Close Up on Background Acting

Damian Forest Light Now obsolete are the days when an actor waiting to be discovered has to solely wait on line at an audition and hopes to get the part in order to work a little in the show business industry without an insider gig or some knowledge of how to make it on the foreground and making it at the same time. Holding a mic, or manning up on some lighting angle that is necessary and deemed by the hands and all the grips around you. It became a sport to submit yourself to casting companies to some background succeeds, and as I found out, the land of background acting has been the home, throughout all of history, belonged to literally, millions of people and millions have worked for pay, doing background work in the movies and on television. It was so easy, to get a job. I showed up in a suit and a manual of a wanna be high adventure blog I wrote while dramatizing issues and stories out in the far reaches of Northern California, added with my own illegal spin and a bunch of hoopla that landed me in a pile of waste, so far everyone including my mother and favorite cousins went running far, far away, in order to save their lives; I brought this now 80 page blog to the front gate of Television City so I could use it as a portfolio, in hopes of getting a job as an actor or a writer, and I was told, "Oh, all stories get sent to the news agency down on Sunset Blvd." So I asked the next person I spoke to over there, like twenty five or so seconds later, 'How do I get a job doing background acting?" and the ticket girl said, "go down to Central Casting and sign up, here is the address." She wrote it down and I went out to Burbank, with a 20.00 fee some three years later, and signed up. A few months later, I was doing officially my second major background gig, but my first of about 30 for CBS TV, and I was on the set of CSI Miami. There, people showed me the elaborate lifestyle of production people and how many meals they were forced to eat in a single day, and the cast roasted in the sun under a tarp, sleeping most of the time. All in all, it was great fun, but there is where I found out about the horrors of Calling Services, where would be background actors paid someone to submit them, via some head shots and local photography taken at an office, to submit them to acting gigs all over the major movie and TV network. I worked in several of them; some for a few weeks and others for a few months, and I have blatantly told them, over and over that some things are just not unexpected in Hollywood, but against ethics of age old practices, and the violation of some of them, could be seen as scandalous, and I have walked out, sometimes not that friendly, under certain pretenses. Other times being asked to leave, other times being told not to come back. Supposedly it was 'illegal'in Hollywood, California and Los Angeles in general, to take money for casting people into acting roles and positions, if the money was not earned through the status of an agency, at an agency run of 20% but, that was the rule for agencies, that they could not charge a fee for services, so...., some people started creating these businesses, known as Services, Calling Services, to be precise, and they would charge a monthly fee in order to cast a person in a series of background roles on major TV and movie sets, in an unlimited and unpredictable amount of times. Sometimes, a person was casted once or twice, other times, they were casted ten to fifteen times in a monthly fee period, and the fees surmounted up to 80.00 a month. By paying the fees, one could be placed in a position to work an unlimited number of times in a month, some of the services were signed up online and accessed through texts and emails, and an online profile, other services had an office and others had both. The gigs were ranging from any number of cable or network television shows, anything that needed actor or extra appearances. Most gigs paid minimum wage with time and half after 8 hours. What I found out was this, not the low wage and the elaborate food that was served all day, for mostly waiting to be set into a scene, and then told by the director to portray some sort of ambiance. What I found was this, every day you worked, it was probably for one scene, maybe two. Even if you were called back; they probably did not finish the scene. But unlike a real actor, background actors are paid by the day, and not by the scene and definitely not by the week. They are not paid through the calling services, they are paid directly by a third party payroll company, and not by the production company itself. Each production company hires its own payroll companies, and they all require their own I-9 form, each time you work, even if you filled one out for that year already, so every day you have to fill out an I-9; some payrolls will do you the favor of having you use your social security card only once a year for the form, though filling one out every day is mandatory. A lot of scenes look like giant welfare lines before hand, where everyone is waiting around for government cheese and to be given places and getting their paper work together. Then, when you do get paid, 90% of the checks get mailed to you, the majority of which will probably take a week or two minimum, sometimes it will be three weeks per check, and some pay roll companies will pay you per day and not per scene, but in seperate checks for each day you work. So, if you work three days, expect three different checks. Films are usually on location or in a studio, and you will have to travel to every part of LA there is in the county in order to work there on the scene for a day or two. Many people sleep in their car or take the bus all the way home and come back early the next morning. Every one must follow the orders of the Fire Marshall and the Director and Assistants Directors at all times or they can be thrown off set. There is usually a smoking section. Food is good and healthy, but lots of in between meals are offered to working crew and cast, background is permitted to eat on