June 24, 1998
'Twas one year ago today that I was running around in Salt Lake City, Utah, making a little movie that it seems no one will ever get to see. It was while filming this so-called Zack & Reba that I met Craig Roth, the red-headed, bleary-eyed assistant to megalomaniacal producer Dan Grodnik. Happily for Craig, he has since parted ways with the Tsar Grodnik and is off producing his own films, the first of which is the one I read for today. It's a suspense/drama mostly between a father and his two sons. I read for the younger son.
The audition went well, for the most part. The writer, Victor, was running the show and had seen both the Frasier episode and Deep Impact recently, as well as having done some post-production work on Zack & Reba. So he was probably the only person in the United States more familiar with my work than my parents. (I'm huge in Europe, mind you.)
So we chatted on about such things for a while as well as reading through the scene. It did go well enough so that we did it again and put it on tape. And as fun as it may have been to be the wimpy bully in the lost Utah love story, it's certainly more exciting to be going up for the large roles these days. My confidence about getting the roles, however, is not as strong as it used to be. It's not that I don't think I could do a good job in larger roles, I think I just need to get used to being out there and remember that I have as good a shot as anybody else. Don't I?