February 17, 2025 • 35 mins
Welcome to Episode 16 of the Actor's Guide to the End of the World!
It has been wild week in sports for both Rían and E-Kan - Rían meets his childhood heroes and Manchester United legends while E-Kan celebrates the other football as his Philadelphia Eagles win the Super Bowl in epic fashion. E-Kan recounts his favorite moments at the Eagles Super Bowl parade and why Philadelphia unlike no other.
Last week was so good, E-Kan and Rían run it back and do a follow up on last week's conversation about the four second self-tape controversy as their opinions have shifted over the week. After their initial gut reaction and emotions are taken out of it, they take a more nuanced look at the discussion overall and face the honest truth about whether four seconds is enough time to judge a self tape. This might be polarizing and unpopular for a lot of actors, but it might help you be less precious about your work and change how you look at your auditions.
Also coincidentally after last week's episode about Best Picture nominees The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez using AI, the guys dig into how the Oscars are considering making it mandatory to disclose the use of AI in Oscar entries moving forward. How much AI is too much for the Oscars?
New episodes every Monday! All shows are on YouTube and Substack as well! Let us know what you think. Email us at actorsguidepodcast@gmail.com. Follow us on all social media @actorsguidepodcast
https://deadline.com/2025/01/atlanta-casting-director-self-tapes-viewing-1236273084/
https://variety.com/2025/artisans/news/oscars-consider-requiring-films-disclose-ai-use-brutalist-1236299063/
Hidden Gems:
https://timdenning.substack.com/p/im-38-if-youre-in-your-20s-or-30s
Time stamps:
(00:00) Intro
(02:05) The Super Bowl and Eagles Parade
(07:35) Rían meets his childhood heroes Manchester United legends
(11:20) Oscars consider disclosing AI use
(17:35) Follow up on four seconds self-tape controversy
(26:05) The honest truth about self-tapes
(31:35) Hidden Gems
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:57):
I had a kind of an emotional reaction to
the time, the four second time.
I actually went back and watched some of
my self tapes and just watched the first
four seconds to see, okay,
did I nail that entrance?
Or did I nail the moment before that I
come in as the character?
You have all these football players just
have a ball during these speeches.
We're watching on the
(01:18):
telecast for local TV.
They're trying to time it
to bleep out the curses.
And inevitably, they're
always five seconds too late.
So all the curses were
coming in on local TV.
That's done.
Hey guys, welcome to the actor's guide to
the end of the world podcast,
where we talk about acting in Hollywood
in a way people understand.
I'm E-Kan Soong and this is...
And I'm Rían Sheehy Kelly.
(01:39):
Follow us wherever you find your podcast.
We're on YouTube.
We're on Substack and follow us on all
social media at actor's guide podcast.
And on the show for today, we're going to
talk a little bit more
about the four second self-taped
controversy from last week.
Just a lot more to dig into.
Yeah. And we had an opportunity to...
We had an opportunity to
think about it ourselves.
(02:00):
And I found that my
opinion changed over the week.
Also, coincidentally, we talked about AI
in the Oscars last week.
We're going to discuss how the Academy is
considering making it mandatory
to disclose AI use in its films.
Also, Rian and I had an
exciting week in sports.
Very exciting.
We're going to talk a
(02:20):
little bit about Super Bowl.
I went to the Eagles Parade, go birds,
and Rian had a little adventure with the
Manchester United team.
So...
Very fun week.
We're going to dig into all that.
It's going to be a good episode.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy.
Now a word from our
sponsor for today's episode.
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(02:41):
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Last time we recorded
was before the Super Bowl.
I'm going to hold
back my Eagles enthusiasm
(03:01):
because I could have easily talked for
two hours just about
the Eagles Super Bowl.
But I'm not.
Ellen told you a bit if
you want to say some words.
Oh yeah, indulge me.
Indulge me is the perfect word.
Do you want to make a little speech?
I did have something prepared.
Anyway, so...
Thank the following people.
So the Eagles had a
pretty great Super Bowl.
(03:22):
We're not here to rub it in.
It was pretty epic.
This didn't make the cut last week,
but I do want to say
we knew this ever since the
last Super Bowl two years ago.
The Kansas City fans are
the nicest people ever.
When they beat us two
(03:43):
years ago in Arizona,
they were so polite even after the game.
It was almost as if they
were apologizing to us.
They were that friendly.
You know, we're all depressed.
We're leaving Arizona.
And obviously the Eagles
fans were very depressed.
So, you know, we're going to try to be classy here.
And it was just an epic game.
It was incredibly one-sided.
(04:04):
The Eagles just came locked in prepared.
And it was, I mean, to be honest,
the game was just a straight up blowout.
Is that fun for you, a blowout?
Or would you prefer a much closer game?
It was so much fun.
You wouldn't like a
tight game with more drama?
(04:24):
If you're watching this, more drama.
(04:54):
So the fact that we didn't have to worry,
like the game was
over almost by halftime.
So we're just we're
just parting our butts off.
You know what I mean?
Was it a great Super Bowl?
I can understand because a lot of people
are tired of the Chiefs winning.
And a lot of people
don't like Eagles fans.
I can understand people having negative
opinions of the game.
(05:16):
That being said, apparently it was the
number one watch Super Bowl in history.
So kind of like what we're talking about
as far as the power of the NFL.
I mean, here's the thing.
This is why Amazon's playing NFL games.
This is why Netflix
is playing live sports.
We just got to acknowledge, hey, this is
what everyone wants to watch.
And they and people tuned in.
(05:38):
I did want to talk about this.
We were talking a little bit about how
you were asking what
Philly fans are like.
And what is the vibe?
We went to I went to
the parade yesterday.
I went to I went to
Philadelphia in, you know, Center City.
The you know, it's a big to do because
this is not our first rodeo.
People slept overnight to
(05:59):
camp out and get a good spot.
It was like the ball
dropping in Times Square.
People came down overnight to get a spot.
People were lined up to
see the speeches at 7 a.m.
I was a little more reasonable.
I kind of wanted to do
that, but I was more reasonable.
Me and my friend just went to the parade.
We were like front row and we saw the
parade's floats and all those things.
(06:21):
So it was great.
In a couple in a nutshell of what Philly
Eagles fans are like,
it's kind of like this fun, known thing
that people throw beers to the players
and then they'll drink
some throw beers back.
It's kind of like this fun thing, right?
Apparently our GM, the GM is the one who
orchestrates the entire team.
He's a genius and he's part of
(06:41):
the reason why we win so much.
He literally got hit in the can hit in
the head with a full can of beer.
Jesus.
And you could say
that it was an accident.
Okay.
He was bleeding when
they did the speeches.
He was bleeding on his forehand.
There was a huge gap.
Jesus, dude.
You could say that,
hey, let's not overreact.
It might be an accident.
(07:02):
It's kind of clear.
Someone threw that can way too hard.
Like, there's no
defending whoever threw that can.
I saw, I finally saw the video.
It came in really fast, really hard.
That was just uncalled for.
And to make it even better, GM, the GM
Howie Roseman gets on the speech.
(07:22):
He shows up because everybody already
knows that he got hit
in the head with him.
He gets onto the podium.
He goes, I bleed for this city.
This is what Philadelphia is like.
The way that he's been for the past
seven, seven some years.
The other thing I will add, what's so
Philly is you have all
these football players just
(07:43):
have a ball during these speeches.
We're watching on the
telecast for local TV.
They're trying to time it
to bleep out the curses.
And inevitably,
inevitably, the curses always get in.
And then they're always
five seconds too late.
So all the curses were
coming in on local TV.
