Well, I Did It Again...

Yeah, I could have said "Oops" instead of "Well," but this is a Britany Spears-Free Zone.

Another week has gone by, and I've been too "behind the ball" to update you all on the comings and goings in our lives... here's a quick encapsulation:

>> Things have been busy on the film front... I auditioned for a film last weekend called The Sum Of The Parts. The film is mostly-finished; they started shooting it in 1999, and the director has been cutting it together ever since. In the process of cutting it together, however, he came to realize that he needed a flashback scene to help explain some of the things happening in the movie. So, he put out an open casting call to cast a couple of actors for this new scene. I didn't feel particularly good about the audition... wasn't sure if I was giving director Raymond Steers what he wanted. I got called back, though... so lets keep our fingers crossed.

The film has an interesting storyline, and the clips I've seen of the stuff that's already been edited to together look great. One of the most interesting things about the movie, though, is the style its shot in. Almost the entire film is in split-screen, with still photographs interspersed among the action. I think that this style is actually going to get the film a lot of attention on the festival circuit. Click here to see a finished clip... you'll see what I mean.

Trish auditioned for a film tentatively titled Recovery last weekend (a Playground Films project) that she felt really good about. She loves the script, and it'd be a great part for her. She got called back to read with another actor today (in fact, that's where she is now)... so we're keeping our fingers crossed on that end.

AND I've got an audition lined up for No Red Ribbons, a film by Gypsy Films that'll be shooting later this month. The character is described as a "Meat and Potatoes" kind of guy who's still fairly open-minded. Yeah... I think I can do that. I'll just have to leave my tea and crumpets in the car :) I'm taking off to read for that part here in a couple of hours.

Needless to say, there's a lot of stuff shooting here in Portland right now, and the grapevine suggests that even more will be coming up in the summer. Trish and I are both going to get new headshots taken by Owen Carey on Monday. I really need them, since my current shot doesn't really look much like me (especially with the new hair cut). Trish just got new headshots last year, but she's lost so much weight in recent months (close to 50 pounds now!) that her face has thinned out a bit. So... you gotta invest the cash to get the jobs (Owen's not cheap, but he is the best in town hands-down).

One last note from the film world... Patrick Kwan, one of the actors in the short film I shot last month, took some candid shots on the set while we were filming them. I posted a few in my MySpace "Pic's" section. Click the link, then click the "Pic's" link underneath the photo on the left-hand-side. Patrick's comment to me when he saw me in costume: "Are you Russian? Do you own a chop-shop?"

>> On The Theatre Side of things... Trish has had a very busy week hob-nobbing with Lanford Wilson. As those of you in Portland know, Profile Theatre has been doing his work all season. He came out to help develop a new version of his Obie-award-winning play Sympathetic Magic, and Trish was lucky enough to sit in on some rehearsals for the play. She says he's a real kick, and not someone who'd take well to fawning and piling-on-the praise. We're going to get a triple-shot of Lanford before he's finally out of our little burg - Trish is going to a lecture that he, Marshall Mason and a bunch of the Circle Rep veterans are putting on at PSU this afternoon, then tomorrow we're going to see a matinee performance of Redwood Curtain and an evening performance of Sympathetic Magic. It'll be a full weekend between that and auditions... but worth it.

I had a meeting yesterday afternoon with some folks from the OHSU Research department about doing another Standardized Patient project with them. This time I'll be testing the screening processes for clinical trials of new drugs that are awaiting FDA approval... no, I won't actually be getting the drugs. Instead, I'll come in as a "patient" and go through the screening process that normal applicants to these trials will go through. The goal is to identify problems in the process and give the staff of these clinics a kind of "dry run" through the intake of people who could use the medication.

This is yet another new department of OHSU that's beginning to use actors as part of their research and training process. I'm really hoping that the word spreads about our effectiveness as a training tool - already the School of Medicine at OHSU has started to recruit more actors for their standardized patient training sessions. It'd be nice if one of the city's largest institutions would start to utilize all the talent that's crawling the streets of Portland. It's a great gig for the actors, and I truly believe that we can be a valuable tool in teaching medical people to think about their patients as people and not just as symptoms.

On the horizon, rehearsals start Monday for a new musical about Eleanor Roosevelt that I'm helping a local playwright to develop, and Trish met with local actor and writer Ritah Parrish about developing a new one-woman show. More on those things as they shape up.

>>We had a great weekend with friends last weekend. Friday night our good friend Kate came over for dinner, and brought her westie Harriet to meet Baby and Buddy. We haven't spent time with Kate in close to 10 years, so it was really great to get re-connected to her... very very fulfilling. The dogs got along great too... once Baby had made it expressly clear to Hariet that the talking pig was HER toy, and not to be played with by guests!

Saturday Trish and I headed up to Seattle to visit our friends Walter and Beth. We got to see the closing night of their show La Bete at ArtsWest (Walter directed and Beth played one of the leads). Sunday we just hung out, and got to play with their 80 year old ivory and bamboo majohng set. It was a trip to play with something that old... you could almost feel the history reeking off it :)

>>We also picked up some "new" music while we were in Seattle. Across the street from ArtsWest was a great little used record store called Rubato Records. We got a couple of albums that tripped our interest.

kind of rolled the dice on the new Jason Mraz album called Mr. A-Z - I'd heard a little of Mraz's music on the way cross-country with Trish's brother Pete (he's got a live album that he just loves), but hadn't really sat down to listen closely to one of his albums. So, when I saw it at Rubato I figured what the heck. Boy am I glad I did!!! Not to wax rhapsodic or anything, but he's got a lovely, sweet voice, and his phrasing and stylings are unlike just about anyone else I've heard in contemporary music. The opening track, "Life is Wonderful" has stuck with me for days since the first hearing... and actually all the cuts on the album are full of life and very interesting musically. Check out his MySpace profile for some song samples, if you haven't already heard them.

We also got some Barry White, a Deep Forest album I hadn't heard, and this funny Average White Band album from the 80's. THE BIG SURPRISE of our music buying trip, however, came when we were getting ready to check out at the register. The clerk at Rubato Records put a new disk into the CD player about ten minutes before we got to the register, and we started grooving on a song we'd never heard called "One Trick Pony." By the time we'd reached the register we were sold! "Who is this??" we asked. "Oh," the clerk replied, "That's Nelly Furtado. She's from Victoria." Needless to say, she had to take the CD out of the player because we were confirmed Nellyphiles.

We grooved to the disk all the way down back to Portland. I'd heard "I'm Like A Bird" in the past, and thought that it was ok... kinda bubble-gummy, but she had a nice voice. Nothing from that single, though, could prepare us for the musical complexity and layers that we found on her second album Folklore. She even has interesting people playing on the disk, including Bela Fleck and the Chronos Quartet. If you get a chance, pick up this disk and give it a listen. It's fun, it's interesting, and it sticks in your head like a peanut butter and flypaper sandwich.

Well, that's it for now... I'd better get out back and mow the yard before my audition. Hope you're all doing well...

-Harold