Eitan the Actor Bio » classes

Lying On Your Resume

Eitan — Wed, 14 May 2008 06:40:42 +0000

Lying on your acting resume? You think this would be a really short post. I’d say something like “don’t do it” and run off for another month or so without posting. Sorry, it’s way more complicated than that.

Some of the stuff I’m going to talk about is risky, some of the stuff is safe as a Volvo. It’s all about your comfort level and how honest the lie actually is. Mostly these are white lies that actors are expected to tell. But they can get pushed too far if you’re trying to be sneaky. The biggest rule I can say is don’t get caught lying. Even if it’s minor. You don’t want to have to start justifying your whole resume to a casting director in the middle of an audition.

Lying On Your Resume Can be a Good Idea - In a perfect world everyone’s acting resume would be a list of parts they’ve played and casting people could easily look at the resume and see where the actor is in their career and if they could possibly be a good fit for the part they are currently casting. Problem is, it’s just not possible. No one’s going to recognize every item on an actor’s resume. Credits don’t always mean the same thing in different contracts. School plays can be really hard to sell as “legitimate experience.” And the list goes on and on.

The First Lie Every Actor is Told To Tell – Let’s get this one out of the way. I’ve read this in books and on other websites so this is the least risky thing in the post. If you did a play at Xavier High School and you played the part of the Fiddler in The Fiddler on the Roof you don’t need to list the production company as “Xavier High School,” you can list it as “Xavier Theater.” Or if the theater has a name you can list it. “The Herbert Einstein Memorial Theater.” Whatever. Because no one really cares. It’s a play in a theater they’ve never heard of. They’ll ask about the play (if at all) and that’ll be that.

Don’t Upgrade Yourself - I’ve seen a fair number of actor resumes in my life. I can’t even calculate the percentage of which have obvious attempts at upgrades but it’s a high number. Suddenly that guy with one line has a “Major Supporting Role” in the film. Or the guy who passed by the star in the hallway is a “Guest Star.” Well guess what, the bigger the lie the more likely someone’s going to catch you. Saying you had a Guest Star part on a very successful show when you had a one liner is typically pretty obvious. I’ve seen resumes listing multiple large parts and when you type the name into IMDB maybe one of the parts comes up… as “Waiter #3.” That’s no “Starring” role. And do you know who’s going to catch you every single time if you list that extra work as principle? The casting director. They remember people they hire. And they’ll never be hiring you. And if you say you were a guest star someone just might try to check your quote, they’ll find out you were lying and you’ll get fired before you were even hired. That’d suck.

Move Laterally - Look at my resume and you’ll see the Final Justice part listed as a “Co-Star.” My contract doesn’t say “Co-Star.” In fact, I have no idea where my contract is so I can’t read the actually billing. But I was hired as a “Principle” and that’s the only billing I had. Problem was, it just stood out on my resume as a weird thing next to my other two actual “co-star” roles (as of this writing, just for the record). So I moved myself laterally. I changed it to “Co-Star.” It’s not really a lie, it’s equivalent. If I were hired on any other AFTRA show I’d be billed as a “Co-Star” with that part. I just didn’t know to ask for that when I was starting out. Also, they never ran credits on that show. Uch. How do you know what your billing is supposed to be? Read your contract. The other great time to move laterally is on a feature when you’re booked as a “Featured” part. Technically this means you got paid a day rate and had a line or two. In resume world, this means you were an extra who thinks they could pick themselves out of a crowd. “Featured” is a term that is dead and gone on resumes. It’s been ruined. You’re now a “Principle” or “Featured Principle.” That means you had a line otherwise people think you’re making stuff up. Isn’t that ironic?

