September 19, 2025 • 42 mins
Welcome to the Actor's Guide to the End of the World Podcast, Episode 46! E-Kan and Rían get back to some of the happenings around town after back to back interview episodes. FYI this was recorded BEFORE the Emmy's, we will do our recap of the Emmy's next week. The Actors Access Terms of Use has been causing many actors drama confusion the last month. E-Kan breaks down what actors need to know and why he feels a relief about what went down... for now.
The HBO Max hit "The Pitt" productions assistants have officially unionized. Is that a good thing? E-Kan and Rían discuss it's implications and what it might mean for the industry. They also share some highlights and takeaways from recent guests Tim Davis and Shaan Sharma and reflect on how much an actor should focus on one thing in their career and how to find more clarity.
You also will hear what E-Kan is up to, and what has him sleeping in Central Park this week.
New episodes every Monday, wherever you find your podcasts, including video on YouTube and Substack. Follow @actorsguidepodcast on all social media..
@ekansoong @ríansheehykelly
Hidden Gems:
Papi Taco's and Churros - @papitacoschurros
Creatine (Please do your research)
Time stamps:
(0:00) Intro
(1:46) E-Kan's adventure in NYC
(7:07) Actors Access Drama
(12:40) Transparency in SAG-AFTRA
(15:25) The Pitt Productions Assistants unionize
(21:09) The After Party for Tim Davis and Shaan Sharma
(28:20) E-Kan just wanted to eat
(36:15) Hidden Gems
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is kind of like what we do in New
York. It's just dawning on me.
Well, I'm definitely going to be sleeping
in the park. I just don't know what hour.
Not for the first time.
I bet.
Exactly.
I think you and I are falling into this
category. We both do comedy and drama.
You know, decent
enough personality, right?
Decent enough comedic skills. I know. I
(00:21):
know. That's really
laying it all thick, right?
Decent enough personality.
Yeah.
I'm going to put that
on a dating profile.
I know exactly.
Hey, guys. Welcome to the Actors Guide to
the End of the World podcast,
where we talk about acting in Hollywood.
In a way people
understand. I'm your host, E-Kan Soong.
And I'm Rían Sheehy Kelly. What's happening?
What's up, buddy? Follow us wherever you
find your podcast at
(00:41):
Actors Guide podcast. We have
video on YouTube on Substack. Follow us
on all social media for
fun clips during the week
at Actors Guide podcast. On the show for
today, we have a little
recap of our recent guest,
Timothy Davis, Sean Sharma. We talk about
Actors Access recent
change in terms of use.
There is some actor controversy with
(01:02):
that. The PAs from the show, the Pit,
officially unionizing.
We talk about the idea of setting
specific goals for yourself. And
stick around and hear why
Econ's parents are so jacked.
What are you talking about? I'm jacked.
The Song family is
(01:24):
just straight up jacked.
They're pensioned big numbers. But first,
a word from our sponsor.
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I want to run this by you. So I'm going
(01:49):
to have a little adventure this weekend.
Shakespeare in the Park is having their
final weekend in New
York. It's obviously a big
tradition institution. Peter Dinklage,
Sandra Oh, Lupita Nyong'o.
Okay. It's a big deal. And then
I'm realizing how big a deal it is
(02:09):
because they have a line
for free tickets. Obviously,
you can buy online, but they probably
sell out in 30 seconds or
five seconds. You wait in line
for this lottery to get free tickets. So
it's this way of, you
know, watching live theater,
live Shakespeare in the park with big
celebrities. It's kind of
this tradition. And on top of it,
(02:30):
I realized that last year they didn't
have it at all. So
everyone's pent up theater energy
is just raging. Okay. I'm talking about
like, they have raging
theater energy. Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. And then of course, I mean, this
is New York is where you
go for that. So there's a
lottery line that they give tickets every
day at 12 PM for a, the
(02:51):
show at 8 PM that night.
Realistically, people are saying 6 AM you
have to be in line to get
tickets at 12 PM. Every day's
different for the lottery. I'm realizing
because I'm planning on
doing this tomorrow, tomorrow,
tomorrow night, I'm realizing 6 AM is too
late. There was an
(03:15):
article on Time Out New York,
3 AM at 3 AM there's 300 people in line.
So this is just dawning on
me. This is actually what my
day might be like tomorrow. I guess I'm
going up to New York to give it a shot.
Well, I'm definitely
going to be sleeping in the park. I just
don't know what hour like I
(03:37):
could be there 11 PM tonight
all the way until they give out tickets
the next day at noon, or I
could sleep a little bit and go
to the park at 1 AM. I'm still actively
debating this, but it's just
dawning on me. I'm going to be
sleeping in the park. I, not for the
first time. I bet.
(03:59):
Exactly. I actually am not scared.
Is that because you do jujitsu? Is that
why you're not scared? No, no, it's
funny. My sister said,
do you need pepper spray? I was like, I
don't know if I'm going to survive
sleeping in the park.
I'm not scared of someone attacking me. I
know there's going to
(04:20):
be a handful of nuts
sleeping there at 11 PM. If I, if it was
by myself, I would be a little scared,
but the beauty of New York, there's
always people around. And I, I haven't
felt unsafe in New York
in 15 years, literally. So that's why I'm
(04:40):
not scared, but I, I very
well could be sleeping in
the park to get. Sounds like you're a
little scared. Dude, I'm
not scared. I think it's just
going to be painful. This is kind of like
what we do in New York.
Like this is extreme for me.
I have waited. I have waited a couple
hours for rush tickets to Broadway.
(05:02):
That's reasonably at
10 AM, seven AM. Uh, I thought the nutso
is getting in line at
five AM. We're crazy.
This is kind of extreme. When I'm talking
about like one AM, I'm
literally bringing a yoga mat
and blankets. I'm in it for the long
haul. Like this is, this is new for me.
(05:24):
I'll, I'll get tickets
to the Superbowl and do whatever I can to
scrounge around like that.
Uh, but this is kind of new.
Like I know I'm not a concert goer. Like,
what if you don't get the
tickets after this? Would you
be distraught? Uh, I would be pretty
disappointed, but I would be
so tired. I'd be like, Hey,
if, if, if two AM wasn't good enough,
(05:48):
Hey, you guys, you guys
deserve it. You guys beat me.
That's fair, but I don't want to be the
guy who shows up at five AM
and be like, okay, I didn't
even get a shot. I think that's kind of
like my, my, my, my
thinking. I just got so many stakes
here where I'm like, if I got to go, I
got to go hard. What's the
craziest thing you ever did?
I don't think I've ever queued up for
(06:09):
anything like that. I've
never waited overnight for
anything. I don't think there's anything
that I don't know. I haven't found
anything that I would
be like, yeah, I'm going to get lost. I
know. I mean, here's the
thing. I'm not even a huge
theater goer. Uh, I mean, the cast is
great. I'm not a huge
Shakespeare nut, but I think
I can't even explain it. This is the
(06:30):
insanity that we just do
primarily in New York. I can't
even explain it. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm
actually trying to convince myself
because literally before we
start recording, this is the conversation
I was having is how early
am I going to be sleeping
in the park tonight? Literally tonight.
Anyway, so that's, that's
me. Um, yeah, we'll see how it
goes. I'll, I'll, I'll recap with you
(06:51):
guys next week. If I
survive, I look forward to
speaking with you about it or not. If it
goes by. Yeah, exactly. This
might be, I might be signing
off right here. Our last episode. All
right. So, uh, in other
exciting news, we can kind of talk
about this actor's access kerfluffle that
happened this month. Uh,
(07:12):
yeah. Yeah. I thought you liked
that. I'm not going to get into the, the
weeds about it, but
there, there is a lot of actor
misinformation. There is a lot of actors
who are confused. Actors
access, put out the terms of
service. It was kind of dramatic for a
handful of us, namely me. And, uh, for
(07:33):
anyone who still has
questions about it, we'll talk about a
little bit later. I, I did
a couple of videos on this
actors access. It was technically new
terms of use. They just kind
of fired it out there. A lot
of actors like me were kind of wondering,
what is this contractual
legal language? There was a couple
things that were red flags. The one
namely was it was waving your right for a
(07:55):
class action lawsuit.
Now that sounds bad. It basically says
you're not allowed to organize
in a class action lawsuit. You
can, you can sue them individually. I
don't know how many, you know, middle
class or actors access
actors would do that, but you're allowed
to do that. Um, you just
can't organize class action.
It sounds bad. It is. There's a lot of
(08:16):
companies who do do that. The
issue is, which sparked up me
and a handful of others is there is a
class action lawsuit
against them starting last year.
So this was in a way, possibly a sneaky
way around it, taking
advantage of actors who are basically
opting in to the terms and waving that
(08:37):
right. It actually did
violate the class actions
in the past, which was in the language.
So I did a little research.
There was a handful of actors
who spoke about it. I did a video about
it that was enthusiastic.
Uh, I'm going to be very fair
about how I say this, but, uh, it got the
(08:59):
attention of people at
breakdown. When it comes down to it,
I was basically holding out, not signing
it. A lot of actors
were trying to hold out.