(08:03):
That was done.
Anyway, it was so Philly.
It was great.
Yeah, that was it.
So I'm flying high.
Brilliant.
Brilliant.
Go birds.
Speaking of general managers and managers
and best ever, I went
to Old Trafford on Friday
for Manchester United
versus Leicester in the FA Cup.
Oh, yeah, that was the big game, right?
(08:23):
That you went to last week.
I went in style, let me say.
My pal, Emmett, who we've mentioned on
the podcast a number of
times, graciously invited me along.
And we had seats in the director's box.
And we ate in the director's restaurant.
And I met some of my
absolute sporting heroes.
(08:46):
The number one being Sir Alex Ferguson,
who is the greatest
manager in football history,
possibly the greatest manager in any
sport, I would think.
Wow.
13 Premier League titles, two Champions
League titles, numerous cups.
Just an absolute legend.
So it was--
(09:07):
What team?
Quite surreal, Manchester United.
Wow.
I didn't realize that was the team that
you guys were going to or watching.
And as a lifelong United fan, it was
particularly special.
It was just amazing.
I was talking to Brian Robson.
I was talking to Dennis Irwin.
This will mean nothing
to you, I don't think.
(09:28):
But they're just--
I know Man U is iconic, so I didn't
realize that was your team.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My dad's lifelong United supporter, same.
My granddad was United supporter.
So my dad was-- when I came back, my dad
was almost as excited as me.
He just wanted to hear
it from start to finish.
(09:49):
And exactly what--
And we went back for a drink in Sir
Alex's private lounge.
We got invited back after the match.
It was an unbelievable experience.
So massive shout out to Emmet for that.
It was incredible.
You were preparing that
you were going to see people,
but did you know who you're going to see?
(10:09):
I honestly know, because I didn't know
who was going to be there.
I didn't really have an idea what the
experience was going to be like.
And it was just better
than I could have imagined.
I'm still kind of blown away.
But I was sitting in the
middle of it going, oh my god.
I can't believe this is happening.
But the seats were incredible.
Directors.
But you can't get any better than that.
You also can't-- it's not
(10:31):
an experience you could buy.
You know what I mean?
You have to sort of just be invited.
Like there is corporate hospitality,
the sort of boxes and
stuff that you could buy.
But you can't buy seats
in the director's box.
That's where the directors of the club
sit, where the managers--
Yeah, special invite guests.
Sir Alex's former manager.
Yeah, it was an
absolutely amazing experience.
(10:51):
Kind of kept going, oh my god, I'm here.
And then just chatting to the legends.
Like, how do you chat to a legend?
What do you say?
You just try not to
fuck up the conversation.
I was going to say,
it's just perfect timing.
Because I saw your
pictures and you got-- obviously,
there's a dress code, fancy jacket.
You were looking pretty sharp.
Then on the other side over in Philly,
(11:14):
we're winging beer cans
and just trying to dodge
beer cans at the parade.
Yeah.
But yeah.
Yeah, it was a very different
experience, let me tell you.
So moving on, it's funny, I haven't said
word around town in a long time.
But yeah, our word around town.
So picking up with what
we spoke about last week,
(11:35):
we dug into AI use in
Emilie Perez and The Brutalist.
So this also came out around last week.
And it's really kind of spot on.
It's just-- this is a little follow up.
Oscars consider requiring
films to disclose AI use
after The Brutalist and
(11:56):
Emilie Perez controversies.
And this is an ongoing thing.
I think it's a great idea.
I mean, we've been thinking about this in
a lot of aspects of the media
as far as an AI warning label.
It's interesting, isn't it?
Yeah.
I don't know if they're
labeling things on social media,
but think about all the deep fakes.
(12:16):
And I think it's fair just so when people
start voting on these
contenders, they're aware.
And is it saying with the Oscars that it
would disqualify a film
or it would just be a--
No, no, it would not.
Hold on, let me just
clarify that because you're right.
I should make that clear.
(12:36):
Actively explore changing its Oscar
submission requirements so that films
would have to disclose their use of AI.
Okay.
But there's no, there's no further.
It would just be a label, right?
It would just be a, uh, disclosing it.
Interesting.
I don't see any problem with that.
It's still a step.
It's still a step.
Yeah.
It is a step and it makes
people more aware of it.
(12:58):
It's like a here in the EU, like if you
have a GMO product in any
food, it has to be labeled.
It has to say GMO.
By the way, I take that stuff seriously.
Yeah, I do too.
I do too.
I do want to clarify.
There are some aspects of the brutalist
that we did not mention last week.
(13:21):
The brutalist was used specifically for
the Hungarian speech.
The Hungarian
pronunciation of certain words.
Yeah, exactly.
Now, I just want to be clear because when
we were discussing, I
was actually thinking
the Hungarian speech, speaking English.
We are talking about only the words of
(13:43):
Adrian Brody and Felicity
Jones speaking Hungarian.
Crazy enough.
The movie, not for this podcast, but I
just started watching
the movie last last night.
So that's a drastic difference.
He's speaking English
with a Hungarian accent.
We are not talking about all those lines.
Him speaking English.
We are talking about the
(14:04):
lines of him speaking Hungarian.
So let's think about this.
So there would have to be some criteria.
It's it's I'm just kind of playing
devil's advocate here
because I think I is a fair
threat to our industry at large and
certainly visual effects.
There would have to be some criteria
because if you just
(14:25):
blanket say AI was used.
What if it was used to clean up dialogue?
Is that the same as somebody's
performance being changed?
So there are I think
there are gradients of AI use.
I'm trying to liken it to CGI.
Right.
So.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(14:45):
You're spot on as well in this article.
There are many other films that use AI.
It just so happened that these are the
two ones that kind of lit
up the headlines because
it's dealing with the main actor and it's
also major Oscar contenders.
But when we look down the row and I'm not
going to bore
everyone with this, but there
(15:05):
are many, many, many films this year that
have used some aspect of AI.
We're going to need to learn about this
and they're going to
have to find criteria that's
fair.
An example of this, which happened
earlier, if you were a
photographer or did some social
media and you use certain tools on a
(15:28):
program that is every
every tool these days is kind
of using an aspect of AI.
Some famous well-known photographers were
getting watermarked for AI use.
And basically the point is, is, whoa, you
guys flagged me for
AI for something that's
so essentially just normal technology,
(15:52):
but it fell into the category of AI.
It flagged them because if you're going
to tell me just
because I used Photoshop that
you're going to flag all of my photos for
using AI and I'm going to
become an AI photographer.
That's the tricky line of this.
So let me just go through some of this
because we are talking
about, we already talked about
Brutus and Emilie Perez.
(16:15):
Furiosa, a Mad Max saga used AI to turn
the younger one
transforming into Anya Taylor-Joy.
They used 150 shots to steadily
transition the
character from child to adult.
A complete unknown, the Bob Dylan movie,
(16:36):
used three wide shots
of a motorcycle, which is
normal for stunt work.
So does that fall into the category?
The stunt enhancement that they've been
doing for 10 years, we
talked a little bit about
that last week, used a copycat program to
make their eyes blue
for the, what's those
(16:57):
people?
Those people with the blue eyes?
I'll fuck that name up if I try it.
Oh, the Fremens.
So they use the machine learning model to
identify and
replicate the blue tone in the
eyes of actors playing the Fremens.
And in doing so, saved
hundreds of hours of work.
Can you imagine?
It's like the guy that's, it's hours of
tedious making everyone's eyes blues.
(17:17):
Yeah.
And I also wasn't aware, as you brought
up, like how much of
cleaning up actors' performances,
special effects teams do.
