Starving Artist? You Don't Have To Be... And The OMPA Agrees!

Hey there kids - as I was doing some year-end tasks (pulling together mileage records, invoicing producers, seeing where the retirement accounts are - yeah, retirement accounts.  Trish and I are actors - in Portland, OR - and we have money set aside for retirement.  It really can be done, ya know...) it occurred to me that I haven't shared this article I wrote for the December issue of the Oregon Media Production Association's monthly newsletter, The Call Sheet about just this sort of thing.  See, for the past year I've been working with the OMPA's Talent Committee to put on a series of workshops that give film and TV workers resources to live a sustainable life... well, it's all right here in the article:

OMPA’s Talent Committee Takes On The Myth of the “Starving Artist”

By Harold Phillips

Most people working in our industry have been exposed, at some point, to the romantic notion of the “starving artist” – that person who lives in poverty, works three jobs to make ends meet while pursuing his or her creative endeavors on the “off-hours,” and is often hungry (but nourished by those endeavors.) 

It’s a romantic notion, to be sure, and our hat’s off to anyone who can make a life like that work for themselves and their families.  OMPA’s talent committee, however, doesn’t believe our members need to starve to work in this industry.  On the contrary – we believe that our industry is only weakened if those working in it are living “hand-to-mouth.”

Of course, we know first-hand how difficult it is to make a living in film, TV, commercials and new media here in Oregon – the variable work, the sometimes (if not often) low wages, the unpredictable schedule… we also know there are ways to take charge of one’s life and business that will not only help those working in our industry “make a living” – but LIVE a stable life.

Over the past year the Talent Committee has presented a series of seminars aimed at giving OMPA members and others in our industry the resources they need to get their business and personal lives in order.  In February, the Committee held a workshop on tax planning.  In September, we presented a panel discussion on health insurance options.  This coming January, the Talent Committee plans a panel discussion on saving, investment, and retirement.  These seminars, and others the Talent Committee has planned for 2012, are presented free of charge for OMPA members (and are open to the public for a nominal fee.)

As our members toast the end of 2011, we hope they’re also analyzing the challenges and missteps that may have occurred this past year… and that they’re laying plans to make 2012 an even stronger year.  The Talent Committee’s seminar series is there to help with those plans.  We hope you’ll join us in the coming year as we explore ways to make our industry stronger, by keeping those working in the industry from starving.

Holiday Shopping Is Here - But Who Are YOU Buying From?

www.madeinusaforever.com

Hey everyone

I know, right?  Two blog posts in two weeks?  I haven't blogged this much all year, it seems... but hey, I've got a couple of minutes before I have to be at my next appointment, and what am I going to do... eat lunch?  Ha!!

So, my dad occasionally forwards me emails.  Yeah... he's turned into that guy.  Now, don't get me wrong - I don't get 50 emails per day with cute photos of dogs and "funny" videos and such (well, not 50...) Honestly, he's pretty selective about what he forwards around.  He's been on the receiving end of those email barrages, and he doesn't want to clog anyone's inbox with things they don't care about. 

He sent one recently that I think all of us ought to care about, though.  I didn't write it, so don't ding me for the language or spelling errors... but the sentiment is right-on-target in my book.  Oh, I may have added a couple links of my own into the text...

As the holidays approach, the giant Asian factories are kicking into high gear to provide Americans with monstrous piles of cheaply produced goods  - merchandise that has been produced at the expense of American labor. This year will be different. This year Americans will give the gift of genuine concern for other Americans. There is no longer an excuse that, at gift giving time, nothing can be found that is produced by American hands. Yes there is!

It's time to think outside the box, people. Who says a gift needs to fit in
a shirt box, wrapped in Chinese produced wrapping paper?

Everyone -- yes EVERYONE gets their hair cut. How about gift certificates
from your local American hair salon or barber?

Gym membership? It's appropriate for all ages who are thinking about some health improvement.

Who wouldn't appreciate getting their car detailed? Small, American owned detail shops and car washes would love to sell you a gift certificate or a book of gift certificates.

Are you one of those extravagant givers who think nothing of plonking down the Benjamines on a Chinese made flat-screen? Perhaps that grateful gift receiver would like his driveway sealed, or lawn mowed for the summer, or driveway plowed all winter, or games at the local golf course.

There are a bazillion owner-run restaurants -- all offering gift
certificates. And, if your intended isn't the fancy eatery sort, what about
a half dozen breakfasts at the local breakfast joint. Remember, folks this
isn't about big National chains -- this is about supporting your home town
Americans with their financial lives on the line to keep their doors open.

How many people couldn't use an oil change for their car, truck or
motorcycle, done at a shop run by the American working guy?