There's a lot of misinformation. The
union didn't speak out. There was a lot
of actors freaking out
in this climate where people are scared
of corporations taking
advantage of actors and
(09:19):
so on and so forth. I was laying low,
heard nothing from the
union. I was connected to
leaders at the union and I was like, Hey,
uh, are you guys aware of the
situation? What's happening?
I was told that legal is working on it.
Anyway, I realized that my account was
essentially disabled.
There are actors I know that literally
don't have access to
their account right now.
(09:41):
That might be because they didn't opt
into the service. So the
good news is someone looped me
into the lawyers of the class action. He
said, Hey, did they talk to
you? I go, no. And he goes,
call this person. I was like, I'm running
around New York. I was like,
they're going to talk to me
on a weekend. Sure enough they were. And
they said, Hey, this is what
(10:01):
we're trying to get started.
We're trying to get an exception for the
class action lawsuit last
year. We're trying to get
that exception for that to stand. And
we're also trying to get
those who opted into the terms.
There's an exception for them. If they
sign these terms, that
class action lawsuit,
(10:22):
they can still participate in. And I
said, this could
happen. And they go, yeah,
we're going to try to make it happen. I
was like, that would be
amazing if it did. I put in a
statement and the next week we got word
that actors access
updated their terms of use.
They put in the exception and that's what
(10:45):
happened. I mean, I
was, I was pretty happy.
I think this is a win for the good guys.
I mean, this is, this is
organization in its finest. I
mean, sure. We didn't have a lot of
transparency or language from
sag what to do with this. And
we found a way out. They got something
(11:05):
done. I will, I will give
it to actors access. They
negotiated. That's actually very fair.
They negotiated. They
found middle ground. I will,
I'll just say this because a lot of
actors are still asking me
this stuff. I put videos on my,
on my Instagram and there are actors.
This is, this is the issue.
People are still asking me,
this is going on for a month. They are
(11:26):
actively not going into
their account and not submitting
for projects and not in wiggling around
this stuff. This is the
misinformation in our actor
community where they're asking for
someone like me who doesn't
know them and they're looking for
guidance of what to do with their lives.
This is your career. Do the
research and do what's best
(11:47):
for you because my situation is
drastically different than
someone else's situation. My point
of all this is saying is, is, Hey, we got
to win. I think we should
feel a little comfort in that.
I'll put this on the record. In my second
video, actors access,
ironically, is actually a little
more fair than other actor websites like
casting frontier and casting
(12:09):
networks. That's the irony.
This is actually, this is actually a
good, a good segue. My issue,
and it's interesting because
the past two episodes, we had great talks
with Timothy Davis. We
also had a talk with Sean
Sharma, who's a leader over at SAG. My
thing is on a general
level, something that came up was
(12:29):
transparency and we can easily knock
whoever and blame whoever, whether we
want to complain about
SAG or we want to complain about the
direction of our union. We want to
complain about social media.
When you look at the, when you're filling
out the SAG after a ballots,
you realize social media has
(12:49):
a lot to do with this. And I'm coming
around on this because social
media is a way for our leaders
to speak out about important issues. And
so going into our next segment, an
ongoing issue that I've
had is when we want to hear where SAG is
(13:13):
about whether it's actors
access, whether it's about
runaway productions, whether it's about
possible, you know, whatever
things that are happening in
our industry. We're looking for words or
support or a statement at
least. And a lot of times we
don't get it. I realize it was actually
kind of nice to have a SAG
(13:35):
leader, the opportunity to ask
the SAG leader what they thought in a
essentially long-form
conversation about things going on in
our union. Because you realize that if
you look at the leadership of our union,
a lot of them were a
little on the older side. A lot of them
don't really do social
(13:56):
media. And you realize there's
kind of a disconnect as far as
transparency. And so, you know, and
needless to say, I understand
that because there's legal, legal
limitations. But here we are the last
month, you know, actors access
is one example. A lot of actors,
(14:19):
including myself, were looking for
guidance. That was an incredible
opportunity. And then we got we got to
get some questions in with
Sean Sarmat. Do you think that's
going to change with the change in
leadership? I mean, it looks like Sean
Astin is. That's a great
point. Obviously, a lot of us are really
(14:40):
excited about Sean Astin.
Sean Astin, I haven't, I've
seen him on some of the solidarity Zooms.
During the strike, he was
very, very vocal. His mom,
Patty Duke, was the first woman president
of SAG Screen Actors
Guild, 1985 to 1988. So he has
(15:03):
some legacy as far as union action. He
gave great speeches during the strike.
And that's actually,
I would like to think Sean Astin is a
little more accessible than some of our
previous leaders. So
I'm excited. I'm optimistic. So moving on
to this. This week, the production
assistants on the pit
(15:26):
officially unionized. Now, for those not
in the industry, production
assistants on the crew level
is essentially the lowest level position.
I don't want to disrespect it, but
they're the assistants,
they go run whatever the department,
whether it's art or whether it's
production or whether
it's the office, they run and go do
(15:48):
things. It's very ambiguous,
but they're very much needed.
So this is the first time ever by far
organized group of
production assistants. They officially
unionized. They joined Leuna Local 724.
They had a grassroots movement of
production assistants,
Productions Assistance United was a
(16:09):
movement that they were just
trying to get momentum since
started in 2023. So during the pandemic,
coming out of the pandemic,
they were trying to organize.
And now they officially got their first
show, the pit, HBO, Noah
Wiley, Dr. Drama. It's kind of
surprising. No, I just well, like of all
the shows at the moment that are
(16:31):
shooting, I've heard
anecdotally that the pit is a very fair
show. I mean, Noah Wiley
sent out that the note that
for everybody, the sort of ethos of the
show that got sent to actors. That's
really cool. I didn't
know about them. It shoots here. Now,
I've heard that it's a really
good set to work on. And it's
just a really good atmosphere. And so of
(16:52):
all the shows that that if
that was going to happen, I
mean, it makes sense that it's that
particular show. Everyone's
everyone I know, for the most
part has been raving to me about the
show. But I managed to get a
few episodes in. First of all,
there's a huge cast. So not only do you
have a show shooting in
LA, I saw in the first two
episodes, I probably saw five, six people
(17:12):
that I knew, like actors
that I knew, it was kind of
awesome. I have a close friend who's a
recurring medic on that show.
Congrats to them. This is the
other thing. You're unionizing production
assistance. It's a
little tricky because of the
nature of the position. Are you because
you're going to get you're
going to get better wages,
(17:33):
you're going to get health care. Okay,
because they didn't they
didn't have union regulations
for I want to say regulations for hours,
doing various tasks. They
do work very long hours.
It brings up a question, is this going to
push production away from union PAs?
Do you know what a PA gets paid? Do you
(17:54):
know production
assistance got paid? Do you have
any idea what the rates of pay are? Okay,
I see LA, LA commercial
productions is maybe 250 to 300
for 12. Okay, 200 to 300 for a 12 hour
day. And that might be a non union
production assistant.
So now we're getting into when we talk
about unions, we're
talking about overtime pay.
(18:15):
Is this going to scare away production?
This is rhetorical. We're
not going to get into this.
This actually this actually would have
been a great question for
say a SAG leader like Sean
Sharma, but you know, we'll have that
another time. Union
regulations going to stairway scare
away productions. If you've been on a
set, you realize production assistance
and this is the knock
production assistants are in essentially
(18:38):
an interim position.
Meaning, that's the ground level
of being in the crew, no disrespect.
Ideally, you become a PA. So
you can work your way up to
something else. Like an AD, like a second
AD, like maybe, I mean,
to be honest, most of them
are probably pushing their screenplays
(18:58):
and pushing their scripts and
probably want to direct. Are
they going to be career PAs? You fight to
be in a union, you're
going to pay dues, essentially,
are you going to cement yourself as a PA
for the rest of life? That is
interesting, because like,
ADs are in the DGA.
(19:22):
I thought it was too, but someone told me
the other day it was DGA.
ADs are part of the DGA, you're right. So
the transition would be
a PA possibly becomes a
second AD or goes down that track and
they become, they eventually
work their way up to the DGA.
If they become producers, then the
producer's guild obviously
(19:43):
has a has a guild so they could
go that way. I think that's kind of like
what we're looking at
production assistants,
ideally are interim position or you work
your way up and is this
counterintuitive to what the
position is? I mean, yeah, I don't know.
I don't know. I don't
know. It's an interesting one.
I wonder if it'll catch on. You know,
like if it'll if it'll spread. First of all,
(20:04):
first of all, that says a lot about the
pit. This is assuming that
the pit or this community is
going to last a while. If this show was
canceled after the first season, this
probably wouldn't be
happening. It kind of doesn't make sense.
And I think that the comp
is in 2023, Marvel Studios
(20:25):
VFX workers under the Marvel Studios
banner successfully
unionized with IOTC. See this tight
knit group of incredibly talented,
hardworking professionals.
