Recovery mode

Yeah, the all-nighter went all-night, but I didn't get booked for the morning, so I was actually able to sleep.

But, just like I said in my last post, you have to be flexible, and sometimes you're the right person for the job, and sometimes not.

On the all-nighter one of the stand-ins fails to show up, so the 2nd ran around holding looking for a suitable stand in, which turned out to be me. Fine, I do semi-regular SI work on a couple shows, so I know how do it. The DP, though, was a real stickler, and wanted the same height, hair color, and skin tone; I fit two of those criteria, which was good enough. So it was a nice bump in pay, plus a long night, and I did work for it. The steadicam op wanted us to go through the lines, which means instant memorization (try that for a "cold read") so he could see the light on our eyes as we did some long hallway shots. At one point the 1st joked, "Hey, nice job, huh? You could be sleeping down in holding with the BG, but instead you're working." Yep, that was was about it. BG got wrapped at 4AM, and I went home around 7AM, close to thirteen hours on that gig.

But I didn't get to sleep too long. While on set I got a call from my serivce, "Can you make it to a photo double interview tomorrow?" Sure, why not, it's only sleep, or lack thereof. After a somewhat restful four hours, I worked my way through Friday traffic to Hollywood (there was a big fire in Griffith Park that afternoon, which complicated matters), and waited around for more than two hours before being shuttled to set to meet with the director.

This time, I was close, but not just "right" for the job. Turns out production wanted body doubles, not just photo doubles. There were six of us interviewing for three different cast members, and none of us were the same sizes as our matching cast member. The casting director knows that, we know that, so it was a waste of time for production, and us, but it was a nice half-day pay (they exceeded the two-hour time window) plus mileage.

Pilot season. Booked for Monday, spent the weekend sleeping and doing chores. That's what working actors do.