Wicked Little Town

Young Goes West

"Evidently in Deadwood, there was a Chinatown," said Keone Young of the one-time South Dakota frontier town. Good for him, because it means this venerable stage and screen actor has landed a juicy recurring role as a Chinese godfather on David Milch's new HBO series, billed as a Western "Sopranos," and slated to debut next spring.

Young seems to prefer the term "survivor" to "gangster."

"He's a leader in the community," said Young. "It's turning out to be a wonderful part. It started out kinda slow, but my character has developed."

There's an undercurrent of criminal activity, of "people trying to get power" -- or, as "NYPD Blue" co-creator Milch has put it, it's a historic time in which "it was legitimate to explore the genesis of law. What interested me about Deadwood is that it was an outlaw settlement, on Indian territory, so the American law didn't apply; there were no laws at all."

At least part of what has interested HBO is the possibility for a grittily revisionist take on the Old West -- i.e., an R-rated show that doesn't shy away from nudity and moral ambiguity. Confirmed Young, "There's cussin' and everything. The whores are real whores. It's real hardcore stuff."

The wild West, indeed.

Networks Network, Minorities Get Work

After the uproar from minority advocates about the notoriously lily-white fall 1999 season, networks have made strides to diversify their ensembles, with noticeable results if not groundbreaking imagination.

Among the ongoing legacies of that debacle is the phenomenon of "diversity showcases," cast and staged in clubs and theatre venues by networks to give a spotlight to undiscovered or underemployed actors of color. There have been showcases for African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans, in which theatre and actors' groups identified with each group (in these cases, respectively, the Robey Theatre, Nosotros and East West Players) have teamed with network exex to dig deeper into those talent pools. The audiences for these "scene nights" include casting directors, agents, managers and other assorted suits, and while no stars have emerged from these showcases, to my knowledge, actors have been signed and/or garnered auditions and gigs.

But what if a diversity showcase were diverse itself? Rather than put together a roster from any one particular under-represented group, last night's ABC Diversity Showcase at North Hollywood's El Portal Theatre mixed and matched 14 performers whose diversity wasn't just defined by ethnicity -- African-American, Korean, Native American -- but by age, which ranged from 18 to 80, and by disability.

Chinese American hottie Gwendoline Yeo, for instance, did a short two-character scene from Joseph Dougherty's "Digby" (no, not that one) opposite deaf actor Anthony Natale. Though the male role wasn't written for a signing actor, Yeo said the network just felt he was the best choice for the role, and was happy to add some ASL to the "special skills" line on her resume. Hers, by the way, includes formidable chops on a rather specialized instrument (sound clips offered, too).

Yeo (pronounced like the goombah greeting) has had success with these network showcases before -- one for Asian-American actors last year landed her 7 auditions and 2 jobs. Indeed, I've talked to some performers who've done a number of diversity showcases. Which raises the question: If networks keep "discovering" talent at these showcases, why do some of the same minority actors have to keep doing them?

Well, to borrow from a great philosopher/poet, there are known unknowns and then there are unknown unknowns. Yeo has guested on "The Lyon's Den," done tons of voiceover work, and tested for several sitcom pilots, so she's no stranger to Hollywood's casting offices. But she has yet to break through to casting directors' must-see lists. Showcases like this, as much as any acclaimed play or guest star spot, are just another way to chip away at the industry's vast indifference to unproven success -- a prevailing risk-aversion which knows no color.

Walla Be Good

"I'm in a loop group," actress Jessica Pennington told me, with the ebullient satisfaction of someone who'd just been accepted into a very exclusive club -- and that's not too far off the mark. "It's one of the hardest gigs to get," Pennington said, "because people hire their friends."

