And it was not fun.
When I last left off my adventures, I was preparing to start training at Universal Studios. I had my first day of new hire paperwork where we did just what it sounds like. Next was my first day of orientation, and it was a pretty good time. I was basically paid for 8 hours of lecture, watching videos, playing "Universal Bingo", getting an hour to eat lunch and roam the theme park and ride some rides. The coolese thing about Universal that became very apparent to me is that Universal really has the feeling of being part of a team or a family, which is a pretty good feeling. Once training began, there was more of the same. As a ticket seller, I was grouped with other ticket sellers and we had a lot of classroom sessions consiting of lecturing, videos, and games. Overall, training lasted 4 8-hour days and was pretty exhausting. You take a lot in and are expected to memorize a lot in a short amount of time. Luckily, I met some pretty cool people during training which really helped. The final 2 days were on-the-job training in the ticket booth, which was really stressful and hectic (especially since the people that trained us were new trainers). On the last day of training, we had to show up and be tested in the booth, and then have a written test at the end of the day. If we passed both, then we were hired. Luckily, things went OK for me and I was officially hired! Of the people that trained with me, one guy decided that it was too much for him, and another guy didn't make the cut.
Excited that I had finally found a second job, I waited until the following day to see if I was going to be put on the schedule. To my suprise, I was put on the following weekend. Things were going pretty well for me and I was happy with my good fortune... until Wednesday of that week came around. My throat started feeling sore. I gave it a day to see if it was going to get better, but unfortunately it got much worse. Since I don't have health insurance (struggling actor remember?), I was unsure of where to go for a checkup but I realized that I had to see someone since my jobs rely heavily on my speaking voice. After checking around, I was told of a clinic by my apartment that is pretty inexpensive. After visiting there, I'm told that I have to come the following morning at 5am, get a ticket, come back at 7, wait to be called, and THEN be seen. After waiting 3 and a half hours, I was finally seen, and to my misfortune the doctor told me that I had tonsillitis. I wasn't too surprised because my symptoms were similar to when I had tonsillitis last fall, but it was bad news nonetheless. On my way to the in-clinic pharmacy I was told that there is a low-income program that I may qualify for. I go to the 4th floor to apply and to my dismay, I qualified and was told that I would have free healt care and prescriptions for a full year! On top op that, I was told that if I needed to get my tonsills removed because of recurring problems, that as long as it was an outpatient procedure, that it would be covered for free. This is really good news because that would normally cost thousands of dollars. But I'll cross that bridge if/when I have to.
After taking what I've dubbed "The Wonder Drug" aka Amoxicillin, I was hoping for a quick recovery. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case. My tonsils became much worse and I got really really sick. It's the second sickest I've ever been in my life, with the first being when I had mono in high school. I was so sick, that even in one of my dreams I was with my family, and I was sick in my dream! Talk about crappy. The worst part was that I was supposed to start my first three days at Universal that weekend but I was to sick to go in. Unfotunately, one of the bad things about Universal is that they aren't very flexible. They have a point system for when you're late, call in, etc. and when you reach X amount of points you're terminated. After calling in for the first day, I soon realized that I wasn't going to be able to make it in the next two days. Work goes on to tell me that I need to bring in a doctor's note to excuse my days missed, so unfortunately, I had to go back to the clinic and wait 4 HOURS just to be seen by a doctor and get a doctor's note.
After 5 VERY LONG days, I finally showed signs of recovery and was well enough to at least return to Hollywood Video. In the middle of the week, I got a call from Virgo Talent asking if I could shoot a commercial for Sprint. Luckily I was free on the day of the shoot and confirmed the job. After calling the appropriate number I was given the information for the day of the shoot. The shoot was going to be in downtown LA and I was going to be playing a firefighter. It's not everday you can play a firefighter, so I was pretty excited. So, I woke up at 5am the following morning and made it to the location at about 6:30, about and hour before my call time. It was a little intimidating at first knowing that it was my first experience on a professional set around actors that have been doing this all the time. I was first greeted by one of the biggest perks to doing commercial acting: full service catering. There was a team of people running a catering truck that would make breakfast to order. After eating some fresh fruit and juice, we were herded into the another area to sign in. Next, we waited until we would be called to do wardrobe and makeup and I ended up meeting some interesting people and we chatted for a bit. The first thing that I noticed about my surroundings was that everyone knew everyone. I guess it's true that it's a small business and it would make sense for people to know eachother if they do this all the time. I also noticed that the union actors had a little smugness to them, much like I saw when I was auditioning in NYC. After waiting an hour or two, non-union actors were finally called and I was fitted in full firefighter garb and makeup. It was a lot of fun and I was excited to start the shoot.
I was also given a storyboard for the commercial and heard that the premise for the commercial was "What if firefighters ruled the world". Apparently there was a group of different Sprint commercials being shot with different professions and ours was the firefighter one. It was also cool having the entire surrounding building and streets blocked off for the shoot, it felt really exciting/professional. After waiting a bit more, we finally went on set. We were led into a giant room that was built/dressed to look like congress and the principle actors were up front as if the judges ruling over the proceedings. There was everything you could imagine from a Hollywood set: Director, AD, PA's, gaffers, lighters, techies, cameras, a crane, the whole nine yards. One thing became very clear: it was mass chaos. It didn't help that there were 75 firefighters that needed to be instructed and kept under control. After a long set-up we were ready get our first shots of the day. As we started, I noticed two things: the lead actor was terrible, and the director was very unorganized. I find out that the 3 principle actors in front aren't actors at all, they are actual firefighters and they were cast for that main reason. Unfortunately, it became painfully clear that this was a HUGE mistake. The main guy had a whopping 6 lines in the entire commercial with call and response between him and us firefighters, and he just couldn't get them right. He would forget lines, mix them up, paraphrase, improvise, etc. To make things worse, he's in front of 75 actors and he is getting nervous, embarassed, sweaty on top of it all. We finally get our lunch break and we file out to our fully-catered meal.