Even without AI.
And that's without AI.
Right, exactly.
Yeah.
It's not just technology.
It just so happens that AI poses a fairly
existential threat to a lot of aspects of
(17:38):
filmmaking.
And technically, technically, AI just
does it at this point.
And in the future, it's going to do it
better for better and quicker.
Well, one, I think the starting point has
to be pretty strict
protective guidelines,
as we discussed in the
in the actor's strike.
(17:59):
And I think the more transparency, the
better with this stuff,
because I wasn't, I'm not
even aware of how extensive AI is used.
You know, I'm not even,
but like, why would I be?
But I'm sure it's used a hell of a lot
more than we think it is.
You know, I mean, this whole article, I
didn't even know about
the, I didn't even know all
these instances until we talked about it.
Like Deadpool and
Wolverine is on this article.
(18:21):
Yeah.
But even if like, even if it transpired
that like, you know, you
were AI, would that surprise
me if you were entirely AI?
I don't know.
Maybe not.
Let's get into the the ongoing
conversation about self tapes.
Yeah.
So, you know, the beauty of, first of
all, I have to say, I
(18:42):
had no idea when we talked
about when we decided to talk about the
self tape controversy
about the four seconds, I
had no idea how invested and how lit up a
lot of our community was.
Even as this week went on, a lot of
people gave responses, a
(19:02):
lot of more opinions chimed
in.
The casting directors themselves actually
did a follow up and we
took a closer look at
that.
It's an ongoing conversation.
I'm feeling my mind
opening up as the week went on.
And I feel I feel differently about it
now than I did
initially, because I think I had
a knee jerk reaction to it and I don't
(19:23):
feel the same way this week.
So yeah, we'll get into it, but I've had
a number of number of thoughts about it.
I think this conversation
has room for a lot of nuance.
And that was just the
skimming the surface last week.
But you know, when we have these
conversations, I look at it as the
beginning of the conversation.
I don't look at it as
these are our final thoughts.
These are all the answers.
I feel like a lot of these conversations
(19:44):
that we have are are
trying to figure out what
we think and trying to
figure out what's really going on.
I also realized that this is
one casting director's opinion.
And I had a very knee
jerk reaction to it.
But as I thought about it over the week,
I'm like, well, one,
you know, I listened to a
bit of their response to it
(20:05):
and what they their follow up.
And one thing I noticed with that was
it's a very sound, body clip.
And I got sort of
fixated on the four seconds.
I got very much if even that casting
director, Tiffany Rochet, I
doubt very much if she only
spends four seconds on every type.
(20:25):
I think it was a kind of a it didn't do
it didn't serve her to
say that because it's
that became the that became the story
then that she only watches.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
People were kind of blowing it.
Yeah, yeah.
Fixating is a good word.
Yeah.
And then I had to sort of
examine my own feelings on it.
And I realized that like, so what do I
(20:46):
want from a self type?
One, I'm grateful to get an audition.
I actually love self types.
And we talked a bit about that, too.
But I don't think that made it in.
We can get into that today a little bit.
But I do really enjoy self types.
So they're often just maybe a bit sad,
but they're often the
best part of my day.
Like I really do enjoy doing them.
And then when I do them now, I don't
(21:08):
think this is always the case.
But when I do them now, and I send them,
I just kind of let them go.
So how they're received is
kind of none of my business.
You know what I mean?
So whether they watch them for four
seconds or the whole
thing, it's not that important
to me personally.
I think what gave me the knee jerk sort
of outrage was like, I
(21:28):
know the time that actors
spend and the effort and the time and the
preparation and the
money that you put into
this career in general and making self
types and sending them off.
This idea of fair, this idea of we want
to solve their problem.
They have a problem.
We want to solve it.
There is no fair in this.
(21:49):
There is no, I deserve this.
No.
There's no.
I just I just want to hammer that home
because that didn't make
it until the last week's
episode.
And for them to watch an entire self tape
because they feel guilty,
we're not doing ourselves
a dis we're not doing ourselves service
by saying, hey, you
(22:10):
guys have to watch all of
our tape if we know that the last five
minutes of it are inaccurate.
That's so my point is, is this first four
seconds is we know what
we're doing or accurate.
But most importantly, we are
here to solve your problem.
Yeah, that's kind of like where I'm
reframing where we can get
into the whole what their
(22:31):
response is.
But I feel like that
would take two hours.
But most importantly, it's this is where
I think the mindset of
an actor we can really
kind of adjust because and also a great
thing how you were
saying it like because we've
gotten reps.
Maybe we can be less precious about all
five minutes of our self tape.
(22:52):
Maybe we can hit the ground running.
You see what I'm doing
from the first moment.
And you can always you can always trust
us to do a great self
tape because we're always
going to hit the ground running and
you're going to keep asking.
You're going to keep calling us in.
And maybe that's the win.
And you don't have to
watch all of our tape.
Yeah.
And that was the other thing that we did
say that doesn't change anything for us.
You know what I mean?
(23:13):
Her saying that doesn't change anything.
If anything, it sort
of makes me focus on.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
It's just a nice reminder.
Like that's how I have to show up.
And like you say, how anybody does their
job is out of my control
and none of my business
in the same way that a casting director
doesn't have a say in
how I prep for an audition.
You know, that's my
business because that's my job.
(23:34):
And I think this conversation goes beyond
this one casting director.
I think this conversation has almost
nothing to do with Tiffany Rocher.
And I, you know, people can pick apart
their their follow up.
And I suggest everyone go go watch it for
themselves instead of
just listening us to
discuss it.
(23:54):
But because I think they had to remove
our emotions and our
feelings from it to, hey,
this is how we set ourselves apart.
And this is this is our job.
I'm glad that she said it because it sort
of forced me to look
at it again and go, oh,
yeah, that's right.
That's my job.
Because I know I need constant reminders
of what's within my
control and what's not
(24:15):
within my control.
And, you know, I'm far better now.
Like you say, we have experience now.
So I'm far better now at just
letting go of auditions going.
Here is my version of what I think this
character is and what I
think these moments are.
Take it or leave it.
And also because, you know, as Leslie
says, it's a business of
moving pictures, you may
(24:35):
not look like somebody's idea of what
that character should look like.
And that can change.
You may be the you might be the casting
director's idea of what
that character looks like.
But if you're not the director's idea of
what that character looks
like, well, then that's,
you know, that's very that's valid.
Someone mentioned this to me and it very
(24:55):
well could have been from the studio.
But someone mentioned to me that, you
know, most of our jobs,
especially starting out
a lot of our job is 70 percent look, 30
percent talent, 70
percent look, 30 percent skill.
Do we fit the role
what they're looking for?
Quite possibly.
Yeah.
I don't know about those percentages.
I'll have to think about that a bit more.
But yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
(25:16):
Also, the other thing that you can't
really legislate for
is somebody's essence.
And I know that from being a reader, like
someone can be a fantastic actor.
But if they don't have the essence of the
way that character is
written, then they're
not getting the part
or they're not right.
And you could also find too.
You could probably you could you could
probably tell that in four seconds.
Yes, I think so.
(25:36):
I actually think you can.
So I think I think all of this, just to
say that I had I had a
kind of an emotional reaction
to to the time before second time.
But the more I thought about it over the
week, I'm like, yeah,
but I've watched friends,
self tapes and I've
known if they're good.
I actually went back and watched some of
my self tapes and I
just watched the first four
seconds to see, OK, did I nail that
(25:57):
entrance or did I nail the
moment before that I come
in as the character?
Some I did some I
didn't, you know what I mean?
In my opinion.