A Real Serious Lie – Ok, this last one is beyond anything I’ve ever done. I’ve said time and time again that no one really cares about films and plays they’ve never seen and never heard of. They just see lines on your resume and assume you know something about being on camera or being on stage. There’s nothing that’s going to excite them unless they recognize something from your resume. That means you can completely make up student films, short films, original plays, acting classes and cast yourself in plays you’ve read and know well enough to pass a quiz on. You can, but you shouldn’t. This is where you really can play too much with your resume and head down a dark and dangerous path. I did a few student films in college but how does someone know I didn’t do three more in which I was the lead? Heck, I was in a few plays there that I know like the back of my hand. Who’s to say I didn’t play the lead instead of the guy carrying suitcases? No one would ever catch a single one of those lies and they’d pad my resume quite nicely. Or at least they would have back when that was all I had on my resume. But know I’ve seen directors ask about a random part, just to make conversation. Just make sure you could make something up if need be.

Don’t Do That! - I hope you read this paragraph after reading the one before it. Don’t do it. Don’t completely make stuff up on your resume, even if you’ll never get caught. It’s useless, no one cares about these projects. Why be a liar for something unimportant? BUT I’m totally down with making things look as good as possible on your resume. Let’s say you did a staged reading for a class of an original play your friend wrote but never did anything with. Why can’t that part be on your resume under theater? You did the part, it just wasn’t a full show. That short fillm that you shot with your buddies? Put your friend as the director and put that on your resume. You shot it, it’s a film. No one judges an actor by how small the font size is on their resume. A List actor resumes only have their latest, greatest and most famous roles listed anyway. B and C list actors don’t even have their theater listed most of the time. It’s only us working class stiffs. If you only had one liners in student films no one’s going to be upset if you make one of those a lead. The director might get annoyed but if he’s teaching 5th grade in Kansas now, how does that affect you?

Lie as Little as Possible – What we can take away from all my examples is that you should lie as little as humanly possible. Don’t go for any lies that can be caught or pointed out easily (See that guy with an iPhone at your audition? He’s checking your IMDB page and knows you’re lying). Lies should be used only to very lightly massage your resume, never to try to bump it up to the next level. Nothing I’ve suggested here will land you a single extra audition. None will make any perceptible difference in your career. They’re small and they just smooth the way towards getting some real credits that you don’t have to work to pretty up.

Acting Class is a Waste of Time

Eitan — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 22:32:38 +0000

People spend thousands of dollars of their hard earned money, take years of their lives off to enter acting conservatories and toil countless hours in black box theaters studying acting… and it’s all for nothing.

When someone in the industry sees an actor who’s just bad they say the same thing, “You need to take more classes.” After a few dozen classes they’re simply bad actors with another line on their resume and a big hole in their checking account. And no matter how many classes they take, it never seems to further their career or noticeably improve their “craft.” Why is this?

Acting can not be taught. There, I’ve said it. You can not learn how to be a good actor. You can learn the technical skills that allow your actual abilities to shine through (on camera work), you can learn new styles of acting (Kabuki, Improv) and you can learn how to read a script and look for things that are important. But you can not learn how to act.

Take the most tone deaf person you’ve ever met and give them a few singing lessons. Do you honestly think they’ll become a good singer? If they’re lucky they’ll learn that they have no business singing and quit. Singing requires a natural ability to move your vocal chords in a certain way and the ability to hear when you’re doing it right. Acting requires a face/body/voice that can show emotion and an ability to know when you’re doing a good job.

Most actors have a warped sense of the second part of that requirement. It’s very easy to know when someone else is doing a bad job, it’s hard to tell if you’re doing it yourself. No amount of acting technique or class is going to help. And you think your teacher’s feedback is useful? Read on.

Acting teachers are in business to teach acting, not make you a better actor. An acting teacher needs to pay rent. They’re not going to do this by telling their students that they’ve, “learned everything they need to know” or that they have a “natural ability that doesn’t need more classes.” No, they need to tell their students that they must stay in class. Even big names like Larry Moss have bills to pay. For every drop of positive feedback you get, you’re going to get more requiring you to do further work. I studied with a teacher that had students with him for decades. Do you think they were honestly still learning anything?

Acting class is about pleasing the teacher, not putting on good work. I’ve seen this one a million times. The students pour their hearts and souls into the piece, finish and turn to look at the teacher wondering if they did a “good job.” And for the reasons above, we know they’re going to say, “no” more times than they said, “yes.” That’s not what acting is about. Acting is not about pleasing one person who isn’t motivated to putting up good work. You want to please your director while doing a movie, but the guy is also looking for the work to be good, not for something to criticize.

