Alright, so you're a decently trained and young inexperienced actor and you finally got headshots you can live with. Then you got some more done. Now you got an entire book filled with a face only a mother could love and you even went so far as to land a reputable SAG licensed agent who also has the same taste as your mother. You are ready to be sold on the open market, but your agent hasn't had the time to give you the entire run-down. Well here it is. Most people in the biz will tell you never to listen to other actors... this is true, but there are some things that are a part of the starter set you should know. Before you start going out on the castings you've been so fortunate enough to be called on (thanks to those wonderful pictures), there are some necessary things you must have in your bag and in your car (or whatever transport you got) at ALL times. In your bag, you should have:

If you're an actor, I think it's in your best interest to know this, especially if you're about to leave your hometown to take a shot at the big time. Let's say you live in Michigan... never mind, let's just say you live anywhere else in the country, anywhere but New York and Los Angeles, and you're an actor who's going out into the city or the ‘burbs, or what-have-you, and you're looking for any type of work. You know, the everyday type of job: waiter, bartender, gas station attendant, Don of the Mob, etc. When you mention that you're an actor, it usually illicits the most surprised of responses, like "Wow, we have a star in the making here," or it may even garner the old "let me tell you my story" kind of dialogue with whoever's doing the hiring... and that's nice. Yeah, it's nice and everything that you have the same chances as anyone else of getting that position, and you may very well get hired... God bless America, right? But were you to mention that in NY or L.A., all you'll be getting out of that interaction is a "thank you but we're not hiring right now" as they flip the Now Hiring sign over.

In the beginning there was the word, and the word was made flesh. In the middle there was this person named an agent and/or a manager... and they told you what the word was and how it was being used or who was using them, and how you should use these words... and then in the end, the Hollywood Films Casting machine was made whole. So I arrived in Los Angeles with an awesome, almost too-good-to-be-true sounding but entirely legitimate program called The Pinnacle Actor's Group, headed by a wise old man by the name of Lawrence Folgo, who brought 45 years of experience and connections to the program. The program is great in that it offers the determined actor to arrive in Tinsel town with all the opportunities to hit the ground running. It lasted an entire month, and in that month we rehearsed previously found scenes, found new ones, and trained and perfected our craft for the potential agents, managers, and casting directors who came to see our three showcases.

Knowing what you want to do in life after college, or any other institution’s release of one’s mind, is only a third of the way in the trajectory to becoming something, anything in this privileged slice of life we call America. To the contrary if you don’t know what you want to do and start out in life, after being ‘educated’, with a natural curiosity for things that absolutely feed your sense of wonder and interest, then I feel there is more room for soul searching and experiential gatherings of knowledge.