Published on Thursday July 13, 2006 .
AS MENTIONED SEVERAL TIMES BEFORE…YOU MUST KEEP YOUR CELL PHONES WITH YOU AND TURNED ON AT ALL TIMES!!!!!
We are getting more and more SAME DAY auditions. It is so frustrating when we spend our valuable time to pitch you in for an audition and we are not able to reach you.
Starting today, if you do not return our call within a 1/2 hour for a same day audition, we will replace you with another client. We simply cannot afford to have a wasted spot on these auditions.
ALSO…YOU MUST REMEMBER TO BOOK OUT IF YOU ARE NOT AVAILABLE!!!!
I keep repeating myself but we encounter a few actors a day who simply forget to notify us when they’re unavailable.
This is a business…NOT a hobby. Please treat it as such. I sincerely dislike having to send these emails, especially to those of you to whom this does not apply. You are all adults and presumably pursue this career as a profession. You are all very talented and likeable people or you would not be a client…period. We must maintain our professionalism in the industry and keep our eye on the ball. Keep my hair from turning gray…PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you!!!!!
Probably not ’cause I know the casting director wasn’t feelin’ my performance. I was suppose to be a translator to the North Korean dictator and Margaret Thatcher comes over to our political entourage and kisses me on both cheeks because I happen to be chewing Orbit gum. After my performance I got the standard “Ok. Thank you for coming in.” Well, you never know the client could still see me on tape and want to hire me. The only caveats are that it shoots in Russia the first week in July and I can’t currently find my passport. Plus I would have to take a leave of absence from work. Nothing to worry about until I get the official phone call.
More immediately I have to worry about my performance for class this Sunday. I have 15 pages to memorize, blocking to work out and my character and actions to figure out.
Published on Saturday June 17, 2006 .
The Sopranos presented by PAX: (edited for content)
—
Oh my G- / What’d you freak out for? Holy s- /
She seemed so down to earth for a hollywood person. What’s with those clothes? She in the f- /
That’s prada! If I was greg, I wouldn’t allow it. Look at you, you look like a f- /
Jon favreau, he’s great! He’s also a writer, you should show him your script. “Swingers”? He can /
—
It was brilliant to see it on MadTV and how they just cut the scenes short and joined the remaing parts together.
Absolutely f- brilliant.
As of last Sunday I’m back in scene study class with Lisa Milillo at the studio. It’s been a couple months since I’ve been in class but it feels good to be back. Lisa has assigned me and my new partner a scene from the comedic play “Spike Heels“. I’m playing Edward and my partner is playing Georgie. We had a table reading this past Sunday and after two lines Lisa stopped the scene. Like always, she challenged the class with “Can anybody tell me why I stopped them”. My fellow classmates responded with “their relationship is not clear” and “I don’t know what is going on in this scene” - which Lisa responded with a resounding “YES!” And proceeded to ask me and my partner basic questions about the scene. She then told us to go off stage and try again. At that point she spoke to the class about the reality of being on a sitcom and doing a table read. She said, “don’t fool yourself - at a table read for a sitcom the producers, writers and director are expecting a full performance at the table. You must come prepared to give it your all.” So we tried again. The second time was better though it was obvious I didn’t have a handle on my character. So Lisa told my partner and I that we need to rehearse at least 8 hours this week and bring it back on it’s feet next Sunday. Whew!
“If you wake up Monday morning wanting to go to work, then you are in the right career.” This is the life lesson I learned today from Donald Trump on “The Apprentice”. But I already knew I’m not in the right career. That’s why I skipped out to a commercial audition today for TLC. TLC is currently running these “Life Lessons” commercials promoting… the channel, I think? That’s the wierd thing about the TLC commercials. They’re going for this off-beat approach, but it’s so off-beat that I don’t get it - and I feel like I’m a pretty smart guy. What are these commercials promoting??? Well no-matter. I hope I book it. 