They through organized action
get together. They fight for proper
rights, proper hours, and
you grow from there. So but
(20:45):
but Marvel just moved to the UK, right?
They moved their
production to the UK. Yeah, in all
honesty, I don't know how that works
because to be honest, there is VFX over
there that they already
had in Europe anyway. But that does that
does bring up a good
question. That does bring up a
question. Did they escape? Moving on. So
let's do this, our little
(21:06):
after party for our recent guests,
Timothy Davis, Sean Sharma. There's a
couple things that a lot of things have
kind of stuck with me.
But it's interesting. One common thread
that they had in both episodes was this
acknowledgement that
most drama schools focus on stage and
(21:29):
they do not prepare you
for a career in film and TV.
Because Timothy Davis went to the
esteemed actor studio. And,
you know, one of his one of his
complaints was, I wasn't prepared to work
as a professional film
and TV afterwards. Sean
Sharma did not go to drama school. And
(21:52):
both of them had that
through line. Yeah, I've heard what
it gives you is a is a kind of a gives
you connections. It
gives you a network. That's
what I felt I missed by not going to
drama school. I felt I missed out a
little bit. I don't know.
But I feel like there are things that I
would have taken from
drama school that that took me
(22:13):
probably longer to acquire in the in
through experience. Oh,
to be to be fair, you're
completely right. And I don't think I
don't think Tim or Sean
were saying it's useless,
but you're completely right. To be fair,
it's like there's there's a
lot of value that you could get
besides necessarily getting on camera
(22:35):
experience. Right. And I
think it would make it more
attractive if if one screen acting was a
bigger part of it, because
that's most of what, you know,
people do today or a lot of what people
do today. And also the
business of acting, which is so
wide ranging. Like I I had no idea coming
in what it involves. And today it
(22:55):
involves more than ever,
because now you're also responsible for
taping and, you know, the
technical side of things,
the equipment you buy, all of that stuff.
It's getting tougher and
tougher. And not to mention,
I just saw right before before we got on,
I saw a commercial for a
show, a new Fx show that stars
(23:15):
Brian Jordan Alvarez, who is, you know, a
guy who creates his own
comedy sketches on his
Instagram and TikTok or whatever. So
that's another example of somebody who's
just making their own
work. And now he's the lead in this Fx
show. Yeah, you know, which
is so just it just kind of
it reinforces the idea that you have to
(23:38):
just kind of create your own
work. And, and, you know, even
just for yourself, for your own sense of
of agency and creativity to just make
stuff. I just realized
that that probably translates to film
school. It's great to learn the technical
tools on set cameras,
lenses, but when it comes to branding,
(23:59):
marketing, because I realize
a lot of my filmmaker friends
who went to film school are trying to
figure out social media. How do I get
buzz from my project?
How do I get attention in this world with
so much noise? And how do you
make your mark when you have
people like Brian Jordan Alvarez? It's
funny that actually that
he's on your radar. I'm aware of
(24:20):
that show. I think they're going back to
season two or season three. I've
auditioned for a couple
times, the English teacher. Yeah, I don't
think I'm actually really,
really amazed that he's on
your radar. Brian Jordan Alvarez, shout
out to him because a lot
of people would not realize
how long he goes back as far as creating
his own projects because I
(24:41):
was actually studying his
projects back when I was creating my web
series. And for years of
people giving him pilots, giving
him opportunities, he had a lot of
talent. And only until now
is he the star and creator of
a halooshio. I think that's another thing
to say, "Hey, no way was
(25:03):
this overnight. This dude was
pounding the pavement." Because I
remember back in the day when he was kind
of like the hot upstart,
dude, that was so long ago. That was so
long ago. And that's a credit to his
diligence and work ethic.
I came across him through Instagram
through some of his comedy
songs and videos and stuff.
(25:25):
I didn't even know that. He's created a
bunch of different characters that he
puts out on Instagram, whatever. Because
I follow a lot of those. I
follow a lot of people who make
their own comedy videos. Funny stuff,
right? Because I really
enjoy it. And some of our
friends do. Carly Christopher, one of
them has been making
videos and making sketches.
(25:46):
She's great. Carly's great. And who did I
see pop up recently? We saw
him at the Stay in LA rally.
Oh, yeah. Clay Ferris. Clay Ferris. Clay
Ferris. Clayton
Ferris. Yeah. Clayton Ferris
popped up in weapons. Did he really?
(26:07):
Yeah, he's in weapons. In our society,
it's actually going to be the... This is
a good segue. We want
to put people in a box.
So we can say that someone creates their
own content and they're
really funny on Instagram,
but are they really going to be on TV?
Well, if they really work
hard enough and they want to,
they could. There's also a lot of
(26:28):
influencers and comedy
sketch people that are on YouTube,
have a huge following in their own
studio, and they have no
interest in being on Hulu.
So it's kind of this very well might be
the new generation of where
we're going as far as there's
enough space in the internet for everyone
(26:49):
to have their own little
plot of land. Absolutely.
You hear about a lot where like you
certainly hear about it at
the studio where like somebody
who's an influencer with a lot of
followers gets that
opportunity and then they have to
get into a class because they need to
learn how to do the
other thing, which is acting.
And then are they going to stick around?
(27:09):
Are they going to stick
around and get better for five
years to learn the skills? Right. Because
it's hard to compress
that experience and knowledge
into a short amount of time. You know,
it's there are a lot of the people
getting the opportunities.
So if you can do both, if you can already
act and you've been
studying that and, you know,
you have experience in that and then you
(27:30):
can start creating your
own work, then you're,
I think you're pretty far ahead. This is
a great segue. So one of
the things that I want to talk
about because it, it, it kind of hit me.
I didn't see it coming and
it kind of hit me because I
realized how much I didn't want to hear
it. Sean Sharma, you
asked him, Hey, you know,
this idea of the business and have you
(27:53):
always looked at your
career as a business and so on
and so forth. And he basically said, you
know, one of the things
that he teaches is, you know,
everyone wants to eat, uh, to say that,
Hey, I just want to work. I
just want to have a career
and I'd be happy with that. Yeah. Saying
I just want to work is like
going into the grocery store
going, I just want to eat. Like you're
not picking. And I realized, and I'm
(28:15):
going to, I'm going to,
you know, this is a confession because
I'm not, I'm not, I'm not
joking around. Uh, my entire,
I've always just wanted to eat. Like
literally it has not
changed for years. Are you talking
about food now? Or is this a metaphor for
work? This is actually
both. This is actually literally
both. And I thought that was perfectly
okay. I actually thought
(28:35):
that was normal. And I was not
expecting Sean to say that so
definitively. And I felt conflicted. I
still feel conflicted. I could
say for an actor on a, on a base level,
it could say an actor who
wants to do comedy and drama.
I feel like I, I actually feel like I
(28:55):
have done both and I
also want to do both. I,
a hundred percent was sleeping on
branding marketing. And on
top of it in the acting world,
and also the stuff that I'm creating,
those are two different
lanes. Trying to figure that out
right now, my YouTube, I am actually
going to split up between my
Hollywood stuff and my travel
(29:18):
food and fun stuff. So this is as of this
week, I'm taking this
advice to heart because I need to
clarify this. These are just examples. I
mean, what do you think
about this? No, you're right. I
don't know. I probably haven't been
specific enough. Here's the thing. I
think there's a point
for me personally, if I get too specific
about what I want, I find it
(29:39):
limiting because I find it,
it, it kind of funnels me into a very
limited vision of what
could be, for example, vision
boards will do whatever you think of
that. That's something that gets hyper
specific. And that's
something that I tried and I just, it
didn't work for me because, and I think
part of the reason is
my, the way my brain works, it's so
(30:01):
visual. I like everything. I have very
strong visual images of
everything that I, you know, think about
or, or, or, or imagine that I
get caught up in the details
and I get in, you know, I get, I get so
in the weeds about the
actual details of it when I try
to envision something in my head. Now,
(30:21):
this isn't necessarily the same thing,
but I, I think I could
probably do with being a bit more
directed. Absolutely. Cause
I, I, I kind of, when you said
that too, I was like, Oh, that's very
interesting. Cause I have always in my
mind gone. I just want
to work because I love it so much. There
you go. That's a common
thread between both of us. You're
completely right. I think it would, you
(30:43):
know, I think it's certainly
worth a shot to try and get
a bit more specific and work with a more
specific goal in mind.
Emmett, Emmett, I brought this up a
few times, but Emmett has described it to
me as like picking a
destination on a GPS, trusting
that you'll get there, whatever that,
whatever that overarching
audacious goal is, you know,
(31:04):
and it can, it can be outrageous. You
trust that you'll get there, but you
accept whatever the GPS,
whatever directions, you know, if you go
around, if there's roadworks
and you have to take a detour,
you just accept all of those things as
the journey, but have faith
that you will get to that place.
And have faith that it's a little better
than Apple maps. Am I right?
(31:25):
Just joking. Apple map sucks, everyone.
Well, there goes
another sponsor. Thanks, Econ.
