I didn't wear a hat and gown or anything but I made it through the gauntlet that was Jill Donnelly. Her patience and experience were inexhaustible and I'm grateful to have learned so much from her. Well she taught a lot at any rate, how much I actually learned remains to be seen. I also had the pleasure of playing with a great crew of classmates and I'm looking to round some of them up to get back into the fray with me. Improv 301. It's happening.
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I'm happy to say I just booked a voiceover gig for HP's 75th Anniversary event in Las Vegas. Recording for them in my home studio got me one step closer to my childhood dream of someday voicing an animated Disney villain. Jafar was an early inspiration. He was tall and I was tall, he understood the Golden Rule the same way I did, and we both had a thing for Jasmine.
I couldn't help playing with the lyrics while singing along to Taylor Swift's "I Knew You Were Trouble" and when they ended up involving the soon-ending show How I Met Your Mother a friend of mine convinced me to write out a whole song's worth and actually film the music video. I have trouble saying no to women. Also peer pressure. Also I wanted to because fun.
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I made an appearance in the latest installment of an educational comedy web series called The Art Of Manliness directed by Jordan Crowder, a compatriot from my UCB Improv 101 class. This episode shows how to make small talk, and in it I say the word "boobs."
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If you wanted to see my 101 graduation show from my very first formal Improv training then I'm sorry I didn't warn you about it in January. I opted for the 1 week intensive and was immensely fortunate to have Mike Leffingwell teaching every day of it. He neglected some of the finer points (apparently the "isation" after "improv" is silent even in print) but was a really inspiring and insightful teacher. Now that I'm back in town after a stint in NYC to replenish my coffers working Fashion Week I've registered for 201 taught starting on Palm Sunday, graduation show scheduled for June 15th.
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...I'm sorry for lying just then. Some of the students in my class prudently expressed a strong desire for their amateur work to be kept from public view so you'll have to imagine me being a solid teammate and at least moderately entertaining. Also cartoonishly taller than most everyone else. Comedy gold.
I was part of a creative cadre of filmmakers back in New York for awhile and this was one of our finer moments, depending which of us you talk to. We won a handful of Best categories in the NYC Film Race that year including best ensemble and cinematography but the real victory was getting my first on-screen kiss out of the way. Shame it had to be such a beardy bearded man.
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I thought I'd give producing another shot and I had a highly motivated and talented friend I'd worked with before, one Lauretta Prevost, direct me in this adaptation of a short story I'd been enamored with since I first read it in high school. The many lessons I learned on this project include:
- Don't cast your girlfriend if you can avoid it.
- Don't film in your own living space if you can avoid it.
- Maybe do some exercise for a week or two before appearing in a scene without a shirt.
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My first real foray into short films, I produced this after being accidentally inspired by my roommate at the time, Art Chan. He was headed out to the pharmacy that day and asked if I needed anything. The obvious joke answer was of course "Yeah, condoms," but from there the seed of racial stereotype based humor took hold. It wasn't quite a TED Talk moment but after a recent previous discussion regarding the potential fun with sparse dialogue shorts I couldn't let the idea go. Art appears as the endowed Asian fellow in a towel and in some important ways all the film work I've done since then is his fault.
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I was cast in a pilot! Not inside a pilot, it's too dark to read inside a pilot. We screened at a festival and I'm still waiting to find out when to show up to film episode 2. Click the "Performance Clips" tab above to see some snippets of my work in it, it's the one with me wearing a purple patterned tie.
Featuring: John Murray, Miriam Tolan, Brian Stack, Dave Pasquesi, and more!
Written by Matt Evans and Christine Walters.
Directed by George Gross.
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