So it's it's it's really interesting to
look at it through that land.
So, you know, I just want to reiterate,
like, I know how hard
that job is, like, I know how
hard the job of casting is.
I'm grateful that self tapes have
(26:18):
democratized the process to
some degree that we can we
can we can audit.
also part of the reason why we're digging
into this more and kind of
having this follow-up because
this is here to stay. This is very much
part of our lives. Self-tapes are
probably more important
than ever and they're probably going to
(26:39):
continue to be important. We
weren't here to demonize any
casting directors. We didn't do it last
week. And also, I think it was
eye-opening for a lot of us.
I thought that it was good that they had
a response. I think it
was good that a lot of
other people in the industry are chiming
in. You talk to a lot of
actors and I have a friend. He's
a killer. His name is Mike Messini. He
had huge thoughts on this
(26:59):
and I'll just drop a few of his
dimes here. When he hears stuff like
that, he lights up. He
lights up because it just
confirms everything he always thought. He
goes, "I don't even
think it takes four seconds.
If you're not fully dropped in by line
one, you're out." This is a continuation
and it's another way
of thinking about moment before, but
continuation of the entire
(27:20):
life leading up to that moment.
It's so not about the first four seconds.
The four seconds aren't
even part of the conversation.
Do we see that life in that person before
your first line even
happens? Are you plugged into
this story? It just takes you to a place.
He goes on and on, but
if you see his tapes, he
crushes for these reasons. No reason to
(27:43):
watch if other people
are, if you're not on fire
before the first word is set. It's as
simple as that. I think
if you talk to a lot of...
It's polarizing and it's not popular, but
if you talk to a lot of killers,
this is how they think. It's not doing
you any favors to be
like, "Hey, I killed myself
over this five-minute tape. You need to
(28:05):
watch it." It's hard as an actor not to
be precious about it,
but I think as you get the reps and with
experience, we become less
and less precious about it.
I think our acting can be better. This is
the other thing. I want to
throw this out because it's
also one nuance. I made a comment last
(28:26):
time as far as for them
to discover the next...
We're Norton and so on and so forth and
whether they're going to
find the next movie star.
They have a problem to solve and they
have less time and less
resources to solve it.
So we might as well solve the problem.
It's not a personal
thing. It's like, "Hey,
(28:46):
I think this guy is going to be the next
superstar and blah, blah,
blah." You got a problem to solve
and you got a week. So just a more
refined look at what their job is and
also being fair to them.
A gun to your head. We're not asked you
to say how much time
you're spending on each tape.
I think once you get into the black and
(29:06):
white of it, that's where it
gets super messy and might be
not a helpful conversation. Absolutely. I
think when you think about it,
other than an agent, you work with a
casting director the most
in this industry because
they're the person you're dealing with
more often than not. And
have respect for everybody's job
(29:28):
because it's, like I say, it's such a
collaborative process and it's such a
collaborative industry
that you need every piece of that puzzle.
I do want to add another
tidbit. This is actually
an interesting little thing that popped
up in conversations over the past week.
I have a friend that is starting to take
the live virtual Zoom
option. So for those who aren't in
(29:50):
the industry, self-tapes is very
prevalent. But I want to say it was
something that we fought for
in our contract that casting directors
need to offer a live
option. If it's remote, then it's
still going to be on Zoom and so on and
so forth. But at least
you're with a person.
That's interesting. If you want to be
(30:10):
with a live person and
say, "This is my five minutes
and I'm going to have this time with
you," depending on who you are as an
actor, and we'll get into,
obviously, we both appreciate self-tapes
and so on, but hey, it's
something to think about.
As an actor, if you want to explore that
option, it's not a bad way to
go. If you think that that's
(30:30):
going to be an advantage for you, this is what we have to deal with.
If you really have a problem with it, if
you have a moral indignation about this,
there are many, many reasons to pick up
and choose a different
profession. This is not an easy
profession, right? But my God, it's fun.
(30:52):
Self-tapes is a value add,
then a value subtract from me.
I get more benefit out of self-tapes than
not. It does allow developing actors to be more
seen. It does allow developing actors to
be seen, and it does allow casting
directors to see more
actors. It definitely benefits me.
Hopefully, you can take advantage of it
and use that as a weapon
(31:12):
instead of using it as a liability. Yeah,
absolutely. As far as
the live Zoom option goes,
I think that's great that that's a
possibility. I understand
that that puts a bit more time
pressure on casting directors.
Personally, I wouldn't do it for every
audition if you felt
like it was necessary. What do you mean
time pressure? You're
taking up their time?
(31:33):
Well, they have to schedule that time,
you know what I mean,
to see you for those
timeslot. What I gather is basically,
hey, we're seeing
people on Tuesday afternoon.
We blocked out three hours if you want to
take a time slot. We have
five slots open on Tuesday
afternoon. Okay, okay. I think it's a
little more reasonable
instead of, hey, are you free
(31:54):
Wednesday at 5 45? It's not setting up a
date, I want to say. Yeah,
okay. I'd love to get a casting
director's take on that too. Yeah. And
how, you know, I'm glad we
got to revisit this. I'm glad
we talked about it in the first place.
And I have to be aware, I think, in the
future of my own first
reaction to something. And like, maybe
not like, maybe not run with that and
(32:16):
just go, okay, well,
why do I feel like that? Yeah, exactly.
And also, that's the benefit
of us being able to do this
every week. So let's do hidden gems. Oh,
good God. I knew you. I've
been thinking about it all day.
And I'm like, what the fuck have we done
this week? That's in any way
hidden gems. It doesn't need to
be eye opening and also doesn't need to
(32:37):
be any week. My hidden
gem, and I had, I was thinking
about saying this last week, but I'll do
it this week. So if you've heard of
Substack, by the way,
we are also on Substack. Substack is this
new platform. It's
everything from podcasts to blogs.
It's, I'm warming up to it. I think it's
a lot of fun. Anyway, so I
(32:58):
stumbled on this huge writer.
He's a popular writer on Substack and the
internet. His name's Tim
Denning. And for whatever reason,
this blog post just popped up. It's
called I'm 38. If you're in
your 20s or 30s, read this.
Now it's in this author's case. He also
(33:24):
does narrate his story.
He's a lovely British voice.
It's really fun. It's not too long. So
you can read it or you can
listen to it. Either way,
there's really great wisdom, really great
advice. And I'll put the
link in our comments. I'll put
the link in our description. I love that.
(33:44):
I actually did have one.
My hidden gem is an app.
It's a meditation app. It's called waking
up. And a friend of mine
turned me onto it and I've used
a number of different meditation apps,
but I think, you know, I
try and meditate every day,
but what I started out with was apps
that, you know, have kind of like
relaxing music or, you
know, bird sounds or whatever. And they
put you in this kind of very
(34:05):
relaxed state. But this app
takes a slightly different approach to
meditation, which I
found really helpful in that.
It's an app designed by Sam Harris. And
whether you agree with
Sam Harris as a, you know,
his opinions or whatever, this app just
has an approach to
meditation that is kind of,
(34:28):
you don't try and block anything out. You
don't try and put on the
relaxing music. It's basically
about just sort of being present with
whatever's going on around
you. And to put it sort of
crudely, everything that happens, the
thoughts in your mind, the sounds you
hear, the sensations in
your body all appear in this sort of
cloud of consciousness.
