Home Again, Home Again, Jigity Jig

Somewhere in my childhood, I heard the nursery rhyme phrase "Home again, home again Jigity Jig", and for some reason I still remember it. I have absolutely no idea what it means. I've also heard most of my adult life, that "You can't go home again." I'm sure ninety nine times out of a hundred that is probably true, as the place you left is usually not as you remembered it when you return. Still, that leaves the one time out of a hundred when it is true, and fortunately, that one time applies to my return to the Seattle area from LA.

We left on January 25th from LA, with bad weather having been the norm up and down the entire west coast. The week before I left LA we had four days of rain which made the rain in the Pacific Northwest look like a spit bath by comparison. Sometimes you just get lucky. We left LA in the sunshine and remained in sunshine for the entire two and a half day trip, and with the exception of a one hour long hard rain just north of Fresno, California, all mountain passes were bare and dry, with the sun shining brightly.

Once home again, I quickly settled into Northwest living, both as a resident and as an actor. I had lunch with my Seattle area agent just before attending the first day of the "Leverage" (TNT) workshop in Portland. I next had an audition in Seattle, followed by an audition in Portland. The one in Portland bore fruit and I was cast as a prison medical director in a film for the U.S. Prison system. That film was shot in Portland just last weekend (Not so lucky with the weather on that one, with rain all the way down and most of the way back....oh, well). And yes, my wife and I really did stay in a Holiday Inn Express the night before the shoot, which means I can legitimately say, "I'm not a real medical director, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night."

The film shoot itself was great fun, and the Portland media production company that was running the show was first rate and quite professional all the way around. For the film I had to learn thirty one lines in two days. Then, on the second day there were a few revisions of my lines, as well as the lines of others. This was a challenge which I welcomed, and is not an uncommon occurrence, as shooting scripts are usually in a semi-liquid state for most productions, right up until the camera begins to roll. The shoot went well with a good group of actors to work with, great crew, and a wonderful catered lunch. We had a ten hour shooting day before we wrapped, coming in only 30 minutes over schedule.

Now it's March 2nd and already I am planning my first return trip to LA, where I will be attending several casting director workshops and taking a private lesson from my acting coach in Hollywood. That is planned for the first half of April.

Other irons in the fire? I'd like to do some teaching, as I feel I have some worthwhile techniques to pass on to other actors in the Northwest. I am just doing some preliminary work to look into that.

Also, while I have written a number of short film screenplays, I have my sights set on something bigger. I have the first 27 pages of a feature length script written. It's been on the shelf for awhile and I want to get back to working on it. If you think getting work as an actor is hard, that's easy compared to selling a feature length script. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained, while an overused phrase, is still true.

I'm still determined to check out the acting scene in Vancouver BC, and now that the Olympics are over, I will need to get serious about that before very long. I will either find out that there is work for U.S actors in Vancouver, and how to go about it, or I will find there is not a possibility of work there and why. Either way, I'll pass on my findings in a later entry in this blog.

So, in my case, you can go home again, and I sum up my year in LA this way. I'm glad I went, and I highly recommend it for all serious actors. Even if, as I did, you decide to leave LA at some point, you will have made contacts that will serve you well, long after you have gone. I'm also quite glad I have returned to the Pacific Northwest, and I am happy to be back.

More later............