2016 A Year in Review

Much has been said and made about 2016.  All the famous deaths, the election. It has not been a good year.  Many feel that 2017 can't get here soon enough. And who can blame then? I'm not going to go into it here. So many others have done that. Let's just move on and take on 2017 with a positive attitude.

2016 was not my best year but not my worst either.  I took a leave from my job in the first quarter of the year to try and figure things out...I went back to work after three months. Nothing changed. Or did it? My co-workers and manager claim that my attitude/behavior has not been the same since my return. I don't know what the F they're talking about. I've been a frigging peach. F-heads! LOL! (That was a joke for this of you who don't get me.)

I thought by taking off time from work, my acting career would get a boost. It has become increasingly difficult to balance the acting career with my day job. But not much activity took place during the leave. So back to work I went. And of course days before I went back, I booked a commercial that shot on my second day back to work! Ain't that always the way?

I spent the Spring rehearsing and performing as Twimble in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying at Glendale Centre Theatre. The show received a few Scenie Awards and was nominated for some BroadwayWorldLA awards. While performing in How to Succeed, I was rehearsing The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at Sierra Madre Playhouse which opened less than two weeks after How to Succeed closed. Spelling got unanimous raves reviews, received a few Scenes and was also nominated for a few BroadwayWorldLA awards. But no audiences. We actually cancelled two Saturday night performances!  In addition, it has received three Ovation award nominations. The awards are in two weeks and I'm very excited to attend. I've never been in a show that was nominated for Ovation Awards, despite having been in two dozen shows in Los Angeles over the last 13 years.

The week Spelling Bee closed, I was asked to jump in to rehearsals for Chico's Angels Five-0, Aloha Angels. Closing day of Spelling Bee was tech night for Chico's.  Chico's sold out before it even opened. And the audiences were loud and raucous. It was a hoot! The Angels have a built in following and it was amazing to perform for sold out houses every night.

I flew to Sydney and New Zealand for two weeks in September. I flew in a helicopter, hiked on a glacier, bathed in a hot spring, and pet a koala and a wallaby. A nice retreat from LA where the traffic seems to get worse and worse. I get so stressed out driving from work to audition to work to rehearsal.  The stress really gets to me trying to do it all. And I think as I get older its getting harder to do it all.

While in New Zealand, I got word that I had booked a commercial shooting in Denver the day after I returned to LA, on my birthday. But the flight to Denver was on the same day I flew into LA form New Zealand. Seriously. I flew into the International Terminal at 6:20 am and was scheduled to fly out of Terminal 1 at 7:35 am. I managed to get them to push me back to a later flight and left LA at 11:30am just five hours after arriving. I went home, unpacked, re-packed, and went back to LAX.

It all worked out and I got a cupcake and birthday song from the crew upon wrapping.

These last two months the commercial auditions have increased. Yay! No bookings though. But I did book two films that are shooting this coming month. I look forward to playing the understanding Dad of a teenage boy coming out and dealing with bullies in high school. A departure for me. Then I play a priest in a gay Mean Girls parody film.


Happy New Year! Here's to a better 2017! Here I am with my sisters celebrating New Years a few years ago.

Hairspray Live!

Last night NBC aired their annual Live Broadway musical adaptation, Hairspray Live! Following The Sound of Music, Peter Pan and The Wiz.  The first three shows were produced on a soundstage in New York City (well Long Island) with no audience.  The leads in the first two were not great but the producers wisely surrounded them with award winning Broadway vets. Last year's The Wiz was an improvement and a lot of fun. It was nice to see a show that isn't done that often. And the casting was more inspired. They very wisely cast an unknown actress in the central role of Dorothy and surrounded her with names.

Last spring, FOX aired Grease Live! which was a broadcast from the Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, and used many outdoor sets on the lot and had a live audience incorporated into the gym and dance sequences as well as on the streets outside. It added an energy that some felt was lacking from NBC's broadcasts. I will admit that sometimes it seemed flat when a big production number ended and there was no applause, just silence and then cut to commercial.