And then you can just kind of
let go of all of it. That's a very poor
(34:50):
description of how it works. But what it
did was it taught me
to meditate when the conditions weren't
perfect. Cause I used to
sort of be a bit too concerned
with making the conditions perfect. And
there has to be no noise
and there has to be that,
but this is sort of about
(35:23):
Also has a very good system of it is it
is a paid app you there
is a free trial period
But he has a pay what you pay what you
can sort of a system
so you kind of pitch a price and go I'd
like to pay this for the year and
The app either says yes or no. Oh
If you can't afford a pay full price, I'd
(35:45):
never heard of that
either. No with an app
So that's kind of what you up it. Yeah,
if you're into meditation, then you're
just looking for a
slightly different approach to it
It's a good way to
Just switch it up a bit
We might have to dig in this a future
episode all this. It's worth trying
because I
Probably just made an
absolute bollocks of that explanation
(36:06):
Well, I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued. I'm
intrigued. Yeah. Oh anyway. All right. I
hope you guys enjoyed it
Join us next week. That's our episode.
Have a good one. All
right guys. See you next week
I had a kind of an emotional reaction to
the time, the four second time.
I actually went back and watched some of
my self tapes and just watched the first
four seconds to see, okay,
did I nail that entrance?
Or did I nail the moment before that I
come in as the character?
You have all these football players just
have a ball during these speeches.
We're watching on the
(01:18):
telecast for local TV.
They're trying to time it
to bleep out the curses.
And inevitably, they're
always five seconds too late.
So all the curses were
coming in on local TV.
That's done.
Hey guys, welcome to the actor's guide to
the end of the world podcast,
where we talk about acting in Hollywood
in a way people understand.
I'm E-Kan Soong and this is...
And I'm Rían Sheehy Kelly.
(01:39):
Follow us wherever you find your podcast.
We're on YouTube.
We're on Substack and follow us on all
social media at actor's guide podcast.
And on the show for today, we're going to
talk a little bit more
about the four second self-taped
controversy from last week.
Just a lot more to dig into.
Yeah. And we had an opportunity to...
We had an opportunity to
think about it ourselves.
(02:00):
And I found that my
opinion changed over the week.
Also, coincidentally, we talked about AI
in the Oscars last week.
We're going to discuss how the Academy is
considering making it mandatory
to disclose AI use in its films.
Also, Rian and I had an
exciting week in sports.
Very exciting.
We're going to talk a
(02:20):
little bit about Super Bowl.
I went to the Eagles Parade, go birds,
and Rian had a little adventure with the
Manchester United team.
So...
Very fun week.
We're going to dig into all that.
It's going to be a good episode.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy.
Now a word from our
sponsor for today's episode.
Does your pet get the yips in auditions?
Does your little friend literally shit
(02:41):
the bed at callbacks?
Welcome to the Royal
Academy for Dramatic Barks,
where your puppies will be
trained by acting legends,
Ellen Barkin, Mark
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Sign up today.
Last time we recorded
was before the Super Bowl.
I'm going to hold
back my Eagles enthusiasm
(03:01):
because I could have easily talked for
two hours just about
the Eagles Super Bowl.
But I'm not.
Ellen told you a bit if
you want to say some words.
Oh yeah, indulge me.
Indulge me is the perfect word.
Do you want to make a little speech?
I did have something prepared.
Anyway, so...
Thank the following people.
So the Eagles had a
pretty great Super Bowl.
(03:22):
We're not here to rub it in.
It was pretty epic.
This didn't make the cut last week,
but I do want to say
we knew this ever since the
last Super Bowl two years ago.
The Kansas City fans are
the nicest people ever.
When they beat us two
(03:43):
years ago in Arizona,
they were so polite even after the game.
It was almost as if they
were apologizing to us.
They were that friendly.
You know, we're all depressed.
We're leaving Arizona.
And obviously the Eagles
fans were very depressed.
So, you know, we're going to try to be classy here.
And it was just an epic game.
It was incredibly one-sided.
(04:04):
The Eagles just came locked in prepared.
And it was, I mean, to be honest,
the game was just a straight up blowout.
Is that fun for you, a blowout?
Or would you prefer a much closer game?
It was so much fun.
You wouldn't like a
tight game with more drama?
(04:24):
If you're watching this, more drama.
(04:54):
So the fact that we didn't have to worry,
like the game was
over almost by halftime.
So we're just we're
just parting our butts off.
You know what I mean?
Was it a great Super Bowl?
I can understand because a lot of people
are tired of the Chiefs winning.
And a lot of people
don't like Eagles fans.
I can understand people having negative
opinions of the game.
(05:16):
That being said, apparently it was the
number one watch Super Bowl in history.
So kind of like what we're talking about
as far as the power of the NFL.
I mean, here's the thing.
This is why Amazon's playing NFL games.
This is why Netflix
is playing live sports.
We just got to acknowledge, hey, this is
what everyone wants to watch.
And they and people tuned in.
(05:38):
I did want to talk about this.
We were talking a little bit about how
you were asking what
Philly fans are like.
And what is the vibe?
We went to I went to
the parade yesterday.
I went to I went to
Philadelphia in, you know, Center City.
The you know, it's a big to do because
this is not our first rodeo.
People slept overnight to
(05:59):
camp out and get a good spot.
It was like the ball
dropping in Times Square.
People came down overnight to get a spot.
People were lined up to
see the speeches at 7 a.m.
I was a little more reasonable.
I kind of wanted to do
that, but I was more reasonable.
Me and my friend just went to the parade.
We were like front row and we saw the
parade's floats and all those things.
(06:21):
So it was great.
In a couple in a nutshell of what Philly
Eagles fans are like,
it's kind of like this fun, known thing
that people throw beers to the players
and then they'll drink
some throw beers back.
It's kind of like this fun thing, right?
Apparently our GM, the GM is the one who
orchestrates the entire team.
He's a genius and he's part of
(06:41):
the reason why we win so much.
He literally got hit in the can hit in
the head with a full can of beer.
Jesus.
And you could say
that it was an accident.
Okay.
He was bleeding when
they did the speeches.
He was bleeding on his forehand.
There was a huge gap.
Jesus, dude.
You could say that,
hey, let's not overreact.
It might be an accident.
(07:02):
It's kind of clear.
Someone threw that can way too hard.
Like, there's no
defending whoever threw that can.
I saw, I finally saw the video.
It came in really fast, really hard.
That was just uncalled for.
And to make it even better, GM, the GM
Howie Roseman gets on the speech.
(07:22):
He shows up because everybody already
knows that he got hit
in the head with him.
He gets onto the podium.
He goes, I bleed for this city.
This is what Philadelphia is like.
The way that he's been for the past
seven, seven some years.
The other thing I will add, what's so
Philly is you have all
these football players just
(07:43):
have a ball during these speeches.
We're watching on the
telecast for local TV.
They're trying to time it
to bleep out the curses.
And inevitably,
inevitably, the curses always get in.
And then they're always
five seconds too late.
So all the curses were
coming in on local TV.
(08:03):
That was done.
Anyway, it was so Philly.
It was great.
Yeah, that was it.
So I'm flying high.
Brilliant.
Brilliant.
Go birds.
Speaking of general managers and managers
and best ever, I went
to Old Trafford on Friday
for Manchester United
versus Leicester in the FA Cup.
Oh, yeah, that was the big game, right?
(08:23):
That you went to last week.
I went in style, let me say.
My pal, Emmett, who we've mentioned on
the podcast a number of
times, graciously invited me along.
And we had seats in the director's box.
And we ate in the director's restaurant.
And I met some of my
absolute sporting heroes.
(08:46):
The number one being Sir Alex Ferguson,
who is the greatest
manager in football history,
possibly the greatest manager in any
sport, I would think.
Wow.
13 Premier League titles, two Champions
League titles, numerous cups.
