Jason Pugatch - Acting Is a Job: Real Life Lessons about the Acting Business

ACTING IS A

JOB

ACTING
IS A
JOB

Real-Life Lessons about the Acting Business

Jason Pugatch

2006 Jason Pugatch

All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention, Universal Copyright Convention, and Pan-American Copyright Convention. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.

10 09 08 07 06 5 4 3 2 1

Published by Allworth Press
An imprint of Allworth Communications, Inc.
10 East 23rd Street, New York, NY 10010

Cover design by Derek Bacchus
Interior design by Mary Belibasakis
Page composition/typography by Claude Martinot
Cover photo: Michael Gerry

ISBN: 1-58115-438-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pugatch, Jason.

Acting is a job: real-life lessons about the acting business/Jason Pugatch.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 1-58115-438-0 (pbk.)

ISBN 9781581158403

1. ActingVocational guidance. I. Title.

PN2055.P84 2006
792.028023dc22
2006001955

Printed in Canada

For my parents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I owe not only a considerable debt of gratitude, but many, many free lunches, to Ethan Angelica, my extraordinary research assistant. Thanks are due to Jamee Freedus as well, for additional research.

Sky Spiegel, Rose Kernochan, and Val Day, each of whom believed in this project, encouraged me to press forward, and helped me navigate the maze of the publishing industry.

Each and every actor interviewed for this book. Without your forthrightness, this book would not be complete. And indeed, many thanks to the casting directors, agents, playwrights, directors, and producers who spoke with me so candidly.

My own agents, whom I will not name in order to protect the innocent. Every actor should have relationships like these.

Nicole Potter-Talling, Tad Crawford, and the entire team at Allworth Press, who have (thus far) left me to my own devices.

INTRODUCTION

ACTING IS A JOB

... No matter how much (or how little) acting
experience you may have, you can start pursuing an acting
career right now ... and this book shows you how.
Breaking Into Acting for Dummies

If you believe that quote, stop reading now. Close the cover, put this book back on the shelf, and have a wonderful career. Write me when youve made it.

If you think that acting, like other professional careers, may take at least a modicum of craft, talent, looks, luck, skill, emotional stability, guidance, patience, and endurance, then read on.

First, there are the stereotypes. Take your pick. Actors are:

A. Lazy

B. Dumb

C. Overpaid for their work

D. Waiters

Well, you cant win em all.

Certainly some actors have no training, some have no talent, some are stupid, and some of them make a lot of money. You could probably cross out my laundry list of prerequisites, with the exception of luck and endurance, and have an accurate accounting of the necessary skills an actor must have. Luck and endurance are the two most important factors in an acting career.

Theres another buzzword. Career. Not a day on a soap opera, not three days of extra work that got you your SAG card. A career. The daily event to which people devote their working lives. A career is a very difficult thing for an actor to have.

For an actor, its also difficult to judge whether you actually have a career. Youre a lawyer when youre arguing in court: You have a career. Youre a doctor when youre looking in someones ear with a scope: You have a career. Youre a teacher when youre explaining Euclidian geometry: You have a career. Youre an actor when youre performing on stage, in television, or in a film.

But you do not have a career.

Acting is a perpetually freelance business that fools people into thinking better of it. It entices with celebrity culture, awards shows, and superstar salaries. But it is, at its core, a job-to-job industry.

The winter after I turned twenty-six, I did not have a career. Success was fleeting, and though I had done some bit parts on television and a commercial, career longevity was a long way off. I wondered if an MFA in acting from a recognized graduate program was a good idea, so I sought counsel from a former college professor. Expecting a conversation on the value of education, the art of acting, and the great skills I could inherit through study, I broached the subject of going back to school.

My teachers response was pointed and simple.

Unless youre a model, he said, theres no work for you until youre thirty.

I am not a model.

I went to school. In the first month of training, we were forced to perform and outperform each other constantly. Acting schools are a weird blend of summer camp and the military. Youre with the same incestuous group of people all the time. Youre laughing, crying, emoting, moving, breathing, dancing, and drinking together. Between class, rehearsal, and performance, youre in the theater sixteen hours a day. Youre exhausted and constantly competing for roles, stage time, and validation.

One day, after an especially gruesome display of acting, our Russian professor wore a particularly grim expression. He rubbed his chin with his hand, looked disapprovingly at the actors on stage, and spoke to the translator.

We anxiously awaited the interpretation. What deep secret was about to span the generational divide? What performance nut would be cracked today? What did our master decree?

Acting, he sighed, is hard.

Fast-forward two years. MFA in hand, New York showcase complete, Im fortunate enough to be taking agent meetings in New York. At one, I sit down with a woman whom I had met prior to school. I remembered this; she did not. Her pitch to meand she did not stop talking our entire time togetherwas that she could take someone off the street, any good-looking young someone, and make him a star. Thats what the business is about, she said. Looks.

Two years of training, some fifty-odd thousand dollars of debt, and I was right back where I started.

Acting is hard. Unless youre a model.

Do ugly actors who are good make it in this business? Yes. Do beautiful actors without a modicum of talent make it? Yes. Is there a hard and fast rule, rhyme, or reason to any of this? No.

Heres what there is. There is belief in yourself. There is a support network. There is the fact that endurance and patience are perhaps the most important skills an actor can have. And, most importantly, there is a need for you to be well informed.

Misperceptions prevail. Actors, with visions of Hollywood stardom, Broadway careers, or even a simple life of consistent employment, have been misled by an industry that sustains itself by leeching off the dreams of the uninformed. Each new generation of actors, and the general public they entertain, has no idea of the actual happenings in an actors daily life. Sure, everyone knows that acting is hard, but do they know about twenty-hour days filled with temping, ramen soup lunches, and late-night rehearsals in unheated East Village studios? Have they heard what an audition is really like? How come my son didnt get that commercial, they wonder. Why did my daughter move from Houston to New York only to get a job back in Houston? How hard can it really be to find employment? What do you mean, Im not good looking?

If you are the parent, friend, or relative of an actor, or youre anyone else outside the industry, you are more than likely lost in a haze of generalizations about the acting trade. Never fearmost actors are too. The impetus for writing this book came from my own parents and relatives, who would, at every Thanksgiving dinner, brag about my recent appearance on this soap opera or that television show. (The conversations about this always lasted far longer than my appearance on whatever show they were discussing.) Seeing a face on TV is exciting, and it pays well for a days work. Yet I never managed to convince people that a day as a crime scene investigator on