Amusing Musings on 2025.

Full disclosure; not all of these musings will be amusing. I just love a rhyme scheme. Much of it will be typically pensive, with bursts of optimism. I find myself sitting on the sofa, feeling a bit at a loss. Today is technically a day off: days often spent rushing around, either physically or mentally, trying to find some way of doing something, anything to progress. I’ve been quite restless this morning because I can’t think of what to do - and I can’t shake that feeling in my head that there is something I’m skirting. The un-itch-able scratch. So I’ve decided to sit down and write this, in the hope that I can shake that feeling by looking back at my year, laying it out in front of me, and seeing that all the work I’ve done has come to something.

I think it’s very easy to get lost in the micro - the day to day minutia of hustling for better representation, getting even a shred of your work seen etc… It can be soul destroying, and even the small victories can feel outweighed by the endless grinding. It’s like putting a blister plaster on a seeping wound at the 22 mile mark of a marathon. But, much like the stock market (of which I understand painfully little) - if in doubt, zoom out. A terrible week of losses might be merely a bump in the road when compared to the month/year/decade of strong performances: I think this is a good mentality when approaching a career in filmmaking or acting. Or really anything - but because I nothing about anything, I’ll really just focus on myself here, if that’s okay. It’s easy to sit at one’s desk and not feel the effect of any work - after all, it’s 10 months later, the scenery is the same, the coffee tastes the same, and I’m sending another email to the same agent I was in March. It’s easy to see how this weighs on a man. But let’s take a brief look at the contents of the email.

I adhere fairly strictly to the rule that you shouldn’t be contacting industry professionals unless you have something new to show them, or inform them on. It keeps waffle to a minimum, and for a man who loves waffle, that’s a welcome restraint. I lean back on my chair as all the words seem to blur into a muddled cloud of letters in front of me, and everything starts to feel like an endless loop of déja vu - I feel like I’ve sent a thousand of these missives out into the ether this year. Why’s that? Because I’ve had a lot to say this year. Firstly, I met an incredible collective of filmmakers at the start of the year and produced “Turn Keys” (in which I starred - I’m sleeping with the Producer, donthcha know?). This gave me reason to tell the industry that I was doing more work. Following that, I was then lucky enough to be awarded my first ever personal awards - one for Best Original Screenplay, and one for Best Actor: this gave me cause a couple of months later to tell the industry that I was starting to be recognised in some small way for the work that I was doing. A few months after that, I shot a commercial that aired on Amazon, and gave me a nice pay packet, and reason to show off a different side to me to the industry. In recent months, since “Turn Keys” has been in the festival circuit, it has picked up some awards - including two more acting awards for me - Best Acting Duo at both IndieX and Indie Short Fest. Not TIFF or Sundance, but awards that I’m immensely proud of, and updates that give me cause to contact people and let them know that I’m still working. So - doubt has been replaced by a zooming out. This might have been a fallow couple of weeks, but the year definitely shows strong progress.

So there you have it - I think that the takeaway for this is that you can be the actor that has 40 auditions a week, or you can be like me and have 8 all year. But one of those was for a huge production in Japan, and I was flown out for two days in Osaka to have the final round in the studio. I had full hair and makeup for a mutli-cam soundstage…for an AUDITION. I didn’t get it. But it’s important that you keep lifting your feet and moving forward. That agency that you really like might be reading your emails thinking “they seem great, but our books are closed, and we want to see what they do in the interim”. Every time you win something, or get cast in something, and you email them, you become more attractive to them. Unless you’re being a pain; and only you know if you’re annoying them. It’s like the great Mark Duplass said - you’re constantly working away, hoping that the cavalry will come and pick you up and take you forward, except they never do. So you keep working and grinding, and one day you look up, and you’ve become the cavalry. And I think that’s a cool way to do it. I may still not even earn a taxable income from my acting and filmmaking, and that bugs me every daythat I need two other jobs to support myself. But last year I was poor with no awards, and this year I’m poor with four awards at the time of writing, and some other great steps forward. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and Henners wasn’t built in 30 years. But who’s to say that it won’t be 31.

Thank you for reading, have a wonderful Christmas, don’t annoy the casting directors, and if in doubt - ZOOM OUT!

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