Just an absolute legend.
So it was--
(09:07):
What team?
Quite surreal, Manchester United.
Wow.
I didn't realize that was the team that
you guys were going to or watching.
And as a lifelong United fan, it was
particularly special.
It was just amazing.
I was talking to Brian Robson.
I was talking to Dennis Irwin.
This will mean nothing
to you, I don't think.
(09:28):
But they're just--
I know Man U is iconic, so I didn't
realize that was your team.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My dad's lifelong United supporter, same.
My granddad was United supporter.
So my dad was-- when I came back, my dad
was almost as excited as me.
He just wanted to hear
it from start to finish.
(09:49):
And exactly what--
And we went back for a drink in Sir
Alex's private lounge.
We got invited back after the match.
It was an unbelievable experience.
So massive shout out to Emmet for that.
It was incredible.
You were preparing that
you were going to see people,
but did you know who you're going to see?
(10:09):
I honestly know, because I didn't know
who was going to be there.
I didn't really have an idea what the
experience was going to be like.
And it was just better
than I could have imagined.
I'm still kind of blown away.
But I was sitting in the
middle of it going, oh my god.
I can't believe this is happening.
But the seats were incredible.
Directors.
But you can't get any better than that.
You also can't-- it's not
(10:31):
an experience you could buy.
You know what I mean?
You have to sort of just be invited.
Like there is corporate hospitality,
the sort of boxes and
stuff that you could buy.
But you can't buy seats
in the director's box.
That's where the directors of the club
sit, where the managers--
Yeah, special invite guests.
Sir Alex's former manager.
Yeah, it was an
absolutely amazing experience.
(10:51):
Kind of kept going, oh my god, I'm here.
And then just chatting to the legends.
Like, how do you chat to a legend?
What do you say?
You just try not to
fuck up the conversation.
I was going to say,
it's just perfect timing.
Because I saw your
pictures and you got-- obviously,
there's a dress code, fancy jacket.
You were looking pretty sharp.
Then on the other side over in Philly,
(11:14):
we're winging beer cans
and just trying to dodge
beer cans at the parade.
Yeah.
But yeah.
Yeah, it was a very different
experience, let me tell you.
So moving on, it's funny, I haven't said
word around town in a long time.
But yeah, our word around town.
So picking up with what
we spoke about last week,
(11:35):
we dug into AI use in
Emilie Perez and The Brutalist.
So this also came out around last week.
And it's really kind of spot on.
It's just-- this is a little follow up.
Oscars consider requiring
films to disclose AI use
after The Brutalist and
(11:56):
Emilie Perez controversies.
And this is an ongoing thing.
I think it's a great idea.
I mean, we've been thinking about this in
a lot of aspects of the media
as far as an AI warning label.
It's interesting, isn't it?
Yeah.
I don't know if they're
labeling things on social media,
but think about all the deep fakes.
(12:16):
And I think it's fair just so when people
start voting on these
contenders, they're aware.
And is it saying with the Oscars that it
would disqualify a film
or it would just be a--
No, no, it would not.
Hold on, let me just
clarify that because you're right.
I should make that clear.
(12:36):
Actively explore changing its Oscar
submission requirements so that films
would have to disclose their use of AI.
Okay.
But there's no, there's no further.
It would just be a label, right?
It would just be a, uh, disclosing it.
Interesting.
I don't see any problem with that.
It's still a step.
It's still a step.
Yeah.
It is a step and it makes
people more aware of it.
(12:58):
It's like a here in the EU, like if you
have a GMO product in any
food, it has to be labeled.
It has to say GMO.
By the way, I take that stuff seriously.
Yeah, I do too.
I do too.
I do want to clarify.
There are some aspects of the brutalist
that we did not mention last week.
(13:21):
The brutalist was used specifically for
the Hungarian speech.
The Hungarian
pronunciation of certain words.
Yeah, exactly.
Now, I just want to be clear because when
we were discussing, I
was actually thinking
the Hungarian speech, speaking English.
We are talking about only the words of
(13:43):
Adrian Brody and Felicity
Jones speaking Hungarian.
Crazy enough.
The movie, not for this podcast, but I
just started watching
the movie last last night.
So that's a drastic difference.
He's speaking English
with a Hungarian accent.
We are not talking about all those lines.
Him speaking English.
We are talking about the
(14:04):
lines of him speaking Hungarian.
So let's think about this.
So there would have to be some criteria.
It's it's I'm just kind of playing
devil's advocate here
because I think I is a fair
threat to our industry at large and
certainly visual effects.
There would have to be some criteria
because if you just
(14:25):
blanket say AI was used.
What if it was used to clean up dialogue?
Is that the same as somebody's
performance being changed?
So there are I think
there are gradients of AI use.
I'm trying to liken it to CGI.
Right.
So.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(14:45):
You're spot on as well in this article.
There are many other films that use AI.
It just so happened that these are the
two ones that kind of lit
up the headlines because
it's dealing with the main actor and it's
also major Oscar contenders.
But when we look down the row and I'm not
going to bore
everyone with this, but there
(15:05):
are many, many, many films this year that
have used some aspect of AI.
We're going to need to learn about this
and they're going to
have to find criteria that's
fair.
An example of this, which happened
earlier, if you were a
photographer or did some social
media and you use certain tools on a
(15:28):
program that is every
every tool these days is kind
of using an aspect of AI.
Some famous well-known photographers were
getting watermarked for AI use.
And basically the point is, is, whoa, you
guys flagged me for
AI for something that's
so essentially just normal technology,
(15:52):
but it fell into the category of AI.
It flagged them because if you're going
to tell me just
because I used Photoshop that
you're going to flag all of my photos for
using AI and I'm going to
become an AI photographer.
That's the tricky line of this.
So let me just go through some of this
because we are talking
about, we already talked about
Brutus and Emilie Perez.
(16:15):
Furiosa, a Mad Max saga used AI to turn
the younger one
transforming into Anya Taylor-Joy.
They used 150 shots to steadily
transition the
character from child to adult.
A complete unknown, the Bob Dylan movie,
(16:36):
used three wide shots
of a motorcycle, which is
normal for stunt work.
So does that fall into the category?
The stunt enhancement that they've been
doing for 10 years, we
talked a little bit about
that last week, used a copycat program to
make their eyes blue
for the, what's those
(16:57):
people?
Those people with the blue eyes?
I'll fuck that name up if I try it.
Oh, the Fremens.
So they use the machine learning model to
identify and
replicate the blue tone in the
eyes of actors playing the Fremens.
And in doing so, saved
hundreds of hours of work.
Can you imagine?
It's like the guy that's, it's hours of
tedious making everyone's eyes blues.
(17:17):
Yeah.
And I also wasn't aware, as you brought
up, like how much of
cleaning up actors' performances,
special effects teams do.
Even without AI.
And that's without AI.
Right, exactly.
Yeah.
It's not just technology.
It just so happens that AI poses a fairly
existential threat to a lot of aspects of
(17:38):
filmmaking.
And technically, technically, AI just
does it at this point.
And in the future, it's going to do it
better for better and quicker.
Well, one, I think the starting point has
to be pretty strict
protective guidelines,
as we discussed in the
in the actor's strike.
(17:59):
And I think the more transparency, the
better with this stuff,
because I wasn't, I'm not
even aware of how extensive AI is used.
You know, I'm not even,
but like, why would I be?
But I'm sure it's used a hell of a lot
more than we think it is.
You know, I mean, this whole article, I
didn't even know about
the, I didn't even know all
these instances until we talked about it.
Like Deadpool and
Wolverine is on this article.