It never mimics real life experiences. Scene studies classes are the biggest culprit here. You get a scene to work on, you go home and have a week to work on the scene, you show up and do it once. Then the teacher tells you to go home and work on x,y,z. You come back the next week and do the same thing. This never ever happens in real life. If you were rehearsing a play you’d just do the scene again until you did it to the directors satisfaction. You wouldn’t get a week between takes. Some classes require you to meet with your scene partner on the days between your classes. That’s absurd. Do you know how often you get to rehearse with someone before an audition or shooting? Maybe if you’re the star of the movie the director might work with you and your co-star for a few days but don’t plan on that happening more than once or twice in your career. Most of the time you get a script a couple days before or show up on set and are told what you’re doing. You get no feedback prior to shooting and you never meet your cast mates until you’re on set.

There are auditioning classes out there that try to mimic the audition process. They give you the sides at the class and have you step out for a few minutes. Often times you get more time for real auditions but this is quite common at commercial auditions. The best thing you’re going to learn in these classes is how to best show your work in front of a camera. But you can also learn this with your own camera. Tape yourself auditioning, and watch it. If you see stuff that interferes with your read, change it.

No one cares where you took classes. That’s a bit harsh. Going to a “name” acting school is the only way for a first-timer to get something recognizable on his resume. I’ll go into my whole “recognizably of resumes” thing on another post. But if you just stepped off the bus from Kansas City, MO (home of one of the worst airports in the country, even factoring in the free WiFi) you’re going to need something that someone in casting will recognize and a class is your best bet until you book something. Anyone who’s ever held auditions can tell you they’ve seen some pitifully bad actors who’ve studied with Stanford Meisner, Uta Hagen and Lee Strassberg. Just because your check cleared at their acting school doesn’t mean you’re good. Also, that line on your resume could mean you studied with them for a weekend… or an hour long seminar.

And if you think anyone cares which celebrity “studied with” those teachers… you’ve got another thing coming. Celebrities are like other actors, they struggled for a while at first. And like many struggling actors they took many different classes. When they hit it big every one of those teachers buys ads in Backstage West saying, “Eitan studied with me!” Which may be true but it’s also true for a thousand other actors who didn’t hit it big. Daivd Mamet said it best when he said that an acting school that claims that they’re a good place for actors to study because actor X studied there is like Corsica saying they’re a good place to raise a future Emperor.

If you want to hone your craft, do a play. You’ll get to work on your scenes in a nurturing environment and at the end of it do it for people who matter, an audience. And better yet, you won’t have to pay a penny.

Classes are good for one thing: to fail. When I’m at an audition I can’t be bad, I can’t try out something absurd and off the wall. When you’re on set there’s rarely time to experiment. When I’m in a class, I can do whatever I want and not care. My teacher’s not going to fire me because I took some weird pauses or did the character ten times more intense than the script calls for. This is the only purpose of a class. But depending on your director, you can often get away with experimentation in rehearsals. After trying something completely off the wall and zany during the rehearsals of a play I got my favorite note ever from a director: Eitan: WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?! I still have the original notes somewhere. I should get them framed.

You can probably find a better use for your $325 a month than an acting class. Heck, doing 5 workshops a month is cheaper and you might get some work out of it.

And don’t get me started on classes that let the students critique each other’s work…

Ray Charles loves Eitan, Ankling the Agent and a New Class

Biographer — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 04:13:07 +0000

Live, from the brand new Eitantheactor.com offices in glorious West LA… here’s Eitan! *sarcastic slow clapping*. Yes, after months of silence Eitan has finally contacted his biographer with an update of his life. Exciting? Not especially.

All of Eitantheactor.com’s Japanese readers are in for a treat. Eitan has acted as the narrator for two episodes of the show “Memoirs.” He can be heard on the Willie Nelson and Ray Charles episodes. It’s seriously an hour and a half of Eitan talking, so this is only for the most extreme Eitantheactor.com fans.