Speaking about Donald Trump, I saw him speak at the Learning Annex Real Estate Wealth Expo at the LA Convention center over the weekend. He was entertaining, but that’s it. As for the Real Estate Wealth Expo, I learned a lot of interesting information about real estate investment strategies but was hammered with sales pitch after sales pitch for $2000-$5000 investment strategy kits and asset protection kits. It’s amazing to me that so many people were stupid enough to spend money on these get rich quick schemes. Ultimately, the only wealth that was gauranteed from the Wealth Expo was for all the salesmen who pitched their products and for the Learning Annex who lured over 50k people to the event at around $200 per person. That being said, I did learn a lot about different real estate investment strategies and asset protection strategies and will be doing research on how I can use all this info to my own advantage. It is true that the only way to create true wealth is to make money work for you and don’t work for the money. In other words, invest more, spend less, be a business owner and have multiple streams of income. For me, I’m still pursuing the Hollywood way which is to eventually create a brand based on my future celebrity status and license my brand to different companies for all types of different products and services (and also build my own companies). Either that or come up with the next huge creative property franchise like JK Rowling did with Harry Potter. Her creative property has made her a billionaire.
Anyway, here’s some links to resources I found which give a voice of reason to the over-hyped “One weekend can make you a millionaire!” Wealth Expo:
http://www.johntreed.com/Reedgururating.html (Checkout what this guy says about the learning annex!!!)
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Investing/Realestate/P77333.asp
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_32/b3845105_mz025.htm (de-mystifying the hype around tax-lien/tax-deed investing)
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/real-estate/20050707a1.asp
http://money.cnn.com/2004/09/29/real_estate/investment_prop/gurus/index.htm
Basically to sum up all these articles, it is possible to become a millionaire using some of these real-estate investing techniques, but it’s just not that easy. Heck, you could become a millionaire with the right website idea. Plenty of people are. It’s just not that easy.
BTW, did I mention that I’m selling my “Get Rich With Your Website!” kit for only $2000 today? I usually sell it for $5000, but just for today, it’s $2000 and you will receive personal coaching over the phone too. (I bet you anything I could have got in front of those 20,000+ people in that keynote hall and sold them some “internet kit” for $2000. I could have made a killing. People were that willing to charge up their credit cards on the dream that they were soon going to be millionaires).
Published on Thursday April 6, 2006 .
H sent me a link today about this film - The Grace Lee Project. It opens in LA today and I’m going to make an effort to go see it. What immediately caught my attention is how similar the themes are of this film with my life. The filmmaker Grace Lee grew up in Missouri and was the only Grace Lee she knew. Then she left the midwest an discovered that there were many other Grace Lees out there. So she created a film to explore the stereotypes surrounding her identity. I grew up between Delaware and Pennsylvania and I was the only David Chiu that I knew of. Heck, other than my family and one of my parents friends, we were the only Asian people I knew of. Growing up I was unique. I was different. I was Asian. And I set out to change the way people perceived me and my asian-ness. Well, actually I just tried to shrug of my asian-ness and assimilate both the white and black culture. Well, more of the white culture but with a strong affinity to r&b/new jack swing music and style. Eventually I grew up and moved to LA to become an actor and immediately had culture shock. I never knew so many asians lived in one place (other than in Asia). What was even more shocking was my first audition walking into a room with a bunch of guys who walked, talked and looked very similar to me. I was no longer all that unique. A few more years pass and I receive another shock when I type in MY Name into Google and find out that MY Name had been moonlighting as the Mayor of San Marcos, a well-known poker player, an executive, a couple grad students, and several others. My name lives on around the world. It was like looking at parallel universes and possibilities of who I could be if I made different choices in life. It was wierd. But then I realized that the website belonging to me appeared at the top of the list - and everything seemed ok again.
I’m glad I found out about The Grace Lee Project. It was good inspiration to get my creative thinking going again.
After writing this I decided to make a self correction. Actually, there were other Asians other than me. There were a few Asian kids at my school (5 including my brother that I can remember). And there was that short stint at “Chinese school” that my dad tried to force upon us one summer. I guess by saying that I was alone in my asian-ness was actually a mirror into my insecurities as a kid growing up and always feeling a little different and inferior…
Published on Wednesday March 29, 2006 .