(18:21):
Yeah.
But even if like, even if it transpired
that like, you know, you
were AI, would that surprise
me if you were entirely AI?
I don't know.
Maybe not.
Let's get into the the ongoing
conversation about self tapes.
Yeah.
So, you know, the beauty of, first of
all, I have to say, I
(18:42):
had no idea when we talked
about when we decided to talk about the
self tape controversy
about the four seconds, I
had no idea how invested and how lit up a
lot of our community was.
Even as this week went on, a lot of
people gave responses, a
(19:02):
lot of more opinions chimed
in.
The casting directors themselves actually
did a follow up and we
took a closer look at
that.
It's an ongoing conversation.
I'm feeling my mind
opening up as the week went on.
And I feel I feel differently about it
now than I did
initially, because I think I had
a knee jerk reaction to it and I don't
(19:23):
feel the same way this week.
So yeah, we'll get into it, but I've had
a number of number of thoughts about it.
I think this conversation
has room for a lot of nuance.
And that was just the
skimming the surface last week.
But you know, when we have these
conversations, I look at it as the
beginning of the conversation.
I don't look at it as
these are our final thoughts.
These are all the answers.
I feel like a lot of these conversations
(19:44):
that we have are are
trying to figure out what
we think and trying to
figure out what's really going on.
I also realized that this is
one casting director's opinion.
And I had a very knee
jerk reaction to it.
But as I thought about it over the week,
I'm like, well, one,
you know, I listened to a
bit of their response to it
(20:05):
and what they their follow up.
And one thing I noticed with that was
it's a very sound, body clip.
And I got sort of
fixated on the four seconds.
I got very much if even that casting
director, Tiffany Rochet, I
doubt very much if she only
spends four seconds on every type.
(20:25):
I think it was a kind of a it didn't do
it didn't serve her to
say that because it's
that became the that became the story
then that she only watches.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
People were kind of blowing it.
Yeah, yeah.
Fixating is a good word.
Yeah.
And then I had to sort of
examine my own feelings on it.
And I realized that like, so what do I
(20:46):
want from a self type?
One, I'm grateful to get an audition.
I actually love self types.
And we talked a bit about that, too.
But I don't think that made it in.
We can get into that today a little bit.
But I do really enjoy self types.
So they're often just maybe a bit sad,
but they're often the
best part of my day.
Like I really do enjoy doing them.
And then when I do them now, I don't
(21:08):
think this is always the case.
But when I do them now, and I send them,
I just kind of let them go.
So how they're received is
kind of none of my business.
You know what I mean?
So whether they watch them for four
seconds or the whole
thing, it's not that important
to me personally.
I think what gave me the knee jerk sort
of outrage was like, I
(21:28):
know the time that actors
spend and the effort and the time and the
preparation and the
money that you put into
this career in general and making self
types and sending them off.
This idea of fair, this idea of we want
to solve their problem.
They have a problem.
We want to solve it.
There is no fair in this.
(21:49):
There is no, I deserve this.
No.
There's no.
I just I just want to hammer that home
because that didn't make
it until the last week's
episode.
And for them to watch an entire self tape
because they feel guilty,
we're not doing ourselves
a dis we're not doing ourselves service
by saying, hey, you
(22:10):
guys have to watch all of
our tape if we know that the last five
minutes of it are inaccurate.
That's so my point is, is this first four
seconds is we know what
we're doing or accurate.
But most importantly, we are
here to solve your problem.
Yeah, that's kind of like where I'm
reframing where we can get
into the whole what their
(22:31):
response is.
But I feel like that
would take two hours.
But most importantly, it's this is where
I think the mindset of
an actor we can really
kind of adjust because and also a great
thing how you were
saying it like because we've
gotten reps.
Maybe we can be less precious about all
five minutes of our self tape.
(22:52):
Maybe we can hit the ground running.
You see what I'm doing
from the first moment.
And you can always you can always trust
us to do a great self
tape because we're always
going to hit the ground running and
you're going to keep asking.
You're going to keep calling us in.
And maybe that's the win.
And you don't have to
watch all of our tape.
Yeah.
And that was the other thing that we did
say that doesn't change anything for us.
You know what I mean?
(23:13):
Her saying that doesn't change anything.
If anything, it sort
of makes me focus on.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
It's just a nice reminder.
Like that's how I have to show up.
And like you say, how anybody does their
job is out of my control
and none of my business
in the same way that a casting director
doesn't have a say in
how I prep for an audition.
You know, that's my
business because that's my job.
(23:34):
And I think this conversation goes beyond
this one casting director.
I think this conversation has almost
nothing to do with Tiffany Rocher.
And I, you know, people can pick apart
their their follow up.
And I suggest everyone go go watch it for
themselves instead of
just listening us to
discuss it.
(23:54):
But because I think they had to remove
our emotions and our
feelings from it to, hey,
this is how we set ourselves apart.
And this is this is our job.
I'm glad that she said it because it sort
of forced me to look
at it again and go, oh,
yeah, that's right.
That's my job.
Because I know I need constant reminders
of what's within my
control and what's not
(24:15):
within my control.
And, you know, I'm far better now.
Like you say, we have experience now.
So I'm far better now at just
letting go of auditions going.
Here is my version of what I think this
character is and what I
think these moments are.
Take it or leave it.
And also because, you know, as Leslie
says, it's a business of
moving pictures, you may
(24:35):
not look like somebody's idea of what
that character should look like.
And that can change.
You may be the you might be the casting
director's idea of what
that character looks like.
But if you're not the director's idea of
what that character looks
like, well, then that's,
you know, that's very that's valid.
Someone mentioned this to me and it very
(24:55):
well could have been from the studio.
But someone mentioned to me that, you
know, most of our jobs,
especially starting out
a lot of our job is 70 percent look, 30
percent talent, 70
percent look, 30 percent skill.
Do we fit the role
what they're looking for?
Quite possibly.
Yeah.
I don't know about those percentages.
I'll have to think about that a bit more.
But yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
(25:16):
Also, the other thing that you can't
really legislate for
is somebody's essence.
And I know that from being a reader, like
someone can be a fantastic actor.
But if they don't have the essence of the
way that character is
written, then they're
not getting the part
or they're not right.
And you could also find too.
You could probably you could you could
probably tell that in four seconds.
Yes, I think so.
(25:36):
I actually think you can.
So I think I think all of this, just to
say that I had I had a
kind of an emotional reaction
to to the time before second time.
But the more I thought about it over the
week, I'm like, yeah,
but I've watched friends,
self tapes and I've
known if they're good.
I actually went back and watched some of
my self tapes and I
just watched the first four
seconds to see, OK, did I nail that
(25:57):
entrance or did I nail the
moment before that I come
in as the character?
Some I did some I
didn't, you know what I mean?
In my opinion.
So it's it's it's really interesting to
look at it through that land.
So, you know, I just want to reiterate,
like, I know how hard
that job is, like, I know how
hard the job of casting is.
I'm grateful that self tapes have
(26:18):
democratized the process to
some degree that we can we
can we can audit.
also part of the reason why we're digging
into this more and kind of
having this follow-up because
this is here to stay. This is very much
part of our lives. Self-tapes are
probably more important
than ever and they're probably going to
(26:39):
continue to be important. We
weren't here to demonize any
casting directors. We didn't do it last
week. And also, I think it was
eye-opening for a lot of us.
I thought that it was good that they had
a response. I think it
was good that a lot of
other people in the industry are chiming
in. You talk to a lot of
actors and I have a friend. He's
a killer. His name is Mike Messini. He
had huge thoughts on this
(26:59):
and I'll just drop a few of his
dimes here. When he hears stuff like
that, he lights up. He
lights up because it just
confirms everything he always thought. He
goes, "I don't even
think it takes four seconds.