What's a loop group, you ask? No, it's not a term for a carpool in Chicago. Essentially a loop group does voiceover extra work: Pennington and around five other actors stand in a recording booth watching scenes with crowds or groups of passersby (on-camera extras are usually either silent or at least not recorded on a film set) and improvising appropriate conversations that match the setting. Pennington's group, headed by industry veteran Erin Donovan, works a trio of one-hour dramas, giving "ER" its medical chatter, "West Wing" its aura of backroom buzz, "Third Watch" a streetwise ambience. The industry term for this background talk is "walla." (No word on the term's origin -- Bollywood, perchance?)

Perhaps because it involves performing on mike, it garners the full SAG day rate rather than the relatively paltry extra day rate. And when I joked that Jessica and co. make a good living standing around murmuring and mumbling, she pointed out that a loop group's improvised dialogue is in fact performed and recorded at full conversational volume. It's the sound mixer's job to create the proper balance.

It makes me wish I could hear a walla-heavy mix of scenes from "ER" -- although, come to think of it, it would probably be as full of "stat" and "cc's" as the show's main dialogue.

Bobby Hill, World's Greatest Mom

Pamela S. Adlon won an Emmy last year, but not enough people seem to know it. Even some folks at the Television Academy appear to be in the dark about it.

"They never sent me my nameplate," said Adlon recently as her three young daughters rustled in the background. A friend offered to make her a 1970s hand-punch label for the nameless trophy that sits in her house and might as well say "World's Best Mom." (For the folks at home: Awardees at the major shows take home a blank statuette.)

But then Adlon (formerly Pamela Segall) is used to not being recognized for her work: She's in animation voiceover, and she's called in mostly "whenever they want somebody who can be a really natural boy." Adlon's Emmy came for her performance as one of the most natural, if loveably peculiar, boys on TV: scratchy-voiced dreamer Bobby Hill on the unassuming Fox mainstay "King of the Hill."

"When I got into voiceover 14 years ago, it hadn't exploded at that point -- it was the bastard stepchild of acting," she recalled. "It was assumed that if you did voiceover your face was too fucked up to be on camera." Now, she joked, "We are the gods -- we have achieved the quan," but there's still a divide between on-camera and voiceover talent. "When 'Will & Grace' did a 100th episode, they all got Porsches. When we did a 100th episode, we got AstroTurf coasters."

The second-class treatment also surfaces when producers of a successful animated show face contract talks with the talent -- as when cast members on Fox's other animated hit asked for more and the producers started holding auditions for replacements.

"When they renegotiated 'The Simpsons,' I told my agent, 'Don't even call me,' " said Adlon of this hardball tactic, which was also used with the cast of "The Powerpuff Girls" and the lead voice on "Babe 2." "I would never, ever undermine another actor who's established and created a character. That's like crossing the [picket] line at the supermarket. It's just not OK."

A character Adlon created onstage will get a new lease with next month's New York backer's audition reading of "Heartbreak Help," a play by L.A. scribe Justin Tanner that she starred in back in 1996. She'll fly on her own dime to join co-stars Laurel Green, Ellen Ratner, and Carol Ann Susi because she believes Tanner "deserves his due in New York. I love the show. We had the best time. It's a fun show. It's just giddy."

She'll fit the play reading into a hiatus on "Hill" tapings, which start up again in January for the show's 9th season next fall. For Adlon, the show's glow hasn't worn off.

"I'm stunned by the level of the scripts," she said. "They let all these natural moments happen -- there's actual silence on a TV show. It feels like classic television, like we're working on something that will last."

Don't tell the Academy, but that just might be worth even more than an Emmy.

Mapa the World, Ma

Some actors just don't fit into Hollywood's cookie-cutter roles. But if they stick around long enough and keep doing their thing, they can eventually be embraced for their originality, and get a chance to reshape the roles they get to fit their outsized personalities.

Take Alec Mapa, for example. A short, impish, epicene Filipino now in his 30s but still looking Peter Pan-ishly ageless, he's best known for playing the original "M. Butterfly" and for a series of solo shows about the ups and downs of his career and his life (two of them, presented earlier this year under the grouped title "Mapa Mia," are nominated separately for Ovation Awards -- yes, Mapa is competing with himself).

