A little backstory: Winter 2009, I'm unemployed and OK with it, I have a little money in the bank and nothing but time. I take a stand up comedy class and then I decide that I would like to be involved with films that I find being produced in the area, via Craigslist mainly. Oh and I have no acting experience.
I have what passes for a headshot and of course no resume. I don't really want anything but to be involved. I send out my headshot to anyone who seems even remotely legitimate. I am invited in for my very first audition and I suck so badly that I want to excuse myself from the room. I am invited in for my second audition and it is only marginally better.
Needless to say I don't get either of those two jobs. But I continue looking.
So I find these guys at the University of Tampa who are making a police drama. They invite me in to audition for the lead role. I tell them I don't want to audition for the lead role, I have no acting experience. I want to be a guy in the background, or someone to get coffee or whatever, but thanks anyway. They say "Just come in and audition. Acting can be very easy and very natural". That took a lot of pressure off of me so I went in.
I did the best I could but still couldn't believe I was even auditioning for the lead role. I knew I was nowhere near ready for something like that but I did the best I could anyway. Long story short, I didn't get the lead role, but they did want me to be a "goon". I figure they thought I looked like I could act like someone who looked like someone who could kill someone.
That was fine with me, my first role! I was pretty stoked. Now my scene lasts for all of about 3 seconds but what happens is I am a mobster's muscle/goon and I'm washing up in a nightclub bathroom. I hear my fellow goons getting shot in the otherwise empty bar adjacent. I pull my gun and rush out of the bathroom to find a rogue cop killing my buds. I take a shot at him and miss, he takes several shots at me and I end up in a crumpled mess on the floor. This by the way is the first of a series of acting experiences where I am the recipient of harsh violence, much to my parents' horror/delight (You'd have to know my parents).
So that was that, and my first IMDb credit as "Bathroom Goon". Very exciting stuff!
Now what's really exciting is that a year later, The Source is shown at the Cannes Film Festival. It still blows me away to think that there are people in the world who have seen me in a film shown at Cannes.
Anyway, thank you Joshua Long et al, for selecting me as Goon #3. It was a lot of fun.
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