Several weeks back in my mindless wanderings across the cyber landscape filled with 99% irrelevant drivel I spotted an article mentioning a movie that would most definitely contain roles that I would be suitable for. Anyway after some discussions my manager finally agreed and got in contact with the Casting Director whom it turns out he knows - that doesn't mean much though unless I am suitable.
Regardless it seems (now this is my conjecture upon how things usually run) the Director was shown my photo and he thought something along the lines of, yes what an ugly bastard - tell him to try for a part.
Despite my best attempts at appearing handsome it appears everyone else sees me otherwise and my life long dream to be a heart throb lead actor has slowly been replaced by the reality that I'll probably be the mean, ugly, bad guy for the forseeable future.
The Conan Stevens Gallery Of Bad Guys
So back to the story....
I am given a definite deadline, as we have come in quiet late in the audition process, to film an audition and get it to them (you see the movie is not being cast nor is it filming in Thailand, where I currrently live) via the Internet - in case you had not noiced my favourite tool.
We have about a week, my manager says he wants to do it earlier so that we can submit and if the Casting Director asks us to do something a little different then we have time to film again and get it back to them again.
My manager contacts an acting and dialect coach to help.... he is uncontactable... likely out of the country taking care of his visa.... hmmmm... not good... A couple of days later we get a hold of him and set a time.
I get dysentery.
I am not sure what I ate that gave it to me, but I am almost sure that the litre and a half of milk that I drank as my last 'meal' (as I was feeling very tired and I don't have any protein powder) made things a lot worse. The one thing you DO NOT eat when you have an upset stomach is milk products.
For those of you unaware of the full implications, this is from Wikipedia :
Dysentery (formerly known as flux or the bloody flux) is an inflammatory disorder of the intestine, especially of the colon, that results in severe diarrhea containing mucus and/or blood in the feces with fever and abdominal pain. If left untreated, dysentery can be fatal.
Luckily for me as soon as I felt nauseous I took some Disento tablets and started hydrating as much as possible with lots of water and electrolyte drinks.
3 days later I am supposed to work with the acting coach the day prior to filming to give me the best chance to secure this role. I have to cancel. I am about 10kg down, I am tired and with no energy reserves as all I had eaten the day before was 1 big meal that I would normally have for lunch spread out over the entire day in small bites.
Around that afternoon I am able to get in two small rice and chicken meals and a couple of litres of lemonade.
We all settle for a few hours coaching before filming the audition the next night.
I also have 3 hours of travel to get to the audition site from where I live.
First thing in the morning I get up and stuff myself with as much rice as I can and wash it down with soft drink (I need easy calories and as many as possible as fast as possible). At this point I look like a runner rather than a bodybuilder as all my muscles are flat, I am completely dehydrated and my glycogen (energy) stores are depleted. This also means I feel like eating then sleeping...
So I go tp the gym, do a light body workout to get some blood pumping and stimulate my appetite, go back home and stuff myself silly with rice and electrolyte drink for the next 3 hours then travel to Bangkok.
I managed to put about 5kg (10lbs) back on in a little under 24 hours.
We do the practise runs and for the first time ever I have an acting coach who knows what he is talking about, is looking to get me to do what the Casting Director wants to see, and talks to me in a manner that I can relate to and respect.
His ideas validate my previous self made ideals but adds layers and maturity to my audition. I will be keeping these in mind for future auditions, it is more about delivery what the Casting Director needs rather than delivering a believable character - though both are important.
Anyway we film and send the files via the magic of the Internet - did I mention how much I like the Internet - to my laptop back home for conversion from the camera proprietary format (WTF do they do this?) to something usable in the wild.
On returning home well after midnight I set the laptop to download, eat another calorie rich meal on top of the battered deep fried fish and chips that I had before the trip back and hit the sack.
Next morning I awoke feeling so much better it was off the scale, looking in the mirror I could see my body had finished hydrating and my fever seemed totally gone, and most of all my mind was clear - so I grabbed my new Nokia N8 mobile phone with inbuilt HD video camera (handy little invention) and shot another take in my room.
I was so happy with this take I decided to include it in the audition takes. I changed the other files to the popular Apple .mov file type and uploaded to one of my servers then emailed the links to my manager who passed them onto the Casting Director.
Initial feedback seemed to be positive. So now we come to my favourite part of my career..... waiting for the next step which will be either;
- Being added to the shortlist and another round of auditions taking place to decide who will pass onto the next stage (either more auditions or an actor being chosen)
- Being told to bugger off and stop wasting their time (it has happened before but in much more polite words)
- Being offered a "show of interest" which means you are now in talks for the role and if the negotiation goes acceptably to both parties then you will have the role
- Rubber swords at 10 paces to determine who is the meanest bad ass
