There are lots of books on accomplishing one’s goals. But none address what to do afterwards. After 18 months of being singularly focused on producing and acting in Carved in Stone, the play has finally closed – and I find myself asking: “What now?”
Following a year-and-a-half of ignoring the industry – which was already on shaky ground – I’ve awakened to find it devolving into something where I’m not sure I belong. Many things about big-time show business that attracted me as a kid no longer exist.
Granted, life as an actor is always a crap shoot. I never wanted “stardom,” but lately it seems merely being a journeyman actor is just as an impossible a dream. I find myself wondering: Is the hope of making a career in Los Angeles a fantasy?
Consider Stephen King’s recent Entertainment Weekly column, bemoaning the death of quality entertainment. BackStage recently devoted several pages to “The Demise of the Middle-Class Actor.” Soaps and sitcoms are dead or dying; reality has taken over television; and studio films get dumber each season. SAG is imploding in slow motion, while stars of the 70s and 80s play the small parts for scale. The economy has made self-sustaining theatre a near impossibility (trust me, I know!). And the Internet has thrown the entire industry into a tailspin.
Meanwhile, I’m looking for a new agent and easing back into the business after months off. Maybe its the pessimistic news, or because I’m not a schmoozer, but I’m done playing the Hollywood game. The return doesn’t justify the investment. The odds are too long. It’s about almost everything except art. And I network by meeting folks on the job, not by going to parties.
Now, I’m not quitting acting. I couldn’t if I tried. I’ll still submit, audition and work in others’ productions when asked, but I’m taking the power out of the hands of others’. I’m making serious adjustments to my ideas of “success in Hollywood,” what I want to accomplish, and how.
Screw the agents and big-wigs, the networks and the big studios, and the corporate owners who base decisions on the bottom line and the interests of teenage boys. If I want interesting roles in work that speaks to me, I’ll create it myself – like when I was starting out in San Francisco in the late 80s, and as I just did with Carved in Stone.
With today’s technology, it’s certainly much easier to produce projects and get them seen. I’m developing a few prospective Internet projects I’ve been sitting on. I’m writing a feature script (based on a classic short horror story) with a wonderful supporting role for me. I’ll produce and maybe even direct it, with my equally fed-up, talented actor friends comprising the cast.
I might not get rich, but I’ll stay working, and engaged in creation – which I’ve always prized more highly than making money. The challenge is keeping the “eyes on the prize” in a town obsessed with financial success and celebrity.
Hollywood is dead; long live Hollywood!
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