cheeky bastids -- feelin' a little persnickity

Just finished getting off the phone regarding a Mercy gig. Turns out as I suspected, that once they give your name in, whether they actually use you for the shot or not, you can't be used again.

If I had known that I would have never applied for this.

What I find interesting is how I met two people who are non-union who have worked on it twice, this past gig being their second time. How they got around that little rule I don't know. I've a feeling they did not get in there through Central. Who else could be casting for this, I wonder?

I know Central keeps a list as I was asked, and I didn't lie, I did state that while I was called for it, they never used me for the shoot, I was never in the scene. But apparently that didn't matter. I think I heard them say they'd get back to me regarding future gigs on this but I'm not sure it matters if that rule is in place.

I'm sure all rules have their reasons.

Meanwhile, watching Fringe. This is the show that's moving to Vancouver to film. All for a 16% tax credit.

It annoyed me hearing the head of the Silvercup Studios talk about New York City having a 'no cap' in order to 'stay competitive'. Okey-dokey. We are at 30%, plus 100% of any surplus goes back to the production company within the year they film, AND we have the Made in NY program that gives them an additional 5%. 35 plus percent is NOT competitive? How? How is Vancouver topping us?

And it's not like these film companies have to pay for permits in order to film -- permits are FREE! So WTF???!

Some of my fellow BG actors are not seeing the whole picture, just how it will affect them, which is understandable. Maybe I just tend to see the bigger picture in all this and know it's not that easy to just blame one person for everything going on in the city and the country. The days of knowing who the good and bad guy is have blurred considerably for many years.

Throughout this, I just went online and researched. Could not find one instance or shred of evidence of actual pullout or end of the tax credit -- just a lot of speculation on blogs and union articles and, I hate to say it, they were all doing a crying wolf.

I'm told I'm just missing the whole point. Hmm. We all know the tax credit isn't forever, just dedicated to the next several years, up to 2012, supposedly, according to the governor's site itself. There's no law set in stone that this goes on in perpetuity. The sense I get is "well, we'll see how it goes." Yet there's all this whipping people up in a frenzy. That's what worries me. It's like a bad social experiment. Anyone who disagrees or isn't caught up in the frenzy is deemed 'not getting it' or gets the 80's Molly Ringwald. You know, the eyes rolling over, mouth slightly open look.

To the business men -- you got your tax credit. Be nice and respectful of it. If you push too much, it could simply be pulled off the shelves altogether. Then what? Everyone goes to Vancouver or L.A and film a LOT of close up shots and use footage from a film library and CGI, baby! Like that won't cost a fortune. Yep it will.

Finally starting to see some of these shows

I'm ecstatic because I'm starting to see the debut of shows that I actually worked on. It's always exciting to see whether I will pop up or not on camera.

Cupid and Kings debuted. I was a little worried about Kings, where it's been said that the debut came up with miserable ratings. I am hoping things improve with that as I'm already liking the unfurling of the plots going on so far.

Cupid is a remake of a television show of the same name that starred Jeremy Piven, the guy that balked on doing the Mamet Speed the Plow on Broadway. Or puked, whatever, regarding mercury poisoning from his 'diet' of 'supplements' and impossibly LOTS AND LOTS OF sushi or fish.

Now back to the show. So Cupid, played now by Bobby Cannavale, is on Earth, being punished/expelled from Mount Olympus and has to put 100 couples together but it has to be TRUE LOVE for each couple in order to get back to Olympus. In the meantime, he meets cute with a psychiatrist played by Sara Paulson who I LOVED in the movie Down With Love. I guess it's not hard to figure out she's going to be his Psyche (she's a psychiatrist and human, get it?). Also, when she talks to him about Psyche, he says he has no idea about her, never heard of her. She reminds him he fell in love with Psyche, who was human, and that he even married her. Again he draws a blank. So that'll be ... cute.

I looked for myself during the New Year's scene in New York City which is in the beginning of the pilot. During this, a man takes some of the lighting during the countdown to 2009 and reconfigures it to read "I'm here Holly" in order to find a girl he spoke to briefly while working in a bar in Ireland. The girl was a tourist passing through but had made a strong impression on the young man who decided to take all his savings and buy a ticket to America to find her and Cupid helps him to do that. I won't give away the spoiler, but it ends cute, which I think might help this show as long as Bobby and Sara keep it from going too sugary.

For the New Year's scene, I recall it being filmed in Coney Island. They took a group of us to go to the rides, and the bulk of us stayed behind at some parking lot nearby, bundled up with our coats, scarves, hats and New Year's attire of balloons and hats, glasses and whistles, to ring in the New Year. We were told we would then be CGI'd to make a "huge crowd" in Times Square. Times Square would also be CGI'd in. What I found most interesting was the fact that it seems the show CGI'd the breath smoke that appears when one is out in the cold, talking. Since the weather was mild and still warm at the time of filming, we had to wear turtlenecks, boots, sweaters, coats, and pretend we were freezing. After pausing the video and slowing it down several times, I didn't see me. Oh well. The life of an extra.

********************************

Kings has a whole Biblical and political theme about it and is very posh looking and dramatic. I would dare to say it's almost sudsy, like a nighttime soap opera. It's about this man who gets elected "King" (Ian McShane) and his family, along with a young modest soldier who happens to have saved the King's soldier son who had been captured on a brave overnight raid during the war that's going on and inadvertently gets sucked in to the political scene when he would rather go back to the battlefield where the rest of his comrades (and formerly his dad was) are fighting 'for the cause'.

I have yet to see the segments I was in, so I will continue to look out and enjoy the ride.