Turning Quid-Pro-Quo Pro

I’ve been running around trying to sign up with various and sundry new extra agencies. Once you’ve gone SAG, the world becomes a colder place. You must move to a new level of sucking-up for work. Signed up for this one ultra-pushy-agency today, where they had this overly hyper-glad-guy back-slapping you into their world. Dreadful dull storefront operation on Coldwater Canyon in the Valley. Lord, the Valley depresses me. I had a friend who become a successful lighting guy in H-wood, but once, when he was denied a job, this dude said to him, “Maybe your gig’s in the valley.” Ouch. Of course, much studio stuff takes place in the valley, but the coolest jobs are all wesssside. Anyway, all these extra places want $$$, and they usually want CASH only. I wonder if they report all this $$ to the IRS. Remind me to call the IRS hotline when I’m truly ticked off at one of these agencies.

Then, I had a second casting cattle call at The Burbank Holiday Inn. Few places are cheesier, then this double tower of baloney. The Background Agency was a new enterprise, started by these two gals from a successful agency. They had hired a stylist! Oh please! And a pro photographer, to take a crappy mugshot of us. All these places are hell-bent on THEM taking a picture of you. DO NOT supply us with your headshot, you know that thing you spent good money on to make you not look like a mongoloid? And all of these places ultimately charge cash-money for these pictures. It must be a scam to make $$ and not report it. But, there’s one site, Background Artists (http://www.backgroundartists.tv/join-form.php?location=Los%20Angeles) that has this brilliant idea: the World Wide Web! Yes folks, it’s the year of their lord 2005, and you can actually have a website where you-yourself, type in your information, you-yourself, submit a j-peg of your photo (tarnation!) and then you are in their data base. Therefore the background agency does not pay a minion to type in the information that you fill in on a form. They do not pay for the taking of your picture by said minion. And it all still works on their data base. The guy still charges a fee for this service, so he’s making money. This mugshot culture is intellectually bankrupt.

I got glad-handed by the ladies running the agency as they know my gay lover is a suit in the biz. They started bugging me for intercession on his part. He is supposed to recommend their company to his company as the newest and bestest background company. I said I’d have him send an e-mail to the appropriate department. I gave them my card from Hollywood Death Cab and said quite candidly “quid pro quo.” I’ve never been so blunt as I have been lately. My Nebraska background was not about saying things like you “scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” More based on merit.

After the event, I thought a drink at a shitty Hollywood Holiday Inn Lounge would be appropriate. Read tomorrow’s blog about this.