Eitan has learned a valuable lesson in the past few weeks.  Just a week after shooting the Barclays commercial Eitan has another audition, this time for a national Hertz commercial.  The audition:  Eitan is a customer who rented from a crappy car company and instead of providing an on-board navigation system, they provide a Sherpa.  Eitan manages to get called back and does the same thing at the callback.  A few days later Eitan gets a call from his agent telling him he is booked on that commercial.  So naturally Eitan goes around telling everyone to look for him in the car with the Sherpa.  A few days later Eitan shows up at the fitting and he’s being fit for a different commercial.  Now it seems Eitan is a customer waiting in line at another crappy car company that hands out stress balls to it’s customers rather than providing adequate customer service.  So for the next two days Eitan corrects himself, telling everyone he’s going to be a customer in line instead.  Eitan is fit in his “customer outfit” and shows up on set a few days later.  He is blocked in as a customer when someone notices the background guy they have working behind the desk will have to be upgraded if he stays there, so now Eitan is an employee at the crappy car rental place talking on the phone and pretty much ignoring a huge line of people in front of him.  He’ll be towards the back while the main guy is talking about his car company.  So again, Eitan was wrong.  The lesson learned:  Eitan shouldn’t be allowed to talk to people.

Eitan has sold out.  Apparently little things like “money ,”a “SAG card” and his “career” are more important to Eitan than being an artiste!  Acting is supposed to be a pure endeavor, untainted by the commercialism of the world.  But Eitan seems not to care.  He gladly accepted and filmed a part in a commercial strutting his stuff on the small screen to promote Barclays Bank.  It should start running on business cable channels (MSNBC, CNBC and those other stations that Eitan doesn’t get) beginning around March 10th.  Eitan will be seen playing the part of a Wall Street suit. 

Here’s how it all goes down:  We see some financial people hard at work.  They’re all plugging away at whatever it is they do when closing credits start coming down the screen.  Yes, like at the end of a movie.  They all take note of this weird occurrence.  We then see other areas around the the New York financial community where people stop to watch these credits rolling.  Finally over the city we see the words “THE END.”  We see two business men on the street looking at these words as they disappear.  One of these men (using the term quite loosely, obviously) is Eitan.  Then either Eitan or Tracy (the other guy on the street) give some reaction to the incident.  No one has any idea which reaction they’ll use as they filmed about 20 different ones, everyone will just have to wait and see. 

The biographer has been asked to note that he also has “sold out” to write Eitan’s biography.  In light of this development, the biographer would like to offer kudos and his congratulations to Eitan on his part in this commercial.  Go Eitan!

The old saying, “No news is good news” doesn’t apply to acting careers.  The biographer is happy to announce Eitan’s latest career accomplishments.  The first is a rather plain and boring story as far as acting stories go.  Eitan had submitted his headshot and resume (although Eitan has a staff of people working on his website, he still insists on mailing his own headshots as he claims it keeps him humble) to a newly formed company called “Ashland Entertainment” for a speculative commercial.  They called him in and he auditioned.  He was called back and subsequently cast.  The plot of the commercial is as follows:  Eitan is a guy taking his girlfriend out to dinner, he is noticeably nervous.  They are sitting there drinking their wine when Eitan pulls out an engagement ring.  In order to kneel and propose he pushes out his chair but accidentally pushes it right into the waiter.  The waiter then spills spaghetti all over Eitan.  His girlfriend picks off a piece of spaghetti, gives him a kiss and obviously has just said yes.  It looks to be a very cute spot and it’s a pity that it will probably never get released.  All the equipment was very high end, so the commercial will hopefully come out with a very professional look.  It was done during an all night shoot from 11PM until 7:30 in the morning in an Italian restaurant in Pasadena.  Despite (or probably because of) staying up all night and spending about an hour of the shoot with cold spaghetti all over his head, on his knees and unable to move for fear of disrupting the pasta, Eitan had a great time.  He also had the production photographer take some photos with his disposable camera, so pictures will be posted eventually. [Biographers Note(2/9/04): The pictures will never be posted as Eitan stupidly lost the disposable camera in Santa Barbara.  Silly Eitan.]

The second story is a tiny bit less conventional.  In December Eitan had submitted a headshot for some play that was being done by the LA Jewish Theater.  They did not call him for that show.  A few months later Eitan saw a posting for another show that they were casting.  He decided not to mail another headshot, as he figured they had his first one and would call if they wanted him.  Eitan was shocked to discover he was actually right.  This story would not be so odd except that he was not called in for a regular audition.  Two actors had dropped out of the show several weeks into rehearsal.  Eitan was called in to possibly replace one of the actors.  He went in and did his monologue for the director before a rehearsal.  He was offered the part and started rehearsal started about one minute later.  Eitan would post the dates of the play, except he does not know them. All he knows is when he has his next rehearsal.  Fortunately (in some ways) it’s not a large part, so Eitan will have little trouble learning the blocking and lines.