Friday, April 27, 2007

Again?! What?! You have to be kidding. Nope. It's only the beauty of my life experiences.

The anatomy of how booking the job isn't always the whole story. An "official booking" is about 91.07544% of the way - Let's talk about the other 8.92456%....

A couple of years ago I booked a role in the film of an Oscar winning director, Steven Soderbergh. I was scheduled to work with two Oscar nominated actors; Elliott Gould and Don Cheadle. Unfortunately, the scene was cut before I got a chance to shoot it - yes, I was paid. The film was "Ocean's Twelve".

One of the cool things about the booking was that I booked it about 3 months before I was scheduled to shoot. So I had those 3 months of promoting it in postcards and on my resume. Then the news came that the scene was cut from the script. I took it in stride, of course, and after a while I thought about it less and less and moved on. Then, of course, when the film was getting ready for release it was like it was happening all over again. I would drive past Warner Bros Studios and see the posters and just shake my head.

I looked at the experience as a great story to be a part of and I strongly felt that Steven Soderbergh would hire me again in the future.

Cut to:

A couple of years later. Mr. Soderbergh hires me a second time and, true to form, I am scheduled to work with an Oscar winner – this time Al Pacino. I book the role four months before shooting with gives another great window of promo and the enjoyment of knowing that the shoot is coming up.

The months turn into weeks and before I know it the shoot is “next week”, but conflicts were on the horizon. Conflicts in the form of a commercial booking. The moving dates started shifting and things got really interesting. In the end I had to pull out of the film due to “scheduling conflicts”. Having to back out of this role morphed into a pretty cool story I must say.

I shot the commercial only to get cut out 4 months later just before airing. Wow. So here I sit again; another “Ocean’s XX” movies that I booked, but will not appear in. Who else can say that? Actually, I wish I wasn’t able to say it myself. It would have been nice if things could’ve worked out, but I trust that things happen the way they do for a reason…and with that I trust that Steven Soderbergh will hire me a third time…and I might even get to shoot it…and that is the other 8.92456%...

http://www.stephonfuller.com/consultations.html

1 comment:

Sarah Jean Fry said...

Stephon,
Great lesson in the other 8.92456%.

Who takes a percentage to five decimal points, but you? I love your originality!

Sarah Jean