So I, well, here's the thing. The comedy
versus drama is just one
example. In Sean's example,
he was talking about, I want to be a
series regular on a TV
show. He did not specify genre.
Basically he said, I want to be a series
regular. I need to make
(31:46):
connections in TV and so on. And
that took him down that path. If someone
says, I really want to be
on Game of Thrones. And then
there's a course of action that you could
go. So let's just talk about
the actors. If you look like
Thor. So this is the difference. I think
you and I are falling into
this category because I feel like
for better or for worse, we have a range
(32:06):
where, you know, decent enough
personality, right? Decent
enough comedic skills. I know. I know
that's really laying it all
thick, right? Decent enough
personality. I'm going to put that in a
dating profile. Exactly.
We could, we both do comedy
and drama. And so it, it, it depends on
the type of actor you're working with.
(32:28):
But if you look like
Thor and you want to be on Game of
Thrones and left and right,
all you're doing is, is funny,
silly little sketches. You're not deep in
your voice. Like Leslie
has this classic story about
how a guy who looked like Conan the
Barbarian and he talked like Mickey
Mouse. Like literally that,
that's, that's, it did not work for his
(32:49):
branding. That's a very clear example of,
you kind of need to,
you know, know what you're working with
and pick a lane. That's
an extreme example. For us,
I think there's room for nuance where
doesn't need to be, these are all of our
one hour drama headshots
and just plaster Instagram with it. So I
(33:10):
think we do have room for
it, but it's interesting to,
it's interesting to think about depending
on who you are as an
actor. Yeah. And there, there,
there are a couple of things, just points
that I, I kind of want to hit on this.
And like one of them
is, um, yeah, you can, you can get really
specific about what you want. This career
is very unpredictable.
(33:31):
So really what you can control is like,
like you say, what you put
out into the world. And some of
that is, you know, of course, like, as we
talked about creating your
own content, if that's what you
want to do, which is the only place you
really have full control. The, how it's
received is out of your
control. But, but I will say like about
that idea of like being specific about a
goal, I think that's
(33:51):
only effective if you don't only see the
lack of that in your life in
the interim. You know what I
mean? If you pick a goal and all you see
is the lack of that goal until you get
there, I think you're
going to be pretty unhappy, uh, along the
way. So I think, uh, a big
part of that to emphasize just
for myself, I'm not talking about anyone
else's, if I have a goal, I
(34:12):
have to enjoy every bit of the
way, the journey there. And, and one
thing that Sean did say,
which I thought was, um,
what was very, uh, insightful or struck
me as like, if you got
everything you wanted, when you
wanted it, you wouldn't be happy. And I
think I've, I've, I've tried
to kind of, I've been thinking
(34:32):
about that a lot. Cause I had heard
someone say, you know, adversity is a
privilege and it is sort
of the same thing where like, yeah, if
everything came easy, there
would be no value to it. So I,
it's actually helped me enjoy things a
little bit more. I do anyway. You know
what I mean? I really
love getting to this. I just, I realized
this week that I love
auditioning and I used to hate
(34:53):
audition. Yeah. And I've gone a complete
180. Yeah. And I really
enjoy it now. Like I really,
you know, you know, when I, when I get an
audition now, I really
get like, I've gotten
buzzed up about it. I'm like, yeah, nice
one. You know, I can't wait to try this
and see how it goes.
This conversation is helping me realize
all the things I want to
create for the most part is a
dread in my morning. I wake up all these
(35:16):
things. I want to create
all these things only 24 hours
in the day. And for me, that could easily
be, Oh my God. It's like,
there's so many things I haven't
gotten to yet. And it could easily weigh
me down or where it could be, hooray.
There's so many things
I haven't gotten to exactly to get to
this one and this one. So
this little clarity is a shift
(35:37):
for me personally, because I'm, I'm
looking at the positive. I'm
looking at the excitement of,
of being able to, to have that challenge.
And there you go. A
little takeaway. We'll see,
we'll see how this goes. This is
accountability, public
accountability, everyone.
So let's, that's, that's a good place to,
to, to wrap it there.
(35:58):
Let's do hidden gems.
My hidden gem for this week, I keep
picking restaurants, but
I don't know. Sometimes
that's the most significant new thing in
my week. But, mine is a restaurant called
Papi's Churros, which is in, on Wilshire
Boulevard in Santa Monica.
Wow. And it is fantastic. They
(36:20):
have fantastic tacos. Believe it or not,
their churros are
excellent. And I don't need a ton of
churros, but these churros are very good.
Everyone loves a good churro. Is it mom
and pop? How big is it?
It's, it's hard. I don't know. I don't
know. It may be a
standalone. I'm not sure, but it's like
the decor is mental. You know what I
(36:41):
mean? It makes no sense.
There's one wall is painted, but
crazy shit. And the other wall has like a
fake like brickwork, but
like a fake hole in it where
you're looking. It's well, it makes no
sense, but the food is excellent. And,
uh, might be endearing
at least. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's got a big,
you know, it's got a big
high ceiling. It's like, it's a
(37:02):
mad looking place, but, um, the food is
fantastic and they're very nice and, uh,
it's pretty reasonably
priced. And this consummate, they give
you like a thing, a consummate with like
a burrito. If you get
a burrito, you get like a thing, a
consummate soup with it, which is very
interesting. That's not
something I've ever come across on a hot
day. Burrito. Yeah. Wait, they
(37:23):
literally call it consummate.
Yeah. It's called consummate. Well,
that's bonkers. Okay. Yeah. I'm
definitely going to have to check
this out. That is bizarre. Get some
consummate. It's tasty. Okay.
Well, there you go. All right.
You're helping your Santa Monica LA food
scene. So I, I'll throw
this one out there. Uh, I was
probably, I was, I was, I had two hidden
(37:45):
gems possibly with last
week's episode with Sean,
but I thought this was too ridiculous to
even put that in. Um, so
not too far off from your
electrolytes a couple of weeks ago, I was
sleeping and by the way, we are not
doctors. So do your own
research. This is not, this is just our
story. Um, I tried
(38:09):
creatine for the first time ever.
Is that your show, Jack? Thank you. No,
I'm just, I'm just kidding. Um, I, I
actually am completely
jacked, uh, for the listeners on audio. I
am absolutely jacked
right now. Um, so I heard of
creatine. We heard of, I don't know if
(38:29):
you heard about it growing
up, all the weight lifters were
pumping creatine. It was a way for them
to get a, you know, buffer,
whatever. So after years of
science, research evidence, creatine is
kind of trending right now
for whatever reason. Maybe the,
I want to assume products are taking it
when I was in school, play
it. Like when I played rugby in
(38:49):
school, did a lot of the players are
playing, yeah, taken creatine. Creatine
is not only helpful for
men and women. I got my parents on it.
They say it's better for
memory, brain function. Uh,
I found a type that was very pure that
has been vetted. Uh, well,
your parents are so jacked.
(39:11):
Well, I mean, to be honest, they are very
healthy for their age,
but, uh, this is just
to help with, to help with it. Anyway,
I'm not going to lie.
You're going to laugh.
I do more pushups than
I've ever done before.
I'm going to be talking. I don't know if
I should put in a number. I
don't know if I should put in a
number when you did your new resolution
to me, when you, when you do your
(39:33):
resolutions of pushups,
you didn't say what your number was. I
did. I said it was 20 a day.
I said it was a small amount.
I do more now, but I did start. You
didn't say 20. It was a, I did. It was a
small amount of pushups
and situps every day, but it was the fact
that I was doing it every
day. How long have you been
taking it by the way? It's literally,
well, funny enough. I think
the first time I tried it,
(39:54):
I put too much, uh, I think my sister
made a smoothie and it was
a little too much. It kind
of, it might've affected my stomach. You
have to take it like five
times a day at the start, right?
Oh no, no, that's insane. Like it
recommends you take it. Oh no, that's
insane. No, don't do that.
Well, to, to, well, it tells you to do
it. Like it tells you to take, and then
you tape her down over
the beautiful month. No, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
that's not on my bottle. That's insane.
(40:14):
That would, that would,
that would have killed me.
It kills your digest. You're going to see
digestive digestion
issue. So here's the thing.
Actually I should, I should caveat this.
This is, this is much longer than I
expected. The one thing
that, uh, part of the reason why it helps
people get bigger, it actually
contributes to water weight.
So needless to say, a lot of women are
(40:35):
using it sparingly or
carefully because they don't
want to gain water weight, but it does
help people get bigger.
It also can affect your
intestines and digestive system. So I
would not suggest overdoing
a, doing a lot. I believe the
first dosage is five grams. I started out
small and I've been doing
(40:56):
it consistently for maybe two
weeks. If my, if it hits my stomach, I
take a day off. I took two days off
actually. Here's what I
read. It said some trainers recommend a
creatine loading phase
where you take 20 to 25 grams of
creatine daily for five to seven days in
five gram servings. And
then after that you maintain
by taking three to five grams daily.
(41:17):
Yeah. Do your research
everyone. That's, that's literally,
that's literally the nut sows. That is
the reason why I didn't
touch creatine for 15, 20 years.
