career moves in Bev Hills

Career moves
I have had the good fortune to be cast in a principle role in an original play being performed at the Secret Rose Theatre in North Hollywood. This stage play (a musical comedy without music, as it were) ends its brief run tomorrow. Our mildly delusional director still insists, "I can make you guys stars on Broadway within 3 weeks. This show is Broadway-ready." Yeah – right – despite the fact that this musical comedy is missing a crucial element (the MUSIC!) I’m quite sure we’d get a warm welcome on Broadway. It just might be Broadway in downtown Detroit (nothing against Detroit, mind you!).

The Disney Lot
In other news, I was lucky enough to have an informal meeting with a big cheese at ABC/Touchstone Pictures/Buena Vista.
Incidentally, the ABC/Touchstone/Buena Vista Offices are in Disney's complex because all those companies are 1 big, happy family now. The Big Cheese's office was located in "Dopey Street". Doesn't do much for street-cred, huh? I had to walk down "Mickey Street" and past a shrub that had been pruned to be a likeness of Mickey himself, to get there. I tried hard not to laugh out loud. Nobody else seemed to think the shrub or street names were silly. It all feels Disneyland-ish and they even have a small Disney Store, although the lot is not open to the public. The store may be there to keep team member’s spirits up, or something?

I also had the privilege of meeting with another (apparently important) Hollywood executive and owner of a production company in Beverly Hills.
This man behaves like a total freak and gets away with it because this is LA! A shaved-head nightmare in bleached $1500 jeans.

He told me repeatedly that any agent he sent me to would not take me on and that the chances of me ever having a career here were "miniscule". And yet again, he had to "be blunt with you to help you", by saying that the
chances of me being cast here are "1 in a million".
Furthermore he verbally abused his ex-wife in front of me when she dropped off the child. Unbelievable. Really. He questioned EVERYTHING on my CV, to the point where he said "come on, you don't speak Afrikaans!!" and made me speak it to prove it to him!

Of course, every play on my resume he either acted in or directed himself, because he knows everything and he's not even 40 yet. Are you beginning to picture just what sort of an ego maniac I am describing?

In former times, I would have been in tears in his office in 3 seconds flat. Today, I'm over 30 and not easily intimidated by an insecure, cigar-chomping bald-head who shows off his cigarbox to an avid anti-smoker!