Sometimes It's You

Nuns and quintuplets: totally unrecognizable from their place in hiding, wearing wimples and looking like four other people.

Keeping Up With the Joneses

One would hope that a movie titled "The Joneses" would be a hard-hitting look at the perils of conspicuous consumerism, but it only gets about halfway there. Without having to decry "spoiler alert!", it can be said that a couple of obvious fingers are wagged in the film, but because embedded in the movie are both caveats and whalefuls of product placement, it's easy to walk away without much more than an aspiration to someday have a Van Cleef and Arpels ring. I wanted to see the one character who ultimately resists the Jonesification to rent a small apartment, wear a solid-color t-shirt, and spend time jogging or reading a book. I wanted those things to be shown as unglamorous but pretty satisfying. I wanted to feel the spaciousness of it, the relief of being off the treadmill. The way it feels to get just what you really need, and nothing more.

Hooray for Hollywood

The Hollywood sign is officially saved! Or rather, Cahuenga Peak, the land surrounding it, is officially bought and added onto Griffith Park, preserving it from developers for good. Hugh Hefner, recognizing anything unproportionately large and rounded, stepped in with the final $900,000 needed. As my talented comedienne friend Fortune Feimster points out in her stand-up set, while activists the world over work on issues of war, famine, and other injustice, LA activists' happy ending came in garnering a $12,000,000 sign. It's true that sometimes those nine letters feel like they're holding the whole town together; like tenterhooks on a celebrity nose job; and nice to know I won't look up to be re-inspired and have to face off with a cell phone ad instead. If you close your eyes halfway you can still see Katharine Hepburn riding around in a jalopy, dressed in dungarees with a monkey on her shoulder...

Plastic Surgery Isn't a Good Idea?

The New York Times pointed out something on Friday that we facial-expression enthusiasts have felt all along: plastic surgery actually isn't a good idea. The NYT article, which can be read here, deals specifically with actors--and yes, primarily the female of the species--and how getting nipped and tucked can ruin your chances of a great career as much or more than raising them. There are period pieces and the requirements of 3-D technology, yes, but there's also the fact that our job as performers is to show human experience in our faces; to not just stand in, masked by botulism. I think of it this way: any face a baby wouldn't be able to read, respond to, and feel loved by, is no face to act with. In an argument with a male model, who took the stance that a woman with huge breast implants could be just as lovely a person as anyone else, I countered that while she may be kind, sweet, or charming, those beach balls state her values louder than any words she could say. In the words of a FOX casting executive about such an individual, "She's just not for me, then."

Working from Home

Welcome to my home office! I know, I haven't made my bed yet. That is the couch where I will spend several hours running lines to prepare for tomorrow's shoot. That is the desk where I will do rewrites on an FBI spoof concept a friend came up with. There's my wardrobe for the character of irate tax auditor; which blue shirt is better? Could you take the potatoes out of the oven? Dance break: "Your Love is My Drug"! Back to creating the promotional materials to mail...and no staring at the clock. There's no such thing as a quitting time.

My Friends Michael

The city of Angels must be filled only with people named Michael...because that's what just about all of my friends here are called. Relating any story of a weekend prior is somewhat complicated. Amy: don't change a thing.

In Case You Were Interested In A Website That Spies On You

Thanks to a friend's heads up, I discovered Spokeo.com. Don't be fooled: that cute blue hedgehog standing in for an "o" is actually a corporate spy! Spokeo collects various facts about you and posts them up for anyone to find. More detailed information can be had for a price, but even without extra coin there are addresses and phone numbers and key statistics. You can remove yourself from the site by clicking on the "Privacy" link on the lower right hand side, but first you might want to review what's being said about you. In my case, that I have children and am not interested in politics. What? Other choice information included that I do not have central heating in my apartment, and that I am a Scorpio. Children? Apolitical? Scorpio? Okay, it does get cold in the winter. The best little bit was this: "is self-driven." What are you going to do with that, marketers? Let's see what you can sell me and call internal motivation.

Five Star Rating

After two solid years of busting every move I could think of to get myself in to a certain casting office, I finally got into one of their workshops! Sunday I was a knee-deep in a tube of red Dior lipstick, running lines like a madwoman in service of landing myself a role on "Mad Men." This particular workshop joint features written evaluations, and hoping not to get slapped on the wrist with teacher's ruler I cringed at the thought of it. Yet after a lovely two minutes in the audition room, I walked out with my report card...and my perfect score. A long row of all 5s: "exceptional"!

So, yes, that is what is hanging on my fridge. Pass the hors d'oeuvres and pour me another glass of wine. I am both thrilled and now need to sleep for a couple of days!

Successful Screening of "April"!

Yesterday I attended the UCLA screening of "April," a 22-minute film about a high school girl who just can't seem to fit in...could it be her lack of pulse? I was excited to finally see my performance as Mary Lennox, government-appointed social worker, on the big screen as well as to laugh my pants off at all the talented, funny actors populating the movie. Festival circuit, here we come!

Things I Learned On Set Today: Lowe's Magazine Edition

Shooting a scene for a movie in a Lowe's hardware store, I killed some time reading their selection of notably obscure periodicals. In these magazines were pages filled with facts that perhaps needed to be read:

+ If you put banana in a smoothie, it makes it thicker. If you add ice to a smoothie, it makes the smoothie fewer calories. If you put cocoa in a smoothie, it tastes like chocolate.

+ Not just men, but also women, lose their hair. Women should feel more bad about this, because they are supposed to look pretty and can't just wear a baseball cap or shave their head. Women can spend $495 on a brush that beams red lasers into their scalp, which may or may not stimulate growth.

+ Here's how to build a contemporary shed. If you are looking to build an old-fashioned shed, don't look here. This will now be explained for 368 pages.

+ This is a magazine all about eating chicken.

+ This is a magazine about feeling bad you are overweight, which you might purchase while shopping at a hardware store.

+ Steve Carell is just as loveable in person.*

*Not in magazine, but rather discovered in real life.

In Which the Comedienne is Swayed By Thrills

Between being spooked from seeing "The Ghost Writer" and overwhelmed by preparing for waking up at 4:30 AM to head out to set, I'm in a furrowed-brow, heart-racing sort of state. As in this new "I just woke up and want brunch!" commercial headshot, I feign composure. Acting is not unlike tightrope walking; i.e. traversing nerve cells and dendrites with studied control. I'm pulling wardrobe and calculating alarms and transit like I'm staging more than the tedium of life. Which is indicative of the heart-racing: underneath these antics is just plain love.

In An Attempt To Not Have to Work In An Office, I Photograph As An Office Worker

And Now For A Serious Message

Got crossed out: couldn't have been too important.

New Headshots!

For those of you with "real" jobs, imagine if your entire day-to-day career came down to a 1" x 1" square photo of you on a computer screen. Hence, the need for new shots as soon as the old ones stop getting you in the door. I'm ready for my yogurt commercial, Mr. DeMille.

Just When I Once Again Want to Break Up With Hollywood, It Brings Me Roses

The words you try not to hold your breath for, after a casting professional watches you perform:

You're in the right line of work.

I think I made that giant gaudy porcelain player's mask on the wall proud.

Once Upon a Laundromat

Gents, if you fear being untoward with compliments about our most obvious lady attributes, take a piece of advice from a spunky septuagenarian I chatted with at the laundromat today. A dashing television host once picked her out of a lineup of pinups to have on his show. "Did you find her in a crackerjack box?" a terribly rude caller asked. "No!" he said, "I'll tell you why I picked her, other than that she smells awfully nice...I'm just queer for ankles! And she's got the best pair I've ever seen!"

Cosigns

On my way to a meeting with a photographer this afternoon, everywhere I drove there was one film or television production or another buzzing along. Aside from the obvious Honeywagons, craft services trucks, and massive lighting equipment, these events are signified by square yellow signs with large block lettering on them. Shorthand for arriving crew, they instruct you where to park by their presence. As I headed into Hollywood I kept track of the messages coming to me from the cosmos:

AUDREY-->

RUSH

HE

PORKCHOP

Am I to stop a man from eating meat? Or is the man in question about as full of life as a porkchop? Perhaps it's a message from Penny: Come back! Forget flying; I'm for pigs writing. And if there's really going to be a movie called "Audrey," me in it...except for the fact that it was filming on the block where I used to live, to which I never want to return. Hollywood Mad Libs, sign by sign.

Medium Pig

Today on the set of "Medium" I got to hang out with a pig (and I don't mean yet another soulless illiterate Hollywood type). Penny, being a versatile actor, was open to starring as male Barney. She looked ever so fetching in her white rope and black eye makeup. Pig! PIG ON SET! Rendering a previously mentally addled moi totally and completely smitten.

I have got to start hanging out in mud puddles more often.

One Bunny Two Bunny

Easter: that time of year when friends get together for brunch and consider buying the overpriced bundles of shiny jelly beans at the cafe counter. How I miss those days in which the holiday meant skipping through the melting snow to see a matinee of "Twilight of the Cockroaches." Thank you, mother and Japanese cinema!

Jobs-in-the-Night

Sleepless me, dear Reader, could use an excuse for all this tossing and turning. I have to be up this early! I'm trading stock on New York time! Or: Yes, I really am going to that 5 AM Bikram class. Or: I am a superhuman who thrives on three hours of Zzzzs; off to write a bestseller!

It's not that I'm knee-deep in the actor's dilemma. No no. I'm just up stitching waistcoats for a trio of amphibians for a 1920s-themed act involving tiny vintage scooters. Sewing takes time. Frogs are slippery.