January 18, 2000: It’s always interesting in Hollywood when most people ‘get’ you but the suit-set doesn’t. You get the look-over from the suits and not much else, especially during the day but I've been working graveyard on Sunset & Schrader, across from the Hollywood Athletic Club for almost 3 years now and the suits are not that repressed. Just remember that you have what it takes.Nice to be on vacation. I still love Hollywood. Stage acting is still my favorite acting work. I could do extra-work but I don’t have the endless humility for it- not when my agents can keep me from minimum-wage work days in the industry. I can make 15-25 times more per hour from a print job….Hollywood is great: there are some of the coolest, most generous souls there. It’s ground zero for every sexy image in the world: nobody does smoke and mirrors as brilliantly as the Hollywood machine. I understand it and know how it works.
January 19, 2000: Great news from L.A. Bebbles committed to a 4-month offer from Disney Studios.
January 27, 2000: Back home in L.A. after a Nor’easter shut down the East Coast overnight and delayed flights by a day or two. I came home and the phone rang with an audition from my agency. I was requested by Black Artists, they are doing an equity play ‘Brighton Beach Scumbags.’ It’s an L.A. production. It was good timing since next week was the planned time for me and the agency to review things and how it’s been going.
Today found my agent very enthused after my profile there being as cold as an ice floe. “Karl, you’re a character look, " my agent rasped into the phone to me today. "You have a strong character look. I just can’t sell you for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. We just had to hold out and we did! You got a call!” It’s probably more accurate to say that I held out. I did a lot of work submitting myself, 21 submissions, alone, three days ago. I’ve started over so many times that I could have done it again.
A frustrating part of acting and agencies is when you’re made to feel that your career is yesterday’s cold toast when it’s not through any lack of participation or enterprising moves of your own. If your career isn’t on your agent’s mind then you can forget any synergy at all. Then a call comes in and they’re on your side for 3 seconds. My agent’s first words were: “You and I have business! You have a contract---" “That’s up next week!” I finished, sounding ten years old on purpose. “I’m willing to try if you want to.”
“You got it!” Agent said.
January 29, 2000: Came in the bedroom to chill out and an audition call came in. It’s an audition for a music video for a group called Elwood. I’m supposed to be a mean biker. I got requested for this one by a casting director named Crystal LaJuan. Thanks Crystal!
I went to the audition at 3rd St. & LaBrea. The Polaroid taker for the day was about five feet tall and shot me from a full foot below, making for a ghastly Polaroid from what I saw! I went in with three other biker candidates: one was a Glenn-Frey-circa-his-Bally’s-Fitness-ads type, the other was an authentic, tattooed Lancaster-type guy and the last one was a guy who looked like a biker from Circus disco.
We went in front of Elwood and the group and what had to be some of their girlfriends sitting in on the session. One of the band members smiled at me and I smiled back. I like cool musicians, plus musicians ‘get’ me more than any other type of artist. The four of us were walked into a recording studio like a line-up of hookers. Whatever- it was a chance and a novelty audition where you had to serve up a look. I could "either be a raver or a biker" is what the consensus was about me when the casting group started talking. It’s a 50-50 shot but the timing was all perfect.
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