“I’m not representing Eitan anymore, I quit!” This may or may not have been the parting words of Barbara Divisek as she left Conan Carroll and Associates (probably not actually). But either way, Eitan is no longer repped by her commercially. Eitan is fielding various offers from other offices (or trying to get offers from other offices) before he makes any decisions.

Eitan thinks he’s funny. So he’s taking the third class at the Groundlings (writing lab). On July 17th some poor fools will have to watch Eitan and his classmates perform a sketch show of their own writing directed by Roy Jenkins. If by some accident Eitan is funny, please laugh. It’s good for his self esteem.

First Bio Entry

Biographer — Mon, 14 Oct 2002 17:51:22 +0000

Eitan Loewenstein was born in Tel Aviv, Israel on August 12^th oh so many years ago (mustn’t reveal my real age) to Avrum and Fredda Loewenstein. He lived there for only a year and a half before his parents moved back to the states. They moved to the lovely city of Sharon, Massachusetts (quite near Boston). It was there that his sister, Shira, was born. Lest they get comfortable, the whole family moved again to glorious Los Angeles, California. But quickly they moved once again to Bethesda, Maryland (right near NIH and the Naval Hospital). It was here that Eitan’s life started to get interesting.

While being educated at the Hebrew Day Institute in Rockville, Eitan was introduced to the dramatic arts. He spoke his first lines on stage, “So did we.” In front of an awed and hushed crowd (Eitan swears the theater wasn’t empty, but no one believes him). He performed in various productions under the guidance of Dr. Ruth Newhouse until his graduation from 6^th grade. There he left for the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School. He only performed in one play at this school, an all Hebrew version of “Oliver!”, before his parents whisked him away once again to sunny California (Eitan is not a military brat, his father simply moved to wherever construction was going on).

A concerned observer would wonder if all this moving around would have some sort of negative effect on Eitan’s psyche, but I digress.

For two years the Loewenstein family lived in glamorous and glorious southern Beverly Hills (it isn’t glamorous or glorious). Eitan was lucky enough to attend the Beverly Hills Public School “Horace Mann.” He was lucky because he realized quite early on how much he hated this school. His 8^th grade year was spent hiding in corners and crying, sometimes literally. Upon his graduation from this school, home of one of the worst graduation ceremonies ever, he left for the shelter of Shalhevet High School in Los Angeles and soon after this his family moved to their current house in West Los Angeles.

He was a regular in the SHS plays, all directed by the brilliant and radiant Emily Chase (HAIL CHASE!). He also learned a bunch of Jewish stuff which he will always keep in his mind and heart regardless of what he does (he made me put that in there for his parents who put him through private school, you can ignore it). Eitan also played basketball in high school (not well at all) and was told by his coach Marty Beagle, “Eitan, there are two types of men in this world. There are ball players and ladies men. You are not a ball player.” That stuck with Eitan for quite a while.

It was during his Junior year that Eitan made a serious life choice, this is a pattern, which will repeat itself. Eitan was in the middle of a physics lab at his school when he decided on his collegiate major. He was playing with some electronic circuitry and decided that was what he wanted to do. Clearly Eitan was a moron.

With a good showing on his SATs and a less than stellar GPA in his hand Eitan began searching for a school in which to pursue his dreams of becoming an electrical engineer. He dreamed of years in a cubicle, building some chip that no one would ever hear about, while basking in the riches brought forth by his stock options as the stock market was doing well back then. Senior year came around and Eitan decided to attend the University of California at Santa Barbara a mere 100 miles from home and right on the ocean (not that Eitan ever went in it) to study electrical engineering.

During Eitan’s freshman year he was a diligent student (compared to later in his academic career at least). He did well in all his core classes and was allowed to take only one elective his entire freshman year. He couldn’t get into a drama class, so he took a religious studies one instead. Due to whatever luck, Eitan had an early registration time for Fall quarter of his Sophomore year. Eitan got into a class that was difficult to squeeze into, Intro to Acting (DA 5). It was there that he was told about the school’s audition system. This is where that whole engineering thing started to go downhill. Winter quarter Eitan auditioned for, and was cast in, a one act directed by graduate student Anna Jensen. That quarter he missed both physics and engineering labs to attend rehearsals, something that would repeat quite frequently over the next few years. Eitan was hooked to theater once again.

