Good times these days, December 3rd, the movie heads to San Diego. I've been really looking forward to this. Screening "LEAF" in front of San Diego, the city where so much of this story takes place. What will it be? Will the fans cheer some moments? Will they boo other moments? For me, as long as they enjoy the movie, it's really all good.
Another screening is next week, and this is the one where I'd like to tell a story about. On Thursday Oct 2nd at 6pm, "Leaf" is playing the Big Bang Film Festival, in Philadelphia. Right in the heart of Philadelphia. 315 South Broad Street.
Now, when I first started in this business, I had no idea what I was doing, so as a result, I basically volunteered as an "intern" for a few casting places, that way I could sort of get a handle on what I was doing. "Intern" is actually playing it nice. I was a "go for", need the trash emptied? I'd "go for" it. Needed your holiday shopping done? I'd be doing that too. Among all the shopping for tv dinners and cleaning bathrooms, I'd actually sometimes get an actual task that related to the film industry. Which is good, because I'd be on the city streets at a dumpster emptying wastebaskets thinking "yeah, I'm sure I'll get Quentin Tarantino's attention doing this".
So sometimes I'd be told "take this envelope filled with pictures and take it to this producer immediately", I'd get right after it. After a while though I realized that there was a way to make these "go for" jobs work for me, every envelope that wasn't sealed? My picture was going in as well. I didn't care if the producers were looking for 90 year old women from Japan, my picture was going in. Were the producers looking for a baby for a pampers ad? Yep, they'd get an envelope of 50 pictures of babies, and one of my smiling face. Did the producers need a kitty for a "meow mix" commercial? Here were some pictures of kitties, and of course, a picture of a non kitty, who looked a lot like me.
Basically, there's so many obstacles in this business, you have to make you own breaks. I talked to Terrence Howard once and he said he'd just crash auditions and make up agents, if he got caught in the lie, he'd just keep lying until they let him on camera. It worked out okay for Terrence, he received an Oscar nomination for "Hustle and Flow", he made his own breaks.
For me, when I'd have to "go for" these task of dropping off pictures, videos, whatever, I'd stop in to a lot of the production offices on Broad Street. This is definitely where I'd dropped some packages off where I guarantee some producers would say "wait, I wanted pictures of triplets, why is the guy's picture who just dropped this envelope off in here?"
So now, for the first time in a long time....I'm heading back to the area where I really sort of started things off, and now, instead of being there to empty wastebaskets or to drop off envelopes or videos....I'm here with my own feature film. So Oct 2nd, at 6pm....I get to show that maybe all of those "Go For" tasks did help get me somewhere in this business.
My only hope is, none of the producers in the audience say "hey, that guy honestly tried to get the role of a kitten in my commercial"
Hope to see you all there. This should be fun.
your homie,
TIM