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One leg folded like a dark and laid-back crane
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I might have mentioned this at some point, but in case I never did, here's the story of my own encounter with Josh Hartnett (if you can call it that), whom I actually knew about before anyone had seen his work:
I came back to L.A. in '95 because I wanted to give acting a shot. I did - no success, really. Either I wasn't a very good actress, or I didn't fit any of their templates. 'Sokay, I had fun. ANYWAY...
A very good, small background casting agency was getting me quite a bit of work in '97. One of my regular gigs was working on Cracker, the series with Robert Pastorelli. (RIP, *sob* - he was a decent guy.) This is the first thing Josh did professionally (unless he did some stage before, but I doubt it), so nobody knew who he was.
About the third day I was there, when I was hanging around the monitor area (which I used to do because I love learning anything about film that I can), I saw this lanky drink of water sitting in his foldup chair looking at the script. The first thing I thought was, "That has to be Tommy Lee Jones's son," because...DAMN. He really looked like Jones back then. He had the same small, deep-set eyes under prominent brows, and the raw-boned look to his face that I associate with the older actor.
He seemed like a nice enough kid, but since I had nothing to hang an opinion on, he came off as just a nice-seeming kid. I got to see some of his work on the monitors when I wasn't on - his sections of the series and mine were completely apart, so I was never working on camera at the same time as he was - and I wasn't terribly impressed. But then again, he was a kid, and his not being much of a dick outweighed his not being much of a thespian. Know what I mean? Unfortunately, I never actually spoke to or interacted with him, in the end. But then again, I don't know what I would have had to say to him, as he was so much younger than me. (Not quite two decades, if you really want to know.) He wasn't attractive to me anyway, so he just kind of slipped out of my consciousness once the job was over.
Now, I know this sounds a little odd, but when you're actually doing this kind of work, the whole fannish thing just doesn't come up. It's a job, though I found it a really fun one. (Which most background people don't, by the way - they do an awful lot of bitching for people getting paid money to just sit around and shoot the shit 90% of the time). I felt no impulse to think about who he might turn out to be eventually, as I never got past just being grateful he wasn't a high-maintenance shit who'd make things tense. That was definitely enough for me to think well of him as a person. (Believe me, you do not want to run into one of those tantrum brats.) He showed up on time, did his work and didn't make anyone crazy - an excellent foundation for getting more work.
When the series finally made it to the air, I liked what he did well enough. He was a fairly callow kid playing a fairly callow kid, so there wasn't any real stretching there. (Though being tied up and threatened with death by electrocution did get some brief but pretty good emotional work out of him). The majority of his work took place during the first pair of episodes, which explains why I didn't see him around much after the first couple of weeks, and the series never got far enough to give him any real arc. Too bad, because it would have been interesting to see what he'd do with it. But hey, we have The Faculty, which happened right after Cracker, so it's all good. :)
P.S. When I went back and looked at Cracker this week, the aforementioned torture scene answered the question of why he almost never peeled down for the camera. Now, I haven't seen a lot of his stuff, so I don't know if he's been dropping trou more recently, but I have a very real suspicion that it's about his physique - he has a very narrow chest and abdomen, enough that it kind of throws off his proportions. This got confirmed when I noticed that the few times he did doff his shirt in the films I'm looking at, the camera would shoot him at oblique angles or in such a manner that you never really get a good look at that part of him. Maybe somebody said something about it on that first job, either in his hearing or not, and made him self-conscious. Regardless, he seems to have gotten over it now!
I might have mentioned this at some point, but in case I never did, here's the story of my own encounter with Josh Hartnett (if you can call it that), whom I actually knew about before anyone had seen his work:
I came back to L.A. in '95 because I wanted to give acting a shot. I did - no success, really. Either I wasn't a very good actress, or I didn't fit any of their templates. 'Sokay, I had fun. ANYWAY...
A very good, small background casting agency was getting me quite a bit of work in '97. One of my regular gigs was working on Cracker, the series with Robert Pastorelli. (RIP, *sob* - he was a decent guy.) This is the first thing Josh did professionally (unless he did some stage before, but I doubt it), so nobody knew who he was.
About the third day I was there, when I was hanging around the monitor area (which I used to do because I love learning anything about film that I can), I saw this lanky drink of water sitting in his foldup chair looking at the script. The first thing I thought was, "That has to be Tommy Lee Jones's son," because...DAMN. He really looked like Jones back then. He had the same small, deep-set eyes under prominent brows, and the raw-boned look to his face that I associate with the older actor.