He noticed fliers hanging around the drama department for people casting student films. He responded to one hoping that they were not planning on making a snuff film and was cast in his first student film. I’ll not mention the name here, because there’s no need to tarnish the name of the director. Production was not a smooth process, to put it nicely. The actress playing opposite Eitan was recast halfway through forcing re-shoots at less than friendly locations (Eitan is very allergic to poison ivy). Thankfully it was finished so Eitan could recover from his skin irritation and return to his studies (which he still took seriously at this point).

He auditioned for many things over the next few quarters at the school, but with little luck. Perhaps his dreams of bright lights and brighter marquees would have died out, if it were not for a student drama group called the “Sherwood Players.” By some odd coincidence Eitan’s DA 5 teacher had previously told the class about the company as they had produced a script she had written. He saw a flier advertising auditions for a show being directed by Matt Weinglass called “Dark Rapture.” Eitan was cast as the smart ass waiter and the drummer in the cheesiest night club act ever. Eitan’s performance was met with rave reviews (some guy told him he was great and it went to his head). Since he wasn’t cast in anything else through the school (except a few student scenes) Eitan performed in the next Sherwood Player production too. He also shot another student film, this time with the visionary: Kenny Krauss.

The spring quarter Eitan gets a call from Kenny asking if he wanted to be in another one of his projects. Eitan had nothing else to do that quarter so he responded with an enthusiastic “YES!” It’s weird for a student film to actually be as good as this film was. You could even say it was as good as gold (it was called “As Good as Gold,” the biographer simply has an odd sense of humor). It went on to play at the UCSB Reel Loud film festival (it didn’t win, but people told Eitan it should have) and a few other venues since.

To retrogress (and to work that great SAT word into the story) for just a second, let us go back to the winter quarter of Eitan’s junior year. Eitan had been performing in some student directed scenes and was enjoying having up to six hours of rehearsal a day so much that he decided to become a dramatic arts major (Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting to be precise). He did lots of research, and even picked up all the forms to change his major before his spring vacation. He was planning on auditioning in the spring for the program and extending his graduation date by two years. He, thankfully, sat down with his parents to discuss this proposition. They responded with a resounding “NO WAY.” They didn’t oppose his choice of careers, mainly his staying in school for an extra two years to get a degree that really didn’t mean that much in the real world (no offense you BFA folk). So they made a deal with him. If he finished his electrical engineering degree he could live at home (which later became “live at home for a year”) while he pursued his dream (of being a professional actor, not the one he has where he’s being chased). Eitan agreed and went back to school to graduate while doing as little engineering work as possible. He succeeded.

The next year was met with much more success in his department of dramatic arts. He was cast in one of the big shows (Hotel Paradiso), which was very cool as he was one of only two people from completely outside the department, during those three years he auditioned, to accomplish this feat. He was cast again the next quarter in another one act for which he again got rave reviews (same guy as before). By the end of this last year he had convinced many students and even a faculty member, that he was a student in the drama department. Even those who knew the truth accepted him with open arms or the paraplegic equivalent. Meanwhile he managed to graduate with a B.S. in electrical engineering by taking the “Intro to..” course load. Pretty much every class Eitan took was named “Intro to” something, and was therefore not very difficult. He was quite amused when one of the engineering professors recognized him from a show on campus. By time he graduated Eitan was so fed up with engineering that he didn’t even attend his graduation. Instead he left for Los Angeles to seek his fame, fortune, his parent’s house and his mother’s good cooking.

Eitan quickly began taking classes at the Groundlings school with Ted Michaels, Ben Falcone, Davide Jahn and Roy Jenkins and scene study with Harry Mastrogeorge. He managed to hold down a real job (9AM-6PM + transit time to Northridge) for around two months before he left so that he could actually pursue his acting career and not just tell people he was doing it. He recently got his headshots done and is excited to get them printed up so he can start going on auditions and things like that.