"People are starting to incorporate my creativity now that they know what I do," said Mapa, who turned a receptionist part on UPN's "Half and Half" into a recurring role by basing his nonchalant demeanor on his own temping days of yore. "And as long as you're working, it attracts other people who are interested in what you do."

Mapa wasn't even going to read for "Connie and Carla," Nia Vardalos' new movie about two women (Vardalos and Toni Collette) who go into hiding by disguising themselves as West Hollywood drag queens (for release next spring). "I so didn't need to be in drag again," quipped Mapa, who apart from "Butterfly" has been called upon to don the eyeliner on other occasions. The caliber of the cast -- and of his co-queen, Stephen Spinella -- convinced to try for a part that, he says, was "pretty thinly conceived." He went in and read the lines as his own Filipino grandmother might; he later found out from Vardalos that when she wants to do "ethnic," she conjures her inner grandmother, too.

Next up for Mapa is Bravo's improvised show about couples in therapy, "Significant Others," (not be confused with the short-lived 1998 drama featuring a current ABC star). Mapa plays the partner of Patrick Bristow -- a pairing that seemed obvious, Mapa said, when producers put the two together and "we wouldn't shut up."

And that's the lesson for today, kids: Just keep talking and eventually they'll hear you.

Give Up and Get "Carnivále"

Cynthia Ettinger is glad she was fired from "Smallville" two years ago. Otherwise she'd now be playing Martha Kent (Annette O'Toole replaced her after the pilot was done) rather than Rita Sue Dreifuss, a tough-as-nails middle-aged cooch dancer whose two teenage daughters perform alongside her in HBO's intriguing Dust Bowl carny series "Carnivále."

Indeed, after being axed from the hit WB show -- a relief, she said, because she was making herself miserable trying to please several different producers rather than just insisting on her own take on the role -- the tall, busty, blonde Ettinger did the opposite of a career move: She gained weight and did theatre. "Theatre people are my people," she said. "When I first started doing television, I wanted to kill myself--they just weren't my people."

With edgy, ambitious writing and a gritty, smoky shoot in Santa Clarita over the summer, "Carnivále" ending up feeling closer to a theatre job, she said. "The cast is made up of people who are willing to do anything," she said. "There's no room for divas who need to make sure their feet don't hurt. And it's great to do a job where you don't have to worry what you look like.

"I spent so many years trying to fit into a mold--to be just regular and pretty, so nobody would know I'm eccentric. When I finally said, I'm through with that, it's not working for me, I get the greatest role of my life, and it's perfect for me."

Even in an industry built on fakery, truth can be stronger than fiction.

Scribe 'Standing' by Blank

At 25, Austin Winsberg is young for a TV writer, but he had a headstart, winning the Blank Theatre Company's annual Young Playwrights Festival five years in a row back in his teens.

Though he's currently working on "Still Standing" and working up a pilot for next season, he still keeps his hand in the Young Playwrights Fest, serving on the play selection jury and directing -- this year it's 19-year-old Ginger Healy's "Mousy Brown," (scroll to the bottom) starring "Good Morning, Miami" regular Constance Zimmer. It seems the Blank's leaders, Daniel Henning and Noah Wyle, have a way with coaxing name actors into the mix: Others who participated in this year's Fest included Tom Lenk, Gregory Jbara, Richard Kline, Amber Benson, Danny Strong and Jon Shear.

Though we spotted a real live casting professional at a recent performance of "funny...", a full run of the 2003 fest's two winning selections, Winsberg assured us he wasn't nabbed directly from his teens into Hollywood; he went away and studied at Brown, then came back to pursue writing. Still, a headstart is a headstart.

Schism Over Monk's Blessing

Update 10/24/2003...