If you have body weightlifting goals, I'm
sure that's the customary
thing, but I basically take
a scoop and, and I worked up slowly, but
(41:37):
absolutely not. I did
not start that. It would
have destroyed my stomach. It literally
would have destroyed my
stomach if that's any indication.
Interesting. I had to take two days off.
I had to take two days
off because I felt it.
Anyway, that's your, that's your hidden
gems. Oh, you never know
what you're going to get
on this show everyone. Well that's our
(41:58):
episode. Hope you enjoy
it. Have a great weekend and
see you next time. See you next time.
This is kind of like what we do in New
York. It's just dawning on me.
Well, I'm definitely going to be sleeping
in the park. I just don't know what hour.
Not for the first time.
I bet.
Exactly.
I think you and I are falling into this
category. We both do comedy and drama.
You know, decent
enough personality, right?
Decent enough comedic skills. I know. I
(00:21):
know. That's really
laying it all thick, right?
Decent enough personality.
Yeah.
I'm going to put that
on a dating profile.
I know exactly.
Hey, guys. Welcome to the Actors Guide to
the End of the World podcast,
where we talk about acting in Hollywood.
In a way people
understand. I'm your host, E-Kan Soong.
And I'm Rían Sheehy Kelly. What's happening?
What's up, buddy? Follow us wherever you
find your podcast at
(00:41):
Actors Guide podcast. We have
video on YouTube on Substack. Follow us
on all social media for
fun clips during the week
at Actors Guide podcast. On the show for
today, we have a little
recap of our recent guest,
Timothy Davis, Sean Sharma. We talk about
Actors Access recent
change in terms of use.
There is some actor controversy with
(01:02):
that. The PAs from the show, the Pit,
officially unionizing.
We talk about the idea of setting
specific goals for yourself. And
stick around and hear why
Econ's parents are so jacked.
What are you talking about? I'm jacked.
The Song family is
(01:24):
just straight up jacked.
They're pensioned big numbers. But first,
a word from our sponsor.
Does your pet get the yips in auditions?
Does your little friend literally shit
the bed at callbacks?
Welcome to the Royal Academy for Dramatic
Barks, where your puppies
will be trained by acting
legends Ellen Barkin, Mark Ruffalo and
Sir Patrick Stewart. Sign up today.
I want to run this by you. So I'm going
(01:49):
to have a little adventure this weekend.
Shakespeare in the Park is having their
final weekend in New
York. It's obviously a big
tradition institution. Peter Dinklage,
Sandra Oh, Lupita Nyong'o.
Okay. It's a big deal. And then
I'm realizing how big a deal it is
(02:09):
because they have a line
for free tickets. Obviously,
you can buy online, but they probably
sell out in 30 seconds or
five seconds. You wait in line
for this lottery to get free tickets. So
it's this way of, you
know, watching live theater,
live Shakespeare in the park with big
celebrities. It's kind of
this tradition. And on top of it,
(02:30):
I realized that last year they didn't
have it at all. So
everyone's pent up theater energy
is just raging. Okay. I'm talking about
like, they have raging
theater energy. Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. And then of course, I mean, this
is New York is where you
go for that. So there's a
lottery line that they give tickets every
day at 12 PM for a, the
(02:51):
show at 8 PM that night.
Realistically, people are saying 6 AM you
have to be in line to get
tickets at 12 PM. Every day's
different for the lottery. I'm realizing
because I'm planning on
doing this tomorrow, tomorrow,
tomorrow night, I'm realizing 6 AM is too
late. There was an
(03:15):
article on Time Out New York,
3 AM at 3 AM there's 300 people in line.
So this is just dawning on
me. This is actually what my
day might be like tomorrow. I guess I'm
going up to New York to give it a shot.
Well, I'm definitely
going to be sleeping in the park. I just
don't know what hour like I
(03:37):
could be there 11 PM tonight
all the way until they give out tickets
the next day at noon, or I
could sleep a little bit and go
to the park at 1 AM. I'm still actively
debating this, but it's just
dawning on me. I'm going to be
sleeping in the park. I, not for the
first time. I bet.
(03:59):
Exactly. I actually am not scared.
Is that because you do jujitsu? Is that
why you're not scared? No, no, it's
funny. My sister said,
do you need pepper spray? I was like, I
don't know if I'm going to survive
sleeping in the park.
I'm not scared of someone attacking me. I
know there's going to
(04:20):
be a handful of nuts
sleeping there at 11 PM. If I, if it was
by myself, I would be a little scared,
but the beauty of New York, there's
always people around. And I, I haven't
felt unsafe in New York
in 15 years, literally. So that's why I'm
(04:40):
not scared, but I, I very
well could be sleeping in
the park to get. Sounds like you're a
little scared. Dude, I'm
not scared. I think it's just
going to be painful. This is kind of like
what we do in New York.
Like this is extreme for me.
I have waited. I have waited a couple
hours for rush tickets to Broadway.
(05:02):
That's reasonably at
10 AM, seven AM. Uh, I thought the nutso
is getting in line at
five AM. We're crazy.
This is kind of extreme. When I'm talking
about like one AM, I'm
literally bringing a yoga mat
and blankets. I'm in it for the long
haul. Like this is, this is new for me.
(05:24):
I'll, I'll get tickets
to the Superbowl and do whatever I can to
scrounge around like that.
Uh, but this is kind of new.
Like I know I'm not a concert goer. Like,
what if you don't get the
tickets after this? Would you
be distraught? Uh, I would be pretty
disappointed, but I would be
so tired. I'd be like, Hey,
if, if, if two AM wasn't good enough,
(05:48):
Hey, you guys, you guys
deserve it. You guys beat me.
That's fair, but I don't want to be the
guy who shows up at five AM
and be like, okay, I didn't
even get a shot. I think that's kind of
like my, my, my, my
thinking. I just got so many stakes
here where I'm like, if I got to go, I
got to go hard. What's the
craziest thing you ever did?
I don't think I've ever queued up for
(06:09):
anything like that. I've
never waited overnight for
anything. I don't think there's anything
that I don't know. I haven't found
anything that I would
be like, yeah, I'm going to get lost. I
know. I mean, here's the
thing. I'm not even a huge
theater goer. Uh, I mean, the cast is
great. I'm not a huge
Shakespeare nut, but I think
I can't even explain it. This is the
(06:30):
insanity that we just do
primarily in New York. I can't
even explain it. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm
actually trying to convince myself
because literally before we
start recording, this is the conversation
I was having is how early
am I going to be sleeping
in the park tonight? Literally tonight.
Anyway, so that's, that's
me. Um, yeah, we'll see how it
goes. I'll, I'll, I'll recap with you
(06:51):
guys next week. If I
survive, I look forward to
speaking with you about it or not. If it
goes by. Yeah, exactly. This
might be, I might be signing
off right here. Our last episode. All
right. So, uh, in other
exciting news, we can kind of talk
about this actor's access kerfluffle that
happened this month. Uh,
(07:12):
yeah. Yeah. I thought you liked
that. I'm not going to get into the, the
weeds about it, but
there, there is a lot of actor
misinformation. There is a lot of actors
who are confused. Actors
access, put out the terms of
service. It was kind of dramatic for a
handful of us, namely me. And, uh, for
(07:33):
anyone who still has
questions about it, we'll talk about a
little bit later. I, I did
a couple of videos on this
actors access. It was technically new
terms of use. They just kind
of fired it out there. A lot
of actors like me were kind of wondering,
what is this contractual
legal language? There was a couple
things that were red flags. The one
namely was it was waving your right for a
(07:55):
class action lawsuit.
Now that sounds bad. It basically says
you're not allowed to organize
in a class action lawsuit. You
can, you can sue them individually. I
don't know how many, you know, middle
class or actors access
actors would do that, but you're allowed
to do that. Um, you just
can't organize class action.
It sounds bad. It is. There's a lot of
(08:16):
companies who do do that. The
issue is, which sparked up me
and a handful of others is there is a
class action lawsuit
against them starting last year.
So this was in a way, possibly a sneaky
way around it, taking
advantage of actors who are basically
opting in to the terms and waving that
(08:37):
right. It actually did
violate the class actions
in the past, which was in the language.
So I did a little research.
There was a handful of actors
who spoke about it. I did a video about
it that was enthusiastic.
Uh, I'm going to be very fair
about how I say this, but, uh, it got the
(08:59):
attention of people at
breakdown. When it comes down to it,
I was basically holding out, not signing
it. A lot of actors
were trying to hold out.
There's a lot of misinformation. The
union didn't speak out. There was a lot
of actors freaking out
in this climate where people are scared
of corporations taking
advantage of actors and
(09:19):
so on and so forth. I was laying low,
heard nothing from the
union. I was connected to
leaders at the union and I was like, Hey,
uh, are you guys aware of the
situation? What's happening?
I was told that legal is working on it.
Anyway, I realized that my account was
essentially disabled.
There are actors I know that literally
don't have access to
their account right now.