If you're not fully dropped in by line
one, you're out." This is a continuation
and it's another way
of thinking about moment before, but
continuation of the entire
(27:20):
life leading up to that moment.
It's so not about the first four seconds.
The four seconds aren't
even part of the conversation.
Do we see that life in that person before
your first line even
happens? Are you plugged into
this story? It just takes you to a place.
He goes on and on, but
if you see his tapes, he
crushes for these reasons. No reason to
(27:43):
watch if other people
are, if you're not on fire
before the first word is set. It's as
simple as that. I think
if you talk to a lot of...
It's polarizing and it's not popular, but
if you talk to a lot of killers,
this is how they think. It's not doing
you any favors to be
like, "Hey, I killed myself
over this five-minute tape. You need to
(28:05):
watch it." It's hard as an actor not to
be precious about it,
but I think as you get the reps and with
experience, we become less
and less precious about it.
I think our acting can be better. This is
the other thing. I want to
throw this out because it's
also one nuance. I made a comment last
(28:26):
time as far as for them
to discover the next...
We're Norton and so on and so forth and
whether they're going to
find the next movie star.
They have a problem to solve and they
have less time and less
resources to solve it.
So we might as well solve the problem.
It's not a personal
thing. It's like, "Hey,
(28:46):
I think this guy is going to be the next
superstar and blah, blah,
blah." You got a problem to solve
and you got a week. So just a more
refined look at what their job is and
also being fair to them.
A gun to your head. We're not asked you
to say how much time
you're spending on each tape.
I think once you get into the black and
(29:06):
white of it, that's where it
gets super messy and might be
not a helpful conversation. Absolutely. I
think when you think about it,
other than an agent, you work with a
casting director the most
in this industry because
they're the person you're dealing with
more often than not. And
have respect for everybody's job
(29:28):
because it's, like I say, it's such a
collaborative process and it's such a
collaborative industry
that you need every piece of that puzzle.
I do want to add another
tidbit. This is actually
an interesting little thing that popped
up in conversations over the past week.
I have a friend that is starting to take
the live virtual Zoom
option. So for those who aren't in
(29:50):
the industry, self-tapes is very
prevalent. But I want to say it was
something that we fought for
in our contract that casting directors
need to offer a live
option. If it's remote, then it's
still going to be on Zoom and so on and
so forth. But at least
you're with a person.
That's interesting. If you want to be
(30:10):
with a live person and
say, "This is my five minutes
and I'm going to have this time with
you," depending on who you are as an
actor, and we'll get into,
obviously, we both appreciate self-tapes
and so on, but hey, it's
something to think about.
As an actor, if you want to explore that
option, it's not a bad way to
go. If you think that that's
(30:30):
going to be an advantage for you, this is what we have to deal with.
If you really have a problem with it, if
you have a moral indignation about this,
there are many, many reasons to pick up
and choose a different
profession. This is not an easy
profession, right? But my God, it's fun.
(30:52):
Self-tapes is a value add,
then a value subtract from me.
I get more benefit out of self-tapes than
not. It does allow developing actors to be more
seen. It does allow developing actors to
be seen, and it does allow casting
directors to see more
actors. It definitely benefits me.
Hopefully, you can take advantage of it
and use that as a weapon
(31:12):
instead of using it as a liability. Yeah,
absolutely. As far as
the live Zoom option goes,
I think that's great that that's a
possibility. I understand
that that puts a bit more time
pressure on casting directors.
Personally, I wouldn't do it for every
audition if you felt
like it was necessary. What do you mean
time pressure? You're
taking up their time?
(31:33):
Well, they have to schedule that time,
you know what I mean,
to see you for those
timeslot. What I gather is basically,
hey, we're seeing
people on Tuesday afternoon.
We blocked out three hours if you want to
take a time slot. We have
five slots open on Tuesday
afternoon. Okay, okay. I think it's a
little more reasonable
instead of, hey, are you free
(31:54):
Wednesday at 5 45? It's not setting up a
date, I want to say. Yeah,
okay. I'd love to get a casting
director's take on that too. Yeah. And
how, you know, I'm glad we
got to revisit this. I'm glad
we talked about it in the first place.
And I have to be aware, I think, in the
future of my own first
reaction to something. And like, maybe
not like, maybe not run with that and
(32:16):
just go, okay, well,
why do I feel like that? Yeah, exactly.
And also, that's the benefit
of us being able to do this
every week. So let's do hidden gems. Oh,
good God. I knew you. I've
been thinking about it all day.
And I'm like, what the fuck have we done
this week? That's in any way
hidden gems. It doesn't need to
be eye opening and also doesn't need to
(32:37):
be any week. My hidden
gem, and I had, I was thinking
about saying this last week, but I'll do
it this week. So if you've heard of
Substack, by the way,
we are also on Substack. Substack is this
new platform. It's
everything from podcasts to blogs.
It's, I'm warming up to it. I think it's
a lot of fun. Anyway, so I
(32:58):
stumbled on this huge writer.
He's a popular writer on Substack and the
internet. His name's Tim
Denning. And for whatever reason,
this blog post just popped up. It's
called I'm 38. If you're in
your 20s or 30s, read this.
Now it's in this author's case. He also
(33:24):
does narrate his story.
He's a lovely British voice.
It's really fun. It's not too long. So
you can read it or you can
listen to it. Either way,
there's really great wisdom, really great
advice. And I'll put the
link in our comments. I'll put
the link in our description. I love that.
(33:44):
I actually did have one.
My hidden gem is an app.
It's a meditation app. It's called waking
up. And a friend of mine
turned me onto it and I've used
a number of different meditation apps,
but I think, you know, I
try and meditate every day,
but what I started out with was apps
that, you know, have kind of like
relaxing music or, you
know, bird sounds or whatever. And they
put you in this kind of very
(34:05):
relaxed state. But this app
takes a slightly different approach to
meditation, which I
found really helpful in that.
It's an app designed by Sam Harris. And
whether you agree with
Sam Harris as a, you know,
his opinions or whatever, this app just
has an approach to
meditation that is kind of,
(34:28):
you don't try and block anything out. You
don't try and put on the
relaxing music. It's basically
about just sort of being present with
whatever's going on around
you. And to put it sort of
crudely, everything that happens, the
thoughts in your mind, the sounds you
hear, the sensations in
your body all appear in this sort of
cloud of consciousness.
And then you can just kind of
let go of all of it. That's a very poor
(34:50):
description of how it works. But what it
did was it taught me
to meditate when the conditions weren't
perfect. Cause I used to
sort of be a bit too concerned
with making the conditions perfect. And
there has to be no noise
and there has to be that,
but this is sort of about
(35:23):
Also has a very good system of it is it
is a paid app you there
is a free trial period
But he has a pay what you pay what you
can sort of a system
so you kind of pitch a price and go I'd
like to pay this for the year and
The app either says yes or no. Oh
If you can't afford a pay full price, I'd
(35:45):
never heard of that
either. No with an app
So that's kind of what you up it. Yeah,
if you're into meditation, then you're
just looking for a
slightly different approach to it
It's a good way to
Just switch it up a bit
We might have to dig in this a future
episode all this. It's worth trying
because I
Probably just made an
absolute bollocks of that explanation
(36:06):
Well, I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued. I'm
intrigued. Yeah. Oh anyway. All right. I
hope you guys enjoyed it
Join us next week. That's our episode.
Have a good one. All
right guys. See you next week
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