Hello, dear readers. Let me apologize for the lateness of this entry. I aim to submit my weekly drivel every Wednesday, but this past week I was on a shoot. “Oh shooting!” I can hear you exclaim. “Then lateness is perfectly understandable, as you were working, pursuing your dreams, and furthering your career! Good for you! We can certainly wait.” Thank you, but not exactly. I was shooting an industrial for a pharmaceutical company, a video that will only be watched by medical students, in which I play a mental patient. Seriously. It’s one of my highest earning gigs to date.

Yes, some of my most lucrative acting gigs have come from the production facilities at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. They’ve hired me three times for such gigs, I guess cause I’m so damn good at it. The first time Dr Ramirez called me, he was needing an actor over the age of 18 who looks young enough to play a schizophrenic teenager. Nutjobs are a specialty of mine, so I was very excited for the opportunity to showcase my skills at lunacy.

I get the script and the breakdown. This chick was CRACKED! The character, Lisa, was having regular, one sided conversations with Satan himself. Apparently Lucifer was telling her the world was about to end. She was an introverted high school chick who would burst into tears and start shaking because “people” were after her. Boy, was this going to be fun! After sinking my teeth the script, I decide to read the breakdown of the project. Dr. Ramirez was taping this project for a company called Otsuka Pharmaceuticals. The tape was going to be used to train people on how to diagnose schizophrenia, particularly adolescents, who are much harder to diagnose, being that all hormonal teenagers are shit-bird crazy anyway.

After perusing the company’s literature, I realized what the implications were. This video was being put forth to the medical community, to train them how to spot schizophrenia in adolescents, so they then can prescribe high dosages of Otsuka’s medication to these afflicted yunguns. I became mortified. I was working for a company that was pumping teenagers full of psycho-pharmaceuticals. Basically, they were everything I’m against. My inner political activist (who takes over my outer presence on many occasions) told me that I would take no such job! I firmly believed that I would never star in advertisements for a company whose policies I was against. No McDonalds! No Wallmart! The Kroc and Walton families can take those residuals and stuff them up their… oh wait, $25,000 you can make? That’s alot of cash to cram up their cracks. Cash a poor little actor can use… to… donate to rainforest rehabilitation and politicians who will raise the minimum wage of course.

And so happened with Otsuka. At the very end of the company materials was printed my day rate. $750 smackers for 3 hours work. Wha-HUH?? Alrighty, let’s sell some DRUGS!!!

Ok, I’m really not that much of a cheap whore. REALLY! I decided that since this tape was to be demonstrating a teen who should be prescribed the sweet, sweet meds, that the crazier I play this warped juvenile, the higher the standards these future psychologists will use when scoring their madness. So I show up to the shoot, wearing my gothic bests, and play the scene as though I were two brain cells from a meltdown. Dr. Ramirez said during the break between 2 takes “Are you ok??” I was highly proud of myself, and walked away without a kernel’s worth of guilt or regret.

I guess everyone was so impressed with my abilities to perform neuroses, that I was called not long after to play a twenty something with mania. This was not nearly as fun; I was basically just playing a combination of all the theatre directors I’ve worked with. BORING! But after shooting the interview, Doc said he wanted to use the time, and would pay me hundreds more, to stay longer and do the same interview as though she were depressed. Then to go through each question, and answer them 2 times, once as a manic and and once as a depressive, to showcase bipolarity. It was quite possibly the most challenging thing I’ve had to do. It took hours, and between each question I had to completely change my posture, my voice, my expression, and the lines of course. I walked out of there thinking I was Sybill.

So on this last occasion, on Wed, when I should have been blogging, I was being depressed. A nice, simple little interview of a character who was just down in the dumps. Not hard, but slightly contagious, so fortunately I could go into the break room after and dance on the table to shake it off. Then of course after I left and was heading home, those nasty implications came back to haunt me. What poor young adult is going be pumped full of anti-depressants because they too much resemble the girl I was on the tape? Then a wave of worthlessness and guilt crept over my psyche and I wanted to crawl into the corner of the train and cry. Shit. Maybe I’ve taken on just one too many crackpot characters.

*The asst producer has promised me videotapes of these performances. I have yet to receive, when I do, I will most certainly post clips here.

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