(09:41):
That might be because they didn't opt
into the service. So the
good news is someone looped me
into the lawyers of the class action. He
said, Hey, did they talk to
you? I go, no. And he goes,
call this person. I was like, I'm running
around New York. I was like,
they're going to talk to me
on a weekend. Sure enough they were. And
they said, Hey, this is what
(10:01):
we're trying to get started.
We're trying to get an exception for the
class action lawsuit last
year. We're trying to get
that exception for that to stand. And
we're also trying to get
those who opted into the terms.
There's an exception for them. If they
sign these terms, that
class action lawsuit,
(10:22):
they can still participate in. And I
said, this could
happen. And they go, yeah,
we're going to try to make it happen. I
was like, that would be
amazing if it did. I put in a
statement and the next week we got word
that actors access
updated their terms of use.
They put in the exception and that's what
(10:45):
happened. I mean, I
was, I was pretty happy.
I think this is a win for the good guys.
I mean, this is, this is
organization in its finest. I
mean, sure. We didn't have a lot of
transparency or language from
sag what to do with this. And
we found a way out. They got something
(11:05):
done. I will, I will give
it to actors access. They
negotiated. That's actually very fair.
They negotiated. They
found middle ground. I will,
I'll just say this because a lot of
actors are still asking me
this stuff. I put videos on my,
on my Instagram and there are actors.
This is, this is the issue.
People are still asking me,
this is going on for a month. They are
(11:26):
actively not going into
their account and not submitting
for projects and not in wiggling around
this stuff. This is the
misinformation in our actor
community where they're asking for
someone like me who doesn't
know them and they're looking for
guidance of what to do with their lives.
This is your career. Do the
research and do what's best
(11:47):
for you because my situation is
drastically different than
someone else's situation. My point
of all this is saying is, is, Hey, we got
to win. I think we should
feel a little comfort in that.
I'll put this on the record. In my second
video, actors access,
ironically, is actually a little
more fair than other actor websites like
casting frontier and casting
(12:09):
networks. That's the irony.
This is actually, this is actually a
good, a good segue. My issue,
and it's interesting because
the past two episodes, we had great talks
with Timothy Davis. We
also had a talk with Sean
Sharma, who's a leader over at SAG. My
thing is on a general
level, something that came up was
(12:29):
transparency and we can easily knock
whoever and blame whoever, whether we
want to complain about
SAG or we want to complain about the
direction of our union. We want to
complain about social media.
When you look at the, when you're filling
out the SAG after a ballots,
you realize social media has
(12:49):
a lot to do with this. And I'm coming
around on this because social
media is a way for our leaders
to speak out about important issues. And
so going into our next segment, an
ongoing issue that I've
had is when we want to hear where SAG is
(13:13):
about whether it's actors
access, whether it's about
runaway productions, whether it's about
possible, you know, whatever
things that are happening in
our industry. We're looking for words or
support or a statement at
least. And a lot of times we
don't get it. I realize it was actually
kind of nice to have a SAG
(13:35):
leader, the opportunity to ask
the SAG leader what they thought in a
essentially long-form
conversation about things going on in
our union. Because you realize that if
you look at the leadership of our union,
a lot of them were a
little on the older side. A lot of them
don't really do social
(13:56):
media. And you realize there's
kind of a disconnect as far as
transparency. And so, you know, and
needless to say, I understand
that because there's legal, legal
limitations. But here we are the last
month, you know, actors access
is one example. A lot of actors,
(14:19):
including myself, were looking for
guidance. That was an incredible
opportunity. And then we got we got to
get some questions in with
Sean Sarmat. Do you think that's
going to change with the change in
leadership? I mean, it looks like Sean
Astin is. That's a great
point. Obviously, a lot of us are really
(14:40):
excited about Sean Astin.
Sean Astin, I haven't, I've
seen him on some of the solidarity Zooms.
During the strike, he was
very, very vocal. His mom,
Patty Duke, was the first woman president
of SAG Screen Actors
Guild, 1985 to 1988. So he has
(15:03):
some legacy as far as union action. He
gave great speeches during the strike.
And that's actually,
I would like to think Sean Astin is a
little more accessible than some of our
previous leaders. So
I'm excited. I'm optimistic. So moving on
to this. This week, the production
assistants on the pit
(15:26):
officially unionized. Now, for those not
in the industry, production
assistants on the crew level
is essentially the lowest level position.
I don't want to disrespect it, but
they're the assistants,
they go run whatever the department,
whether it's art or whether it's
production or whether
it's the office, they run and go do
(15:48):
things. It's very ambiguous,
but they're very much needed.
So this is the first time ever by far
organized group of
production assistants. They officially
unionized. They joined Leuna Local 724.
They had a grassroots movement of
production assistants,
Productions Assistance United was a
(16:09):
movement that they were just
trying to get momentum since
started in 2023. So during the pandemic,
coming out of the pandemic,
they were trying to organize.
And now they officially got their first
show, the pit, HBO, Noah
Wiley, Dr. Drama. It's kind of
surprising. No, I just well, like of all
the shows at the moment that are
(16:31):
shooting, I've heard
anecdotally that the pit is a very fair
show. I mean, Noah Wiley
sent out that the note that
for everybody, the sort of ethos of the
show that got sent to actors. That's
really cool. I didn't
know about them. It shoots here. Now,
I've heard that it's a really
good set to work on. And it's
just a really good atmosphere. And so of
(16:52):
all the shows that that if
that was going to happen, I
mean, it makes sense that it's that
particular show. Everyone's
everyone I know, for the most
part has been raving to me about the
show. But I managed to get a
few episodes in. First of all,
there's a huge cast. So not only do you
have a show shooting in
LA, I saw in the first two
episodes, I probably saw five, six people
(17:12):
that I knew, like actors
that I knew, it was kind of
awesome. I have a close friend who's a
recurring medic on that show.
Congrats to them. This is the
other thing. You're unionizing production
assistance. It's a
little tricky because of the
nature of the position. Are you because
you're going to get you're
going to get better wages,
(17:33):
you're going to get health care. Okay,
because they didn't they
didn't have union regulations
for I want to say regulations for hours,
doing various tasks. They
do work very long hours.
It brings up a question, is this going to
push production away from union PAs?
Do you know what a PA gets paid? Do you
(17:54):
know production
assistance got paid? Do you have
any idea what the rates of pay are? Okay,
I see LA, LA commercial
productions is maybe 250 to 300
for 12. Okay, 200 to 300 for a 12 hour
day. And that might be a non union
production assistant.
So now we're getting into when we talk
about unions, we're
talking about overtime pay.
(18:15):
Is this going to scare away production?
This is rhetorical. We're
not going to get into this.
This actually this actually would have
been a great question for
say a SAG leader like Sean
Sharma, but you know, we'll have that
another time. Union
regulations going to stairway scare
away productions. If you've been on a
set, you realize production assistance
and this is the knock
production assistants are in essentially
(18:38):
an interim position.
Meaning, that's the ground level
of being in the crew, no disrespect.
Ideally, you become a PA. So
you can work your way up to
something else. Like an AD, like a second
AD, like maybe, I mean,
to be honest, most of them
are probably pushing their screenplays
(18:58):
and pushing their scripts and
probably want to direct. Are
they going to be career PAs? You fight to
be in a union, you're
going to pay dues, essentially,
are you going to cement yourself as a PA
for the rest of life? That is
interesting, because like,
ADs are in the DGA.
(19:22):
I thought it was too, but someone told me
the other day it was DGA.
ADs are part of the DGA, you're right. So
the transition would be
a PA possibly becomes a
second AD or goes down that track and
they become, they eventually
work their way up to the DGA.
If they become producers, then the
producer's guild obviously
(19:43):
has a has a guild so they could
go that way. I think that's kind of like
what we're looking at
production assistants,
ideally are interim position or you work
your way up and is this
counterintuitive to what the
position is? I mean, yeah, I don't know.
I don't know. I don't
know. It's an interesting one.
I wonder if it'll catch on. You know,
like if it'll if it'll spread. First of all,
(20:04):
first of all, that says a lot about the
pit. This is assuming that
the pit or this community is
going to last a while. If this show was
canceled after the first season, this
probably wouldn't be
happening. It kind of doesn't make sense.
And I think that the comp
is in 2023, Marvel Studios
(20:25):
VFX workers under the Marvel Studios
banner successfully
unionized with IOTC. See this tight
knit group of incredibly talented,
hardworking professionals.
They through organized action
get together. They fight for proper
rights, proper hours, and
you grow from there. So but
(20:45):
but Marvel just moved to the UK, right?
They moved their
production to the UK. Yeah, in all
honesty, I don't know how that works
because to be honest, there is VFX over
there that they already
had in Europe anyway. But that does that
does bring up a good
question. That does bring up a
question. Did they escape? Moving on. So
let's do this, our little
(21:06):
after party for our recent guests,
Timothy Davis, Sean Sharma. There's a
couple things that a lot of things have
kind of stuck with me.
But it's interesting. One common thread
that they had in both episodes was this
acknowledgement that
most drama schools focus on stage and
(21:29):
they do not prepare you
for a career in film and TV.