Thinking about a heartfelt gift for mom? Mom would LOVE the services of a local cleaning lady for a day.




My computer could use a tune-up, and I KNOW I can find some guy who is struggling to get his repair business up and running.

OK, you were looking for something more personal. Local crafts people spin their own wool and knit them into scarves. They make jewelry, and pottery and beautiful wooden boxes.

Plan your holiday outings at local, owner operated restaurants and leave
your server a nice tip. And, how about going out to see a play or ballet atyour hometown theatre.

Musicians need love too, so find a venue showcasing local bands.

Honestly, people, do you REALLY need to buy another ten thousand Chinese lights for the house? When you buy a five dollar string of lights, about fifty cents stays in the community. If you have those kinds of bucks to burn, leave the mailman, trash guy or babysitter a nice BIG tip.

You see, Christmas is no longer about draining American pockets so that
China can build another glittering city. Christmas is now about caring about US, encouraging American small businesses to keep plugging away to follow their dreams. And, when we care about other Americans, we care about our communities, and the benefits come back to us in ways we couldn't imagine.

THIS is the new American Christmas tradition.

Forward this to everyone on your mailing list -- post it to discussion
groups -- throw up a post on Craigslist in the Rants and Raves section in
your city -- send it to the editor of your local paper and radio stations,
and TV news departments. This is a revolution of caring about each other, and isn't that what Christmas is about?

Ok, so I don't know that this is a "NEW" American tradition... in point of fact, Trish and I have always tried to buy American (and buy LOCAL) when it comes time to give a gift.  It's not easy - go into any Target, Wal-Mart, or other "Big-Box" store and you'll spend an hour searching the shelves to find an American-Made product... and make no mistake, when you do find one it'll probably be a little more expensive.  That extra money you spend buying a Cuisinart instead of a Sunbeam, however, is going to factory workers in this country - not factory workers in places like China or Taiwan.

I was glad to see that the emailer suggested supporting your local arts groups when thinking about giving LOCAL gifts.  When he forwarded this message, Dad made sure to mention that giving the gift of locally-produced films is another good idea - and you know, I couldn't agree more.  There are over twenty Oregon-Produced films in my Oregon Film and TV Market Amazon store, and several more locally-produced films available through other retail outlets. Giving your friends and family members a DVD this Christmas puts money in the pockets of people working in Oregon's film and TV industry, and allows them to produce that next feature and hire even more of your friends and neighbors for it.

One last note - You can still buy American when you shop online.  www.MadeInUSAForever.com has over 29,000 American-made products (many produced by small businesses around the country) that are ready to ship out anywhere in the country. 

Look, guys, it's the "season of giving." We want to make the holiday season bright for our friends and family, but we also feel a little more prone to help those who haven't been as successful or fortunate this year.  In some cases that means bringing cans of food to the food bank or dropping a couple coins in the Bell Ringer's kettle... but this year, you have the chance to keep someone employed - and maybe even create a few more jobs once the receipts are tallied.  It's certainly worth taking a couple extra minutes to think about where the product you're purchasing was made, and checking to see if there's a domestically - or locally - produced alternative.

Hope you're all doing well...

-Harold

Cross Delancey Street With Me Next Tuesday

Great Image, huh? Don't thank me,
thank Birmingham's Theater LJCC!

Hey everyone

Long time, huh?  I know, I know... I should really spend more time keeping up with the blogging, but most of my writing time has been consumed by OregonFilmandTVDollars.com... now that the year is winding to a close, however, I may get a few more chances to post some of my overly-long yadda-yadda about life, the world, etc... at least that's the goal.

That's not the topic of today's post, however... even though the year's winding to a close, I seem to be getting busier and busier.  Before I run off to the next appointment, I wanted to let you know that I'm going to be appearing in the Portland Civic Theater Guild's "First Tuesday" reading of Susan Sandler's Crossing Delancey.

You may remember the 1988 film version of Crossing Delancey with Amy Irving.  The film is based on the play we'll be reading at 10:00 AM next Tuesday December 6 at Portland's Old Church (1422 SW 11^th - click here for a map)  If you're not familiar with the story, it follows
Izzy, a single New Yorker who runs her own bookshop and day-dreams of a life with one of her customers, a celebrated author. Her Grandmother Bubbie, however, has other plans for Izzy's future - she conspires with  Hannah, a flamboyant matchmaker, to set Izzy up with the man they feel is the perfect match for her: Sam, the pickle maker.  It's a beautiful, sweet romantic comedy - a perfect way to kick off the holiday season.

I'm lucky enough to work with Karen Wennstrom, Mary Mcdonald-Lewis, Chrisse Roccaro, and Rick Sanders on the reading... oh, and the show's director is kind of fun to work with too!