So taking a cue from FOX, NBC aired Hairspray from the Universals Studios in Hollywood and also used the backlot for outdoor shots. Once again, they had a big search for an unknown actress to play Tracy and surrounded her with name talent. Harvey Fierstein recreated his Tony award-winning performance as Edna. Martin Short, Kristin Chenoweth, Derek Hough, Jennifer Hudson, Ariana Grande, Andrea Martin, Sean Hayes, Rosie O'Donnell and games by the original movie Tracy, Ricki Lake and Broadway Tracy, Marissa Jaret Winokur.

Hairspray is one of my favorite musicals of the last couple of decades. I love the score. Its got a great early 1960s sound.  And the show is just plain fun. I love it! I think it was an excellent choice and since its not that old show they were able to have one of its original stars re-create this role.

There were some technical issues throughout with some shaky camera work, sound going out a couple of times, and some odd camera angles, or blocked shots. There was a moment in one of the dance numbers where a couple of dancers were blocking a shot of two leads in an embrace for instance.  But I think that kind of adds to the excitement of doing it live. But then again I don't think I've noticed as many technical glitches as I did in this one. Lots of shadows on performers' faces too. The jail scene between Tracy and Link as one example. A couple times, Tracy was briefly out of her light in the Corny Collins Show stuff.

And I loved the retro commercials. Those were fun.  The Reddi-Whip milk man had me scratching my head. Was that a thing back then? But then I realized they were dong retro style commercials. I loved the Toyota spot best. I have to say it was jarring to see Derek Hough finish a number and then walk directly to the camera and do an Oreos commercial.

Speaking of Derek Hough, I knew he could dance, but he can sing and act too!

I think Maddie Baillio did a great job as Tracy. I loved that they had a talent search to fund an unknown and she did a great job carrying the show. She had great energy, which Tracy needs. I really liked Dove Cameron as Amber too. Garret Clayton as Link was the weak link in the main cast. He looked and moved great. He had some killer moves on the dance floor but not the strongest actor up there.

I LOVED Harvey Fierstein and Martin Short as Edna and Wilbur Turnblad. Their second-act song, You're Timeless to Me, was a high point for me. A couple of sketchy camera shots but otherwise, perfection. Two old pros showing you how its done. THAT'S Broadway to me.

Jennifer Hudson as Motormouth Maybelle? Singing I Know Where I've Been. Amazing! Brought the house down. But I felt she was a little small in stature to be Big Blonde and Beautiful.  Still loved her though.

Kristin Chenoweth was great as always. And they clearly re-wrote her numbers so she could hit those high notes at the end.

Speaking of re-writes, there seemed to be some re-writes form the stage version. There was no Big Dollhouse number and Tracy was the only one to get arrested and go to jail. In the Broadway version all the women wind up in jail.  But one of things I noticed with Grease Live! too was that they were doing a hybrid of the Broadway and movie versions of the show as opposed to doing a straight-up televised stage production.

The production design was amazing. Seriously, I loved the Baltimore street set with the Easter eggs in the names of the shops, Waters Plumbing, Divine Pet Food with a pink flamingo on the sign. Nice! And I totally geeked out when I realized that the two women escorting Tracy and Edna in and out of Mr. Pinky's were Marisa Jaret Winokur and Ricki Lake.  But seriously, I loved the set design. So much goes into these live productions. And this one looked fantastic.

Picky stuff...in opening number, Good Morning Baltimore, it was clearly not morning but nighttime as the scene was done outdoors after sunset in LA. And since when are there mountains in Baltimore? You could clearly see the Hollywood Hills in the background. I know I'm being nitpicky but these are the kinds of things I notice.  Like Billy Eichner as the news reporter with a couple of days scruff. That is a very NOW look. A TV host/emcee/reporter in 1962 would never go on the air looking like that.

Again, I'm being nitpicky. Most people wouldn't notice or care. And does it ruin the experience for me? No. It just takes men out of it when I see something that isn't period in a period piece.

I loved it overall!  And I think this one is the best of the NBC shows so far. Nest year, Bye Bye Birdie with Jennifer Lopez.