I had a Dr Pepper audition this morning. The call was for “business men in suits” which made it easy since I have to dress up for my conservative day job. The location was a casting studio in Hollywood. Parking is always tough in that area but today it was even more so because there was a production filming in the area and all of the production trucks were parked on one side of the street. Luckily I found parking further down the street. I’ve been to this casting studio many times before (actually this is where I got cast in my first national commercial) and usually it’s packed with people. Today was different though. Only a handful of guys in suits waiting for their turn. I was the only asian guy at the time as well which is cool because it means less competition for “my type”. Anyway, the audition was as simple as walking aross the room passing another business guy drinking a Dr. Pepper and saying “23″. I have no idea what “23″ is suppose to mean or refer to, but we did this 3 different times from different angles and that was it. I was in-n-out within 20min. Nice and easy. Now let’s see if I can get a callback.
I can only hope to be as lucky as that asian guy in the new cingular commercials. He’s gonna be making the big bucks.
Scene study class was re-scheduled to 10am this morning in account for the Academy Awards. My scene partner and I were hoping to get final approval from our acting coach that we had finished our work on our scene but our performance missed the mark so we will be bringing it back to class next week. I have been really struggling with the scene and playing this character. A charismatic Catholic priest who grew up on the Bronx streets and is now being accused of molestation. In this particular scene my objective is to convince Sister James of my innocence. But for some reason I’m finding it difficult to cover my emotion of fear and anger with casual-ness. On top of that I’m trying to incorporate a Bronx accent and keep everything grounded and intimate. So I’ll have to really work on it this week.
An interesting thing that Lisa (my acting coach) said at the end of class today is to watch the Oscars and keep your eyes on the goal. A lot can happen in a year. Why couldn’t it be us on that stage? And if we train ourselves everyday just like an Olympian, then things will eventually happen. On the flip side, I was watching the Biography of Johnny Depp. I really respect his work and he has mentioned to other people that he doesn’t need an award to feel validation. He just works on the projects that speak to his spirit.
I was also recently informed that Parry Shen (of Better Luck Tomorrow fame) wrote a very kind blog entry about me on his website. How unexpected and very generous. Parry, I wish you the best in your career as well. We should do a project together. Maybe an Asian version of Brokeback Mountain. Two Asian men who have immigrated to America in 1864 in search of the golden mountain but work during the day building railroads. Their relationship blossoms…
We could approach Ang Lee, or maybe even Justin Lin. This project would almost gaurantee us an Academy Award. What do you think!
Just kidding.
On another note, my commercial agency called me Saturday about an audition on Monday. It’s for Intel and it’s a going to be for web distribution. Nothing exciting, but at least I have an audition.
Published on Thursday March 2, 2006 .
I asked my theatrical agent today if there was any feedback from my audition a few days ago. She called the casting office and they said they had already thrown out all the notes because the role had been cast. Bummer. No call-back either. I guess I wasn’t right for the part. Well, all I can do is send a “Thank You” postcard to make sure they don’t forget me.
I started going through Now Casting and LA Casting casting notices and submitting to TV, Film and student projects. Nothing yet.
I really need to produce my own movie…
Published on Tuesday February 28, 2006 .
On Sunday my acting coach told my partner and I that we were done with our scene. That’s not to say that we performed the scene perfectly, but more of that we demonstrated that we understood the scene and the characters and were able to present a believable interpretation of the scene. I know for myself, I would still need a lot of work to add in a believable Bronx accent (I left out the accent on Sunday’s performance) and I would also like to add the little nuances that would make my character slightly creepy and introduce doubt to the audience (only makes sense since the play is called Doubt). But ultimately my coach was happy because he could see me become more grounded and connected in each moment. I wasn’t trying to “act”. He said that right now their goal with me is to really ground me as an actor and help me exude more confidence as a leading man.
Last Sunday I appeared on the show Restoration Realities with my wife. It’s a show about restoring old houses and in the show the two hosts walk us through a couple of projects. That was fun and we got a new screen door too.
