Rich and Famous in Thirty Seconds: Inside Secrets to Achieving Financial Success in Television and Radio Commercials

By Batt Johnson and Richard Lewis

Rich and Famous in Thirty Seconds is written by a veteran of more than thirty years in show business and is filled with inside secrets and helpful tips, many not taught in university programs. It has in-depth interviews with successful actors, teachers, agents, and casting directors. Special chapters on marketing, getting jobs, and actors tax deductions provide stimulating insight. Additional chapters are dedicated to broadcasters, models, and children who want to succeed in the fun and lucrative business of TV commercials.

This book will help you develop highly marketable skills, maximize your potential, avoid pitfalls, and profit in the process.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 30, 2000
• ISBN: 9781462099436

Book preview

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgement

Foreword

Introduction

Commercials

CHAPTER 1

Acting in Commercials:

How Do I Get Started?

CHAPTER 2

Copy Analysis: Understand What the Writer Means

CHAPTER 3

Voice Acting: Make Your Money

Where Your Mouth Is

CHAPTER 4

Taking Your Best Look to the Lens:

Fitness, Nutrition, Grooming, Wardrobe, Makeup

CHAPTER 5

Marketing;

You Are the Product, Sell It

CHAPTER 6

Audio-Video Demo Reels:

Elimination of Demonstration Aggravation

CHAPTER 7

The Audition: Your Opportunity

CHAPTER 8

The Actor, The Director:

The Relationship

CHAPTER 9

The Job: Now Show Your Stuff!

CHAPTER 10

Agents: Come Here Kid, I’m Gonna Make You a Star!

CHAPTER 11

Unions: What Can They Do for Me?

CHAPTER 12

Children in Acting:

The Educational and Leadership Values for Your Kids

CHAPTER 13

Hear Me, See Me: From Radio to Film and Television

CHAPTER 14

From the Runway to TV: Models Making the Transition

CHAPTER 15

Taxes : It’s Your Money, Get It Back!

Rich & Famous BibliographyThe Screen Actors Guild (SAG)

Appendix

What Do I Think About Before I Speak?

About the Author

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my wife, Lisa Aldisert, who saw my desire, knew my dedication, and gave me my first acting lessons as a gift. We had no idea it would turn into this.

Thank you for your kind, nurturing soul and spirit. Thank you for giving me the courage to write this book.

Acknowledgement

I thank the following people for their contribution to this book: The Weist-Barron School of Television for my initial education and over twenty years of support; Lisa M. Aldisert for her belief in me and her inspiration and guidance; Sylvia L. Weber and Laura Poole, text editors; Michael Bernhaut for the title; For their time, energy, and interviews, I thank Valerie Adami, Johnetta Lever-Ruff, Alan Rosenthal, Willie C. Carpenter, Glen Holtzer, Lucy Peters, Jerry Coyle, Rikki Charles, Alan Lefkowitz, Don Robinson, Rick J. Klejmont, Al Rosenberg, Jay Thomas, Lorraine Stobbe, Richard Lewis, Lawrence Axmith, Carrie Morgan, Paula Dorf, Carol Hanzel, Mark McEwen, Kerry Ruff, Harley Jane Kozak, Barbara Picard, Sue King, and Ross Haime.

Foreword

by

Richard Lewis

I got my start in the business by getting very few laughs at home, and I realized that I had better find an audience of strangers and a microphone. That is what propelled me seriously after college to enter the arts and express myself with comedy.

I graduated from Ohio State University with a degree in marketing and used it as a copywriter. It was very clear to me as I slowly started to sneak subliminal jokes into the copy that copywriting was not my calling. So I started working in stand-up comedy in Greenwich Village in New York and was befriended by many wonderful comedians. One of my best friends in the business is David Brenner, who was already a very well-known comedian back then.

What I learned back then was that I had such tunnel vision and passion for comedy. I had an incredible desire to achieve success. I had a need for attention and expressing myself.

I think you have to be hungry; you have to want this business. I had a tremendous need to be liked, and I knew I was never going to quit. I believed in myself and what I was doing. If I can inspire anyone right now, I want you to hear this: Follow your heart.

I have been involved in many facets of show business for nearly thirty years, commercials being part of it. It’s pretty flattering to get selected from hundreds of other actors to be the person to do a commercial. You can’t be discouraged by the number of actors trying to get the same commercