Years ago, while living in New York, I had a recurring fantasy:

As I was walking to or from my miserable job to my equally miserable apartment, a stretch limo would pull up alongside me. The smoked glass window would roll down smoothly (this is when plebs still had to roll down old-school), a hand would extend out from the darkness of the cool interior (it was always August-hot in the fantasy) and a well-manicured finger would point at me...me! I was being selected for some nebulous form of greatness, to be lifted up from my sadly unappreciated existence to...well, some nebulous form of greatness TBD.

Laugh all you want; this is how most actors operate on a day-to-day basis. Hell, it's how most Americans operate, we of our First World sense of entitlement and lottery mentality. I wasn't acting back when I had this dream, after all: I had a job, what some would say a dream job, as a copywriter at a top Madison Avenue consumer ad agency, writing TV commercials for cars and packaged desserts.

Imagine if you were an actor, always one audition between you and your million-dollar contract on a hot episodic; often one job between you and living in your car. Now laugh it up, motherf*cker.

It's about time someone started explaining How It Really Works to these poor kids...

"How to Get an Agent...or Not: The Best Advice You Will Never Hear from Anyone in the Business," in The Networker, on LAcasting.com, now.

xxx
c

Image by A@lbi via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.