set, but not on the scene or while cameras are filming and rolling .... What puzzles most people, is that some services will book you fifteen times in a month, but will demand you pay your fees every month, and they are a little less than a thousand dollars a year. Then you can work. If you don't get to work, they will give you a refund, and if you work once, you get a partial refund and the same with only twice, in some services. Others will only give you a refund only if they don't book you at least once. But others, like Booked Talent on Sunset Blvd., will not give you a refund if they don't book you and will demand you pay your fees on time, even if they don't book you for six or seven weeks straight, and then only cancel on you. Not only that, if you work with Booked Talent, you are not allowed to book through anyone else, and you are not permitted to leave Booked Talent for one year, even if you pay them a monthly fee, not a yearly. So, there, people don't get booked and the office staff, books themselves on jobs, as they do in every other calling service. Cut Above Casting was great, I worked for movies, TV, indies, and even some porn scenes at Digital Playground, except they were being scammed by a scam artist and were becoming guilty of unknowingly taking a bribe from people who worked for them as background actors, and started their own would be agency; where they lured in foreigners, speaking their language and then preying on them for not having skills at speaking English, and getting them to sign up at Cut Above Casting in Hollywood and Central Casting in Burbank for more than $500.00 U.S. Currency. Trouble is, this guy brought in a dozen people a month, none of them speaking English and signing them up at Cut Above for two months at 150.00 total, keeping the end, and a $20.00 or then post law suit FREE $0 charge at Central Casting, where it was deemed in civil liability of some form or even illegal to charge people to sign up at Central. This guy was supposedly making $5000 a month signing people up, and supposedly he got free months from them, whether they knew it or not, and not to say they are bad people, everyone needs to eat, but the ethics were the rich got richer and the poor working actors suffered until they were union, even to the point of starving or living in the streets as struggling artists. Then there was the online services, like LA Casting, which got me several gigs in TV and cable, lots of student films and shorts with lines and great experiences, but they also had a scam artist, offer me $$$7000 for a single weekend's work, send me a check for almost five thousand dollars, and expect me to withdraw it and send the money to the hair dresser after i took a 500.00 cut of it, and deliver it to them directly into their checking account, after they texted me the third party numbers. The money and check turned out to be phony after sitting several days in my account and I walked back and forth to the bank attempting to move the money and putting it back. Turned out to be phony checks sitting there waiting for me in cash in my accounts. There was Explore Talent, which called me on the phone and told me that for "$2000, you could sit behind the scenes of an actual movie being filmed and sit on an old man's lap and see what it did for your movie career', at that point I told them off and hung up,of course now, told them not to call back. Hell, seeing tons of TV stars and guys from westerns at the library in Oregon where they filmed a flick I was in that was in the theaters, known as Conversations With God, where I stood up in an audience to face an adversary who heckled Neal Donald Walshe, an author at a speech or lecture, is not as monumental and ironic when they are just gathered up in Ashland and Medford, in a library, together, staying warm, and these guys were actors for like fifty years, just to stay warm! They sit staying warm in the parking lot or in a library during the winter months in Oregon, why? Because of the antics of corruption in the movie industry. Every believes they live rich but most movies only pay 80,000 dollars plus royalties. Gene Hackman only made top gross of about $300,000, TOPS from any one of his fifty or so movies. So, how long does that money last an actor? When a tourism agency sponsors most Hollywood Homes, and they are filled with counter people and celebrity signs and cartoon drawings of the Hollywood Sign in every one of their living rooms? You know the ones on the Star Maps when you take the tour in LA? I was in LA County Jail one time and some prisoners told me they had just seen Robin Williams in there and Robert Redford. I don't know if it is true, but those people were arrested because they would not work for the Devil that orders people around when they try to make it in LA, all the legends run from the coyote, who beckons at bickers at performers in LA, those who love the Big Apple and all those mean old folks sliding away like worms thriving in the middle of it; And that is what kills the spirit of Hollywood, pretending that those guys deserved to give people their autograph, and listen to criticism on their work, it is what makes the actor hate and run from Hollywood, only because the critics could not do nil, save, hate the actor for running from giving autographs, from critics in the street. I have watched Paparazzi run through the street darting through traffic and cars to chase an actress walking from the store, or a kid playing in a park, whom no one knew who he was, and his parents had to roll up at the playground, across the grass in an SUV and throw the kid in and drive away at top speed because reporters were hounding them. Paparazzi is hired by most celebrities, but what about those people who are not celebrities that are hounded by them? What will Hollywood Come to next, without music and stars like Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson, Dean Martin and Fred Estaire? Now that record labels fear the band, because there is nowhere to buy the album, so people don't? You tell me. Live Long Guidos Prosper Everyone Else