I hope you get a chance to come down next Tuesday morning and share this light little comedy with us.  Take an early lunch - we'll provide the sweet!

Hope you're all doing well...

- Harold

It Can't Happen Here... Right?

Hey there everyone. Long time no talk, huh?  Yeah, I know, I know... apologies, Mea Culpa, etc (you can always tell how busy I am by how often I update this blog and OregonFilmandTVDollars.com... which hasn't been too often of late, so you can draw your own conclusions.)

Even with everything that's been going on, though, I wanted to take a minute today to let you know about a very cool project I'm going to be part of tonight, Monday, October 24 at 7:30 PM.  Portland's Fuse Theater Ensemble is joining theaters around the country to perform a staged reading of It Can't Happen Here - an adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' 1935 novel that was performed in 22 theaters (in 18 US Cities) as part of the Federal Theater Project in 1936.  The nationwide readings commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of those Federal Theater Project readings.

So, why should you care about a play written in 1936?  What possible relevance could it have to the world we're living in right now?  Well... the book (and the play) were written during a time when no one could find a job... when the median income in the united states had hit rock bottom and didn't look like it would ever rise... when people were taking to the streets to demand a change.  In a situation like this, it's easy to see how people could fall in line behind a charismatic leader who promised to make things better (no, I'm not going to put a current-events link on THAT one... I'll let you draw your own contemporary conclusions...) even though s/he could turn out to be a dictator.

That's what this play is about, after all... it envisions a fictional America where a powerful president becomes a dictator - abolishing labor unions, free speech, and the free press. His sinister allies, known only as "the Corpos," recruit unemployed and dissatisfied young people and intimidate anyone who opposes their agenda. "No one agreed on the play," Hallie Flanagan told an audience some months later, "but everyone had to see it. It was called good, bad, savage, mild, American, un-American, Fascist, communist, too far left, too far right, a work of genius, a work of the devil."

I hope you'll join me tonight at Theater! Theatre! (check HaroldPhillips.net for the address and a map link)  for this celebration - and cautionary tale.  Admission is free, though donations for Fuse Theater Ensemble and Occupy Portland will be accepted.

Company of Thieves Premieres August 21

Hi guys

You long-term readers may remember back to October of 2009, when I mentioned that Trish and I were both going to be working on a new short film by Portland director Shilpa Sunthankar.

The film, Company of Thieves, is finally out of post-production and is going to be playing at Portland's Hollywood Theater on Sunday, August 21 (you can find all the details at haroldphillips.net.)  Trish does some voiceover work in the film about a man and his relationship with right and wrong, God and the Devil.  As for me... well, I'm guessing you can tell what part I play from the photo.

I hope you'll all come out to the premiere screening - admission is free, and it's a short film (about 17 minutes or so.)  I plan on being there after finishing the Portland Century ride with my dad... so don't be surprised if I'm just a little sweaty!

Oh, what's that?  You say you want to know a little more about the film than what I've written above?  Well...

The Company of Thieves Clip: Sc 1 & 2 from PushStart Productions on Vimeo.

History's Mysteries (or "Geeking Out On Stuff You Don't Care About...")

I've written from time-to-time about how much I enjoy playing my "Online Video Game..." about how it gives me a connection to history I didn't know I had, about how researching the lives of long-gone family members reveals stories that the best authors and screenwriters couldn't have made up, about how delving into my family's stories helps to make connections with people I already had connections with - but didn't necessarily know about.

When I talk about how much time I spend messing around on Ancestry.com and how much I enjoy it, a lot of people roll their eyes... but it really is kind of like a video game.  I don't mean a first-person-shooter like Halo, or a "brawler" like Dynasty Warriors though... I mean the RPG-type story-driven investigative video games we loved to play in the 80's and 90's - games like Suspended or Police Quest or Gabriel Knight.  Games where the purpose wasn't to gain points or treasure by defeating aliens and monsters, but to unlock a mystery so a story could be told by the time the player finished the game.  That's the fun of messing around on Ancestry.com - solving mysteries and reading stories.

Case in point - I was contacted through the web site by a distant, distant, relative (we're related by a connection about five generations back - I'm sure we share a little DNA, but no more than I share with Louis CK, Prince Charles, or... well, maybe you!)  She had a couple of photos in her possession.  The first was a photo of three Phillips men from, say... 1900 or so.  She knew who they were, and how they were related to my "3rd great grandfather" (after a while, you stop saying "great-great-great..." because, hey, it'd just get ridiculous.)  She had a second photo of three more Phillips men, though, that she couldn't identify... so she asked if I could help.

