet one of the best things about the local film scene is that there are opportunities to do interesting projects and build relationships with up-and-coming filmmakers. In 2001, I worked on a locally-shot, super-low-budget, short student film called Baby, directed by Bridget Bedard (a South Dakota native who was enrolled in New York University's film school at the time) that wound up in the Sundance Festival. Even though I didn’t earn a cent, I met and worked with a talented group of up-and-coming filmmakers from one of the finest film schools in the world. So if scheduling and money aren’t issues, these projects offer awesome opportunities to work on your film acting skills and sometimes create beautiful work. Be careful though. The people you work with on these local indie projects are often beginners, so an already long shooting day can get tediously longer. On the last one I worked on, I almost had a light dropped on my head. Is it starting to look like a fit for you? Work in theater, and take the film work when you can get it? Except it’s not always easy to jump into film acting from theater because you need an agent to get you into most of the auditions. On the other hand, this is a small enough town that you can get a meeting with an agent if you are persistent and creative about it. At the audition, you may meet directors and producers, or you may just read the scene with the casting agent and he or she sends a video to the real decision makers. You may even have to pass what I call The Lie Detector Test. The first time I encountered it was at the callbacks for Fargo. I walked into a small room where there was one person—the casting director—sitting at a table. There was no camera. I sat across the table and read the scene with him while he looked into my eyes like a Gestapo agent trying to gauge whether or not he believed me. I kind of liked it. After all, that’s what the camera does in close up. But the toughest part of working in film in Minnesota may turn out to be your esteemed theater colleagues. I dropped out of a play to do a film last year, and when an opportunity came up later in the year to be in a remount of the play, the producer refused to consider me. The director and the author wanted me in the production, but the producer blocked it because I had dropped out that first time. I was unemployed for the six weeks that I could have been working on the remount. I could have signed the contract for the play initially and then invoked Actors Equity Association rule #31 for Small Professional Theaters: “The actor shall be entitled to an unpaid leave of absence in order to accept more remunerative employment in the entertainment industry.” Yet because I make my living primarily as an actor, I know that my long term relationships with theaters here is vital. So I chose to let the producer screw me over instead of the other way round. From an actor's point of view, I guess I’m just supposed to feel lucky I had two projects to choose from. I made more money on the film than I would for the initial six week run of the play, so you just hope an employer understands. In the producers’ defense, theater schedules are complicated and demanding. Still, I think it’s important to remember that we have an amazingly talented pool of actors here in the Twin Cities, and the reason they stay is because of the opportunities available to them both artistically and financially. Hey Management! If you don’t let labor (the actors) make some money they will go to New York or L.A. or Chicago! Oh, yeah— What’s the secret to acting for the camera? Wear a nice shirt to the audition and hold your face still from the eyes down. The casting couch? Actually, I'd say your bigger concern in the Minnesota film business is that falling light. Look out!