He seemed like a nice enough kid, but since I had nothing to hang an opinion on, he came off as just a nice-seeming kid. I got to see some of his work on the monitors when I wasn't on - his sections of the series and mine were completely apart, so I was never working on camera at the same time as he was - and I wasn't terribly impressed. But then again, he was a kid, and his not being much of a dick outweighed his not being much of a thespian. Know what I mean? Unfortunately, I never actually spoke to or interacted with him, in the end. But then again, I don't know what I would have had to say to him, as he was so much younger than me. (Not quite two decades, if you really want to know.) He wasn't attractive to me anyway, so he just kind of slipped out of my consciousness once the job was over.
Now, I know this sounds a little odd, but when you're actually doing this kind of work, the whole fannish thing just doesn't come up. It's a job, though I found it a really fun one. (Which most background people don't, by the way - they do an awful lot of bitching for people getting paid money to just sit around and shoot the shit 90% of the time). I felt no impulse to think about who he might turn out to be eventually, as I never got past just being grateful he wasn't a high-maintenance shit who'd make things tense. That was definitely enough for me to think well of him as a person. (Believe me, you do not want to run into one of those tantrum brats.) He showed up on time, did his work and didn't make anyone crazy - an excellent foundation for getting more work.
When the series finally made it to the air, I liked what he did well enough. He was a fairly callow kid playing a fairly callow kid, so there wasn't any real stretching there. (Though being tied up and threatened with death by electrocution did get some brief but pretty good emotional work out of him). The majority of his work took place during the first pair of episodes, which explains why I didn't see him around much after the first couple of weeks, and the series never got far enough to give him any real arc. Too bad, because it would have been interesting to see what he'd do with it. But hey, we have The Faculty, which happened right after Cracker, so it's all good. :)
P.S. When I went back and looked at Cracker this week, the aforementioned torture scene answered the question of why he almost never peeled down for the camera. Now, I haven't seen a lot of his stuff, so I don't know if he's been dropping trou more recently, but I have a very real suspicion that it's about his physique - he has a very narrow chest and abdomen, enough that it kind of throws off his proportions. This got confirmed when I noticed that the few times he did doff his shirt in the films I'm looking at, the camera would shoot him at oblique angles or in such a manner that you never really get a good look at that part of him. Maybe somebody said something about it on that first job, either in his hearing or not, and made him self-conscious. Regardless, he seems to have gotten over it now!
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As to the storytelling, the jobs that were getting me actual income were for children, doing shows around the Southland for the public school and library systems. Those paid incredibly well, about $200 a show, and made it possible for me to take time and really concentrate on improving my performance, since just a handful of shows a month would set me up. My target audience was between 7-10 years old, old enough to understand the stories but not old enough to be jaded and resistant. It was an amazing experience getting to influence minds that young and open. I still treasure the two "books" of notes from a pair of elementary school classes that I told to that summer - they came in the mail completely unexpectedly, page after page of thanks written in big childish hands on that hugely lined "learning to write" paper, some with little drawings. The day I told there, I was surrounded afterwards by all the kids who wanted to hug me and say thanks. It's just an indescribable feeling.
I also occasionally did shows for adult audiences, and much as I loved telling to kids, this is where my heart really was. In telling for adults, I could really let loose and use all the tools I'd learned in the acting I did. I would act in my children's shows too, of course - the kids LOVED that - but I couldn't hit any real depth there. In the adult shows I did, however. You know what my fics are like, now imagine seeing someone telling you stories like that with full-bore emotional interpretation. I did some very heavy stuff, including a re-interpretation of the story of the Levite's concubine from the biblical book Judges, and my own greatly expanded dramatic re-telling of Jabberwocky, from the point of the view of the little boy who kills the monster. Jesus, it was SO MUCH FUN to draw an audience in, spin them around and around and then sock them in the gut. It was glorious, holding them in the palm of my hand. Yes, I hope against hope I'll be able to do that again.
I'm lucky that I actually have a recording of one of my shows. Now that I have a little bit of money, I'm thinking I'll send the tape to a guy I know who does DVD conversions, so I can be sure it survives. If that ends up happening, I'll probably convert the show to .avi and post it so people can see what I was doing back then.