Because Timothy Davis went to the
esteemed actor studio. And,
you know, one of his one of his
complaints was, I wasn't prepared to work
as a professional film
and TV afterwards. Sean
Sharma did not go to drama school. And
(21:52):
both of them had that
through line. Yeah, I've heard what
it gives you is a is a kind of a gives
you connections. It
gives you a network. That's
what I felt I missed by not going to
drama school. I felt I missed out a
little bit. I don't know.
But I feel like there are things that I
would have taken from
drama school that that took me
(22:13):
probably longer to acquire in the in
through experience. Oh,
to be to be fair, you're
completely right. And I don't think I
don't think Tim or Sean
were saying it's useless,
but you're completely right. To be fair,
it's like there's there's a
lot of value that you could get
besides necessarily getting on camera
(22:35):
experience. Right. And I
think it would make it more
attractive if if one screen acting was a
bigger part of it, because
that's most of what, you know,
people do today or a lot of what people
do today. And also the
business of acting, which is so
wide ranging. Like I I had no idea coming
in what it involves. And today it
(22:55):
involves more than ever,
because now you're also responsible for
taping and, you know, the
technical side of things,
the equipment you buy, all of that stuff.
It's getting tougher and
tougher. And not to mention,
I just saw right before before we got on,
I saw a commercial for a
show, a new Fx show that stars
(23:15):
Brian Jordan Alvarez, who is, you know, a
guy who creates his own
comedy sketches on his
Instagram and TikTok or whatever. So
that's another example of somebody who's
just making their own
work. And now he's the lead in this Fx
show. Yeah, you know, which
is so just it just kind of
it reinforces the idea that you have to
(23:38):
just kind of create your own
work. And, and, you know, even
just for yourself, for your own sense of
of agency and creativity to just make
stuff. I just realized
that that probably translates to film
school. It's great to learn the technical
tools on set cameras,
lenses, but when it comes to branding,
(23:59):
marketing, because I realize
a lot of my filmmaker friends
who went to film school are trying to
figure out social media. How do I get
buzz from my project?
How do I get attention in this world with
so much noise? And how do you
make your mark when you have
people like Brian Jordan Alvarez? It's
funny that actually that
he's on your radar. I'm aware of
(24:20):
that show. I think they're going back to
season two or season three. I've
auditioned for a couple
times, the English teacher. Yeah, I don't
think I'm actually really,
really amazed that he's on
your radar. Brian Jordan Alvarez, shout
out to him because a lot
of people would not realize
how long he goes back as far as creating
his own projects because I
(24:41):
was actually studying his
projects back when I was creating my web
series. And for years of
people giving him pilots, giving
him opportunities, he had a lot of
talent. And only until now
is he the star and creator of
a halooshio. I think that's another thing
to say, "Hey, no way was
(25:03):
this overnight. This dude was
pounding the pavement." Because I
remember back in the day when he was kind
of like the hot upstart,
dude, that was so long ago. That was so
long ago. And that's a credit to his
diligence and work ethic.
I came across him through Instagram
through some of his comedy
songs and videos and stuff.
(25:25):
I didn't even know that. He's created a
bunch of different characters that he
puts out on Instagram, whatever. Because
I follow a lot of those. I
follow a lot of people who make
their own comedy videos. Funny stuff,
right? Because I really
enjoy it. And some of our
friends do. Carly Christopher, one of
them has been making
videos and making sketches.
(25:46):
She's great. Carly's great. And who did I
see pop up recently? We saw
him at the Stay in LA rally.
Oh, yeah. Clay Ferris. Clay Ferris. Clay
Ferris. Clayton
Ferris. Yeah. Clayton Ferris
popped up in weapons. Did he really?
(26:07):
Yeah, he's in weapons. In our society,
it's actually going to be the... This is
a good segue. We want
to put people in a box.
So we can say that someone creates their
own content and they're
really funny on Instagram,
but are they really going to be on TV?
Well, if they really work
hard enough and they want to,
they could. There's also a lot of
(26:28):
influencers and comedy
sketch people that are on YouTube,
have a huge following in their own
studio, and they have no
interest in being on Hulu.
So it's kind of this very well might be
the new generation of where
we're going as far as there's
enough space in the internet for everyone
(26:49):
to have their own little
plot of land. Absolutely.
You hear about a lot where like you
certainly hear about it at
the studio where like somebody
who's an influencer with a lot of
followers gets that
opportunity and then they have to
get into a class because they need to
learn how to do the
other thing, which is acting.
And then are they going to stick around?
(27:09):
Are they going to stick
around and get better for five
years to learn the skills? Right. Because
it's hard to compress
that experience and knowledge
into a short amount of time. You know,
it's there are a lot of the people
getting the opportunities.
So if you can do both, if you can already
act and you've been
studying that and, you know,
you have experience in that and then you
(27:30):
can start creating your
own work, then you're,
I think you're pretty far ahead. This is
a great segue. So one of
the things that I want to talk
about because it, it, it kind of hit me.
I didn't see it coming and
it kind of hit me because I
realized how much I didn't want to hear
it. Sean Sharma, you
asked him, Hey, you know,
this idea of the business and have you
(27:53):
always looked at your
career as a business and so on
and so forth. And he basically said, you
know, one of the things
that he teaches is, you know,
everyone wants to eat, uh, to say that,
Hey, I just want to work. I
just want to have a career
and I'd be happy with that. Yeah. Saying
I just want to work is like
going into the grocery store
going, I just want to eat. Like you're
not picking. And I realized, and I'm
(28:15):
going to, I'm going to,
you know, this is a confession because
I'm not, I'm not, I'm not
joking around. Uh, my entire,
I've always just wanted to eat. Like
literally it has not
changed for years. Are you talking
about food now? Or is this a metaphor for
work? This is actually
both. This is actually literally
both. And I thought that was perfectly
okay. I actually thought
(28:35):
that was normal. And I was not
expecting Sean to say that so
definitively. And I felt conflicted. I
still feel conflicted. I could
say for an actor on a, on a base level,
it could say an actor who
wants to do comedy and drama.
I feel like I, I actually feel like I
(28:55):
have done both and I
also want to do both. I,
a hundred percent was sleeping on
branding marketing. And on
top of it in the acting world,
and also the stuff that I'm creating,
those are two different
lanes. Trying to figure that out
right now, my YouTube, I am actually
going to split up between my
Hollywood stuff and my travel
(29:18):
food and fun stuff. So this is as of this
week, I'm taking this
advice to heart because I need to
clarify this. These are just examples. I
mean, what do you think
about this? No, you're right. I
don't know. I probably haven't been
specific enough. Here's the thing. I
think there's a point
for me personally, if I get too specific
about what I want, I find it
(29:39):
limiting because I find it,
it, it kind of funnels me into a very
limited vision of what
could be, for example, vision
boards will do whatever you think of
that. That's something that gets hyper
specific. And that's
something that I tried and I just, it
didn't work for me because, and I think
part of the reason is
my, the way my brain works, it's so
(30:01):
visual. I like everything. I have very
strong visual images of
everything that I, you know, think about
or, or, or, or imagine that I
get caught up in the details
and I get in, you know, I get, I get so
in the weeds about the
actual details of it when I try
to envision something in my head. Now,
(30:21):
this isn't necessarily the same thing,
but I, I think I could
probably do with being a bit more
directed. Absolutely. Cause
I, I, I kind of, when you said
that too, I was like, Oh, that's very
interesting. Cause I have always in my
mind gone. I just want
to work because I love it so much. There
you go. That's a common
thread between both of us. You're
completely right. I think it would, you
(30:43):
know, I think it's certainly
worth a shot to try and get
a bit more specific and work with a more
specific goal in mind.
Emmett, Emmett, I brought this up a
few times, but Emmett has described it to
me as like picking a
destination on a GPS, trusting
that you'll get there, whatever that,
whatever that overarching
audacious goal is, you know,
(31:04):
and it can, it can be outrageous. You
trust that you'll get there, but you
accept whatever the GPS,
whatever directions, you know, if you go
around, if there's roadworks
and you have to take a detour,
you just accept all of those things as
the journey, but have faith
that you will get to that place.
And have faith that it's a little better
than Apple maps. Am I right?
(31:25):
Just joking. Apple map sucks, everyone.
Well, there goes
another sponsor. Thanks, Econ.
So I, well, here's the thing. The comedy
versus drama is just one
example. In Sean's example,
he was talking about, I want to be a
series regular on a TV
show. He did not specify genre.
Basically he said, I want to be a series
regular. I need to make
(31:46):
connections in TV and so on. And
that took him down that path. If someone
says, I really want to be
on Game of Thrones. And then
there's a course of action that you could
go. So let's just talk about
the actors. If you look like
Thor. So this is the difference. I think
you and I are falling into
this category because I feel like
for better or for worse, we have a range
(32:06):
where, you know, decent enough
personality, right? Decent
enough comedic skills. I know. I know
that's really laying it all
thick, right? Decent enough
personality. I'm going to put that in a
dating profile. Exactly.
