Networking and Acting I

Pictures from our day trip to ZhuJiaJiao…a small suburb city of Shanghai with a pretty cannal.

So I’ve been going to bars alot. And parties. And Toastmasters. I’ve been trying to become Mr. Social. Some of you, like Jeremy and Brad will say “Jesse…you have always been Mr. Social.” Some of you,…well…most of you will say “Jesse…becomes social…really?” This is how I do my job search here. I go to events and bars. I talk to people. I hand out business cards and collect there cards.

So far I have gone to interview for a Product Manager position with Intel (I didn’t get the job…they are giving it to an internal hire…but I never got an interview with them before). I am interviewing with a consulting company for a business development position (basically I would be paid a little money plus commission to do what I’m doing now…go to networking meetings and pass out cards). I interviewed for a Business Systems Analysis position for a credit card software company. I got the Intel interview through a T-bird Alumni. The other interviews were from referrals from people I met in bars.

In the later two interviews, they called in Chinese workers to test my Chinese; they all said I spoke with charm and intelligence. OK. Please don’t make the obvious jokes/lame comments on the tag board about this.

So I met this guy named Jack in a bar who told me he was looking for foreigners to be actors, models, etc in commercials and movies. I told him I didn’t like the idea because foreigners are always portrayed as the “bad guy”, or without normal human relationship sense. Or they are stupid red-headed Canadian clowns. But I would not mind being cast as a zombie or other monster. Big, hairy chested monster.

I got a call the next day to appear at an audition. Jack didn’t tell me anything about the role, except that it is a horror movie and the director is American. I thought, “Great! I can be the zombie and eat the brains of the sexy (but too short and stupid) Chinese girl!” I took a taxi to the audition location. It was raining heavily and pitch black. The address took me down a dark alleyway in a sort-of slum area (meaning, big molding Stalinist concrete apartments). I walked down the alley way and couldn’t find the address. I said (in Chinese) “This must be a fudging joke. I will fudging kill Jack the next time I fudging see him”. Just then a girl called out from a doorway telling me to come. The girl, AnAn, was Jack’s coworker.

The audition studio was a two story apartment with bright red painted walls covered with movie props. (the fact that it was a two story apartment meant that some thick walls were knocked out of this 1950s set-piece apartment block) Beautiful people all around. Not model-beautiful. They were TV-beautiful. The type of archetype good looks you never ever see walking down the street to the $.45 dumpling restaurant.

AnAn asked me about my past acting experience. I said none. She was pissed. “Why did you come here then?!”

“One. Do not use that tone with me. Two. I’m here because Jack told me to come here. What is YOUR problem?”

“The problem is Jack sent you to audition for the lead role and you have no experience!”

Lead role?! “No problem. Any moron can act.”

AnAn took me into another room filled with actors waiting to audition. She was very nervous. She put the audition script in front of me – it was all in Chinese…which I cannot read.

The assistant casting director sat down next to me. She was nice. She started to explain the movie. “Its a horror movie. But it has some things to do with religeon. Do you understand?”

“Yes. Horror and religion in one movie. Like peanut butter and chocolate. ”

“Right. Now…you are a police investigator. The head investigator. You are a tough guy. And there are these people that are dying. After they die, they get a mark carved into their foreheads.”

“Sort of like a Roman Polanski film?”

“I don’t know.”

“OK. Go on.”

“So in this scene, you are in the office with your two subordinates. And you are questioning them about these murders.”.

“I think I’ve seen this movie before. So… cool. I’m gonna be the tough cop.”