West Side Story

For the past two days I have been working on the show 'Parks and Recreation' on-location in Hollywood. They had us park at the Hollywood Palladium parking lot. Cool fact about the Hollywood Palladium is; 5 years ago, I had caught wind of the website "Beinamovie.com" It allowed people to be in movie who were visiting Los Angeles or people who were curious. Basically they made you an extra for a cattle call, and you didn't get paid. Anyways, back then, I had no idea what an "extra" for a movie was. So I signed up because I thought it was cool to have the opportunity to be in a movie. They were filming at the Hollywood Palladium, the movie was 'Akeelah and the bee.' A spelling bee movie, so I was apart of the audience for the spelling bee. I had no idea that it was going to be a 12 hour day or that we would get feed a sack lunch. None the less, I was just happy to see the process of my very first movie set experience. That was 5 years ago, and it was just cool to see how far I had come from that point in my life.

The scenes I have been shooting take place in a club. Club scenes are the longest days. Long days don't bother me, but long days dancing to no music and holding a drink get a little old. Great money though, and having comedic talents such as Amy Poehler there made the day better. The real funny part of days like this, are the other 20 somethings I get surrounded by. This time around I had 3 couples, 2 married couples, guys with fohawks, and girls that were 19 who skipped college to become a movie start (that usually works out for them. . .) The way this goes is, the couples get annoyed with each other because of too much 'together time'(ALWAYS entertaining) the fohawk guys use their time to try to pimp the ladies around, while the 19 year old girls complain that day is too long and can't believe they were up at 4:30 in the morning.

My buddy Jason was there to keep me laughing through all this. Jason is probably one of the biggest pot smokers I know. He disappears and comes back smelling like a Dave Matthews Concert. Sometimes I will give him a ride home because he takes the bus. Which is pretty fun when you get stuck in traffic.

Today, I had the actor David Lawrence aka Puppet Master from HEROES come to my apartment and help me with getting my Voice Over career on the right track. Set me up with a mic, the software, how to use it, and I am now apart of his agency. I took classes from him in January and this kicked it into high gear. Voice Over work consists of EVERYTHING you can think of. Commercials, Movies, Tv, Radio, Over the phone recordings. So this will be another door opened and a way to expand my career to cover all my bases.

"If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. It's the hard that makes it great." - Tom Hanks