Here's where the "video game" starts getting interesting.  When I'm doodling around on Ancestry.com, I generally work back along my "line" linearly - my dad to my grandfather to his grandfather etc... sure, there are lots of other relatives that "branch off" from that line, but for the most part I don't pay much attention to them - not because their lives aren't interesting, but there's only so much time I can spend on a hobby like this and hey, I have to make a living, too :)

This investigation required me to take a look at some of those branches on my family tree. The first photo gave me a start - my 3rd great grandfather's three boys Alma, John Dee and Joseph.



Now, I don't know anything about these guys... their brother Edward Charles was my 2nd great grandfather, so he's the one I've always focused on.  Ancestry.com makes looking into people easy, though - all I had to do was add all of my 3rd great grandfather's kids to my family tree (a fairly automatic process where you import information from other people's family trees into yours... you have to pay a monthly fee to do this, but it's not much - and at times like this it's worth it!)  Once I did this, their lives started to take shape - I could find out where they lived from census data, where they were born and where they died, and even some personal details like their professions, newspaper articles about them, and that sort of thing. 

I even found a couple of children that no one else had in their family trees... see, Ancestry.com has digital copies of census pages dating back to the 1800's in their system.  If you want, you can go beyond the catalogued data, and see the actual census page the data comes from.  Looking at one page, I discovered John Dee's wife and two children living in Utah in 1910, more than 20 years after John Dee died... so I added them to their records to the system for other people to find.  Look at me - such a trailblazer :)

Anyway... back to the task at hand: the mystery Phillips men that my relative was wondering about.

As you can see from the border, the photo was taken in Idaho... and most of the Phillips' of that generation were based in Utah.   Looking into the details of the three guys in the first photo, however, I discovered Joseph Samuel was born in Utah, but died in Ucon, Idaho... and he had three sons - Edward Christensen, John D and Joseph M.  Two out of the three were born in Idaho, and one of them died in the same town Joseph Samuel died in... so it's not too far a reach to assume that these three are Joseph Samuel's sons.

Figuring all this out took me an afternoon.  That's it.  But the feeling that went along with making these discoveries, putting the pieces together, and figuring out the mystery - well, I'll put that up against any video game on the market.  Or detective novel.  Or police procedural on TV... because just like the audience for all those mediums, I'm doing the detective work as I watch/ read/ play the story.  I'm trying to figure out the mystery.  And that's a whole heck of a lot of entertainment to get out of an afternoon in my back yard on the laptop.

Now for the sequel... what's the story behind those two children that weren't in the system before...

Training Up (Part II)

Hey there everyone... been a while, huh? 

I've really been neglecting my "personal" blog a bit lately (is it just me, or am I always saying that these days?)  Of course, I've been writing plenty over at http://www.OregonFilmandTVDollars.com and if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you know that I've been "sharing" plenty online... but I haven't really had the time to sit down and do much personal writing of late.

One reason for this (alongside the general "actor hustle" of going to auditions and networking events, and making time for family, and taking care of the house and family, and... and..) is the time I've been spending on my bike.  You might remember my post at the end of June where I talked about getting ready for the annual Portland Century bike ride.  Since that post, Dad and I have decided to go on the 70 mile ride instead of the 40 (because of construction, the 40 has been lowered to a 33 mile route, and I'm already riding 30 miles at a stretch, so there's not much challenge in that any more...) 

So, I've been hitting the trails a couple times a week, adding more and more miles to the routine as I try and get up to 70.  I've also been tracking my mileage, fitness, and diet on http://www.mapmyride.com (you can find me at "HaroldPDX" on that system if you want to see what I've been doing) - it's been a big help in training up.

The trick, of course, is finding the time to push the mileage up past my last ride... I only ride about 12 or 13 miles per hour, so the farther I go, the longer the ride takes... and that's less time I spend in the office, or chasing down connections that might bring work.  On the other hand, if I'm on the bike I'm not sitting in the office obsessing about the bookkeeping or the connections that might bring more work :)  In fact, I have to be honest here... if I didn't have the Century to train for, I probably wouldn't be spending so much time on my bike; it'd be one of those things I'd think I "should do" but never got around to doing... because I'm in training, I'm outside enjoying the air and the view and... well, getting more fit.  So, when I think about it, I'm probably doing myself more good than harm by getting out of my little cave and pedaling.

Anyway, if you care to track my progress and see the routes I've been riding, set up a free http://www.mapmyride.com account and become my "friend" on the system... or just watch the Twitter or Facebook feed; my rides should start posting on those services soon.

And if you don't care, that's ok too... I'm sure many of you are tired of hearing me jibber-jabber all the time :)

Hope you're all doing well...

Harold