I got a passionate response from the publicist and one of the producers of "Monk" after posting this item. That's not how it happened, according to co-producer Randy Zisk. North and his partner got through the whole scene, reading it with Shalhoub -- and the "God bless" send-off was actually the last line of the script, not an impromptu jab from Shalhoub. Casting director Amy Britt confirmed that the lines were indeed in the script. North said that even his scene partner -- someone he'd only met before the audition -- told North he'd gotten the same impression of Shalhoub's sarcasm. Who to believe? Well, auditions are often recorded, so I watched the tape. Read about it here.

Original post...

In what business would a seasoned job applicant be asked to prepare a sample of his work, then be paired in his job interview with a lunkheaded stranger -- and then not even be allowed a chance to present his work? Where else but in acting, of course.

Matt North -- whom viewers may recognize as the right-wing lawyer for the prosecution in the Showtime drama "Dirty Pictures," or as Jason Alexander's agent in an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" -- is more or less used to the routine indignities of auditioning, but he doesn't need to have his face rubbed in it. That's what "Monk" star Tony Shalhoub apparently did recently, after North's audition went poorly.

North had been paired with an under-rehearsed actor so the two could audition for a scene as two garbagemen; the other actor botched a few pages of lines, while North got to say about three words--and by then the producers had seen as much they thought they wanted. This was bad enough, but Shalhoub added insult to injury, North said, by announcing, with patronizing facetiousness, "Gentlemen, God bless you and God bless your work." North said it took all his strength not to reply, "Tony, you went way over the top in 'Big Night.' "

Green Makes Good 'Match'

"Actors, please remember this is a comedy," reads a sign next to the sign-in sheet at the casting office for "Miss Match," NBC's new one-hour single-camera dramedy.

It's that one-hour single-camera thing that must throw some actors, since there aren't many comedies in that format ("Gilmore Girls" is the only other one that comes to mind). That well-placed sign might have helped the versatile Laurel Green land a recent guest star part on the show (her episode airs Nov. 7), as she recalled: She went in the room on a callback with casting directors Gayle Pillsbury and Bonnie Zane and producer Dennis Erdman with this mantra in her head: "Keep it real, but keep it light."

She was called back for a bigger part than she'd initially been called in for, which was for "a girl who's at one of those 12-step sexaholics meetings. They all laughed at my reading, and as I was leaving, Dennis came running after me and said, 'Would you read for this other part?' " Given just 15 minutes to prepare, she thought she blew the audition for the bigger part of a mousy homemaker whose husband is divorcing her. Indeed, while she read, she said producer Darren Star came in. Star and Erdman had seen Green onstage in her glory days with Justin Tanner in such plays as "Pot Mom" and "Teen Girl," but this previous assocation only made it worse, Green said: "If they've seen you in the theatre, they expect you to be brilliant."

Apparently she didn't blow it -- she booked the part. The shoot went smoothly, but compared to doing stage and sitcom work, Green did confess, "The weird thing is, you go, 'Is it going to be funny? Are they going to laugh?' There's no way to gauge it." Except perhaps by feedback from series regular Ryan O'Neal, who took Green aside and told her, "You're very talented, and you better get used to hearing that." She's heard it from her theatre fans for years, of course -- but it's nice to know that others are catching on.

One From Mare's Heart

I didn't catch much of David E. Kelley's new "Brotherhood of Poland, N.H." (I love the tagline I read somewhere, about the three hefty leads: "They're large and in charge"), but let's just say it was on in our house, and I was wrenched from whatever I was doing by the sound of a familiar song at about the 40-minute mark. I walked in to the TV room see the incomparable Mare Winningham accompanying herself at the piano in a heartfelt rendition of "Take Me Home," playing it for her on-screen husband, played by Randy Quaid. This was a first-class TV moment on many levels: It's a neglected gem of a song from Tom Waits' score for Coppola's misbegotten "One From the Heart," and Winningham -- whose singing talent was also on display in "Georgia" -- appeared to be performing it live on camera, without playback, as she acted the yearning, gently chiding words of the song: "Take me home, you silly boy / 'Cause I'm still in love with you." I have a strong hunch the song was Winningham's choice. Either way, that moment of primetime was all hers.