It was quite refreshing being in the middle of downtown LA and eating steak, lamb, potatoes, and pasta for lunch, but I won't complain. As I'm finishing up my lunch, I get a phone call from a restricted number and pick up. A man asks for me and I tell him that it's me speaking and he goes on to ask me if I'm aware that I'm 3 months overdue on my student loan and that I owe $777. I'm speechless as I hear this and I tell him that it's not possible because I consolidated all my loans so that something like this wouldn't happen. He goes on to tell me that it's a private loan and that it can't be consolidated and I should have been told this when I consolidated my loans. He also goes on to tell me that if I don't pay my late fees that the entire loan will have to be paid: $27,000. He then has the gall to ask me, "can you pay it?" and I laugh at him and reply no. I ask him why I haven't been told about this and haven't gotten anything in the mail or any phone calls and he ask me if I still live at my Illinois address and I tell him that I moved. He then tells me it's my fault that I didn't tell them that I moved. But I insisted that I couldn't call someone to tell them I'm moving when I didn't know I had the loan in the first place. He then gives me his name and number and tells me to call him ASAP to start paying everything off.
I hang up and return to set in a complete daze. I was super confused at what had just happened and at the terrible timing of everything. I was finally getting by financially and starting to get my foot in the door of Hollywood and this was the last thing I needed. I really felt my career flash before my eyes and the reality sunk in that if this loan thing was for real that I would have to move back to the Midwest. There's just no way that I could afford to pay an extra $250 every month on top of all my expenses of living in LA. I decide to just get through the commercial and call my Dad as soon as possible to see if I can clear everything up. The rest of the commercial started to be come tedious and extremely frustrating. The main guy kept screwing up take after take and they even had to wipe his face of sweat and put a fan on him between each take to cool him down. We end up staying 3 and a half hours later than planned and get out of there at 10:55pm after starting the day out at 6:30am. All in all, it was a great experience to be introduced to the professional world and to meet some cool people. There were two men in particular, in their early 50's that I became good friends with and they gave me great advice and connections in the business. One guy told me that my best bet would be to quit one of my jobs and pursue acting stuff on the side in my free time. He gave me numbers to other agencies to check out and that more extra work would be a great way to get started.
The following day, I called my Dad as soon as I could to talk about my loan situation. After talking to him about it, he said he would call the guy and try and get to the bottom of it, because apparently the man on the phone said my Dad was on the loan as well. The reason that the loan seemed fishy in the first place was because he said it was for $27,000 and I know that I didn't take out that much on top of the other loans I had. Luckily, my dad emailed me after talking to the guy and apparently the total was for the combined loans from my sister, brother, and myself, not just me. This was a huge relief to hear, as it was the difference between me having to move back home or staying in LA.
After finally kicking my sickness and 2 weeks later, I was able to return to Universal. Or should I say "start" at Universal. It was a crappy situation having been trained, and hired, and then having to wait 2 weeks for my first day of work. A lot of the stuff I had learned and memorized was a bit fuzzy and I had to try and retain as much as possible for my first day on the job. After showing up, I am confronted with the fact that it is now Sprng Break and that we are at "peak time" at Universal Studios which means that there are a lot of visitors. All in all, I felt comfortable in the job, but there were still a lot of issues throughout the day. At one point, my computer crashed without telling me and then at the end of my shift my drawer was over $64. They had to call a LP specialist to figure out what went wrong and then when I went to Inventory Control with my coupons from throughout the day, I was apparenty over 8 coupons as well. It was frustrating, but I was just glad to have gotten through my first day of work. Afterwards, I met up with 2 girls that I trained with and we went into the park, hung out, and went on a few rides.
Now that the smoke seems to have cleared from the craziness of the past month I still have a few decisions to make. One big one is what to do with my jobs. I spent so much time trying to find a second job but now that I have it, I think it would probably be in my best interest to do more extra work and pursuing acting with my free time. I got about $175 for my Sprint commercial and even if I shoot one or two commercials a week, it will more than make up for having one less job (The average commercial I would get paid anywhere from $100-$125). On top of it all, I would be doing what I want to do: act. On a side note, I found out that Union actors get paid hundreds of dollars to do extra work and that a lot of them do it just for the easy money and are in a sense "selling out" instead of pursuing their career of really acting. I definitely want to avoid that from happening to me at all costs. Regardless, the problem is that I don't know which job to quit. Universal is nice because it pays more and I could pick up extra shifts here and there, but they are very unflexible with taking days off. Hollywood Video is nice because they are flexible, I get free movies, I really enjoy the environment, but they don't pay as much. I'll most likely just work the next month or so to make up for lack of funds and then by that point I will be able to decide which is in my better interests to quit.
I'm not sure whether the Sprint commercial is national or regional but considering it's a big company like Sprint and it's one of a few commercials in the set, I'm pretty sure that it's national. It will be a lot of fun just to see the finished product.
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Movie Reviews of the Day:
Forrest Gump - 5 stars
Ocean's Eleven - 4.5 stars
Becoming Jane - 4 stars
Romeo and Juliet (Zeffirelli) - 4.5 stars
Penelope - 4 stars
The Apartment - 5 stars
Lust, Caution - 4.5 stars