We could, we both do comedy
and drama. And so it, it, it depends on
the type of actor you're working with.
(32:28):
But if you look like
Thor and you want to be on Game of
Thrones and left and right,
all you're doing is, is funny,
silly little sketches. You're not deep in
your voice. Like Leslie
has this classic story about
how a guy who looked like Conan the
Barbarian and he talked like Mickey
Mouse. Like literally that,
that's, that's, it did not work for his
(32:49):
branding. That's a very clear example of,
you kind of need to,
you know, know what you're working with
and pick a lane. That's
an extreme example. For us,
I think there's room for nuance where
doesn't need to be, these are all of our
one hour drama headshots
and just plaster Instagram with it. So I
(33:10):
think we do have room for
it, but it's interesting to,
it's interesting to think about depending
on who you are as an
actor. Yeah. And there, there,
there are a couple of things, just points
that I, I kind of want to hit on this.
And like one of them
is, um, yeah, you can, you can get really
specific about what you want. This career
is very unpredictable.
(33:31):
So really what you can control is like,
like you say, what you put
out into the world. And some of
that is, you know, of course, like, as we
talked about creating your
own content, if that's what you
want to do, which is the only place you
really have full control. The, how it's
received is out of your
control. But, but I will say like about
that idea of like being specific about a
goal, I think that's
(33:51):
only effective if you don't only see the
lack of that in your life in
the interim. You know what I
mean? If you pick a goal and all you see
is the lack of that goal until you get
there, I think you're
going to be pretty unhappy, uh, along the
way. So I think, uh, a big
part of that to emphasize just
for myself, I'm not talking about anyone
else's, if I have a goal, I
(34:12):
have to enjoy every bit of the
way, the journey there. And, and one
thing that Sean did say,
which I thought was, um,
what was very, uh, insightful or struck
me as like, if you got
everything you wanted, when you
wanted it, you wouldn't be happy. And I
think I've, I've, I've tried
to kind of, I've been thinking
(34:32):
about that a lot. Cause I had heard
someone say, you know, adversity is a
privilege and it is sort
of the same thing where like, yeah, if
everything came easy, there
would be no value to it. So I,
it's actually helped me enjoy things a
little bit more. I do anyway. You know
what I mean? I really
love getting to this. I just, I realized
this week that I love
auditioning and I used to hate
(34:53):
audition. Yeah. And I've gone a complete
180. Yeah. And I really
enjoy it now. Like I really,
you know, you know, when I, when I get an
audition now, I really
get like, I've gotten
buzzed up about it. I'm like, yeah, nice
one. You know, I can't wait to try this
and see how it goes.
This conversation is helping me realize
all the things I want to
create for the most part is a
dread in my morning. I wake up all these
(35:16):
things. I want to create
all these things only 24 hours
in the day. And for me, that could easily
be, Oh my God. It's like,
there's so many things I haven't
gotten to yet. And it could easily weigh
me down or where it could be, hooray.
There's so many things
I haven't gotten to exactly to get to
this one and this one. So
this little clarity is a shift
(35:37):
for me personally, because I'm, I'm
looking at the positive. I'm
looking at the excitement of,
of being able to, to have that challenge.
And there you go. A
little takeaway. We'll see,
we'll see how this goes. This is
accountability, public
accountability, everyone.
So let's, that's, that's a good place to,
to, to wrap it there.
(35:58):
Let's do hidden gems.
My hidden gem for this week, I keep
picking restaurants, but
I don't know. Sometimes
that's the most significant new thing in
my week. But, mine is a restaurant called
Papi's Churros, which is in, on Wilshire
Boulevard in Santa Monica.
Wow. And it is fantastic. They
(36:20):
have fantastic tacos. Believe it or not,
their churros are
excellent. And I don't need a ton of
churros, but these churros are very good.
Everyone loves a good churro. Is it mom
and pop? How big is it?
It's, it's hard. I don't know. I don't
know. It may be a
standalone. I'm not sure, but it's like
the decor is mental. You know what I
(36:41):
mean? It makes no sense.
There's one wall is painted, but
crazy shit. And the other wall has like a
fake like brickwork, but
like a fake hole in it where
you're looking. It's well, it makes no
sense, but the food is excellent. And,
uh, might be endearing
at least. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's got a big,
you know, it's got a big
high ceiling. It's like, it's a
(37:02):
mad looking place, but, um, the food is
fantastic and they're very nice and, uh,
it's pretty reasonably
priced. And this consummate, they give
you like a thing, a consummate with like
a burrito. If you get
a burrito, you get like a thing, a
consummate soup with it, which is very
interesting. That's not
something I've ever come across on a hot
day. Burrito. Yeah. Wait, they
(37:23):
literally call it consummate.
Yeah. It's called consummate. Well,
that's bonkers. Okay. Yeah. I'm
definitely going to have to check
this out. That is bizarre. Get some
consummate. It's tasty. Okay.
Well, there you go. All right.
You're helping your Santa Monica LA food
scene. So I, I'll throw
this one out there. Uh, I was
probably, I was, I was, I had two hidden
(37:45):
gems possibly with last
week's episode with Sean,
but I thought this was too ridiculous to
even put that in. Um, so
not too far off from your
electrolytes a couple of weeks ago, I was
sleeping and by the way, we are not
doctors. So do your own
research. This is not, this is just our
story. Um, I tried
(38:09):
creatine for the first time ever.
Is that your show, Jack? Thank you. No,
I'm just, I'm just kidding. Um, I, I
actually am completely
jacked, uh, for the listeners on audio. I
am absolutely jacked
right now. Um, so I heard of
creatine. We heard of, I don't know if
(38:29):
you heard about it growing
up, all the weight lifters were
pumping creatine. It was a way for them
to get a, you know, buffer,
whatever. So after years of
science, research evidence, creatine is
kind of trending right now
for whatever reason. Maybe the,
I want to assume products are taking it
when I was in school, play
it. Like when I played rugby in
(38:49):
school, did a lot of the players are
playing, yeah, taken creatine. Creatine
is not only helpful for
men and women. I got my parents on it.
They say it's better for
memory, brain function. Uh,
I found a type that was very pure that
has been vetted. Uh, well,
your parents are so jacked.
(39:11):
Well, I mean, to be honest, they are very
healthy for their age,
but, uh, this is just
to help with, to help with it. Anyway,
I'm not going to lie.
You're going to laugh.
I do more pushups than
I've ever done before.
I'm going to be talking. I don't know if
I should put in a number. I
don't know if I should put in a
number when you did your new resolution
to me, when you, when you do your
(39:33):
resolutions of pushups,
you didn't say what your number was. I
did. I said it was 20 a day.
I said it was a small amount.
I do more now, but I did start. You
didn't say 20. It was a, I did. It was a
small amount of pushups
and situps every day, but it was the fact
that I was doing it every
day. How long have you been
taking it by the way? It's literally,
well, funny enough. I think
the first time I tried it,
(39:54):
I put too much, uh, I think my sister
made a smoothie and it was
a little too much. It kind
of, it might've affected my stomach. You
have to take it like five
times a day at the start, right?
Oh no, no, that's insane. Like it
recommends you take it. Oh no, that's
insane. No, don't do that.
Well, to, to, well, it tells you to do
it. Like it tells you to take, and then
you tape her down over
the beautiful month. No, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
that's not on my bottle. That's insane.
(40:14):
That would, that would,
that would have killed me.
It kills your digest. You're going to see
digestive digestion
issue. So here's the thing.
Actually I should, I should caveat this.
This is, this is much longer than I
expected. The one thing
that, uh, part of the reason why it helps
people get bigger, it actually
contributes to water weight.
So needless to say, a lot of women are
(40:35):
using it sparingly or
carefully because they don't
want to gain water weight, but it does
help people get bigger.
It also can affect your
intestines and digestive system. So I
would not suggest overdoing
a, doing a lot. I believe the
first dosage is five grams. I started out
small and I've been doing
(40:56):
it consistently for maybe two
weeks. If my, if it hits my stomach, I
take a day off. I took two days off
actually. Here's what I
read. It said some trainers recommend a
creatine loading phase
where you take 20 to 25 grams of
creatine daily for five to seven days in
five gram servings. And
then after that you maintain
by taking three to five grams daily.
(41:17):
Yeah. Do your research
everyone. That's, that's literally,
that's literally the nut sows. That is
the reason why I didn't
touch creatine for 15, 20 years.
If you have body weightlifting goals, I'm
sure that's the customary
thing, but I basically take
a scoop and, and I worked up slowly, but
(41:37):
absolutely not. I did
not start that. It would
have destroyed my stomach. It literally
would have destroyed my
stomach if that's any indication.
Interesting. I had to take two days off.
I had to take two days
off because I felt it.
Anyway, that's your, that's your hidden
gems. Oh, you never know
what you're going to get
on this show everyone. Well that's our
(41:58):
episode. Hope you enjoy
it. Have a great weekend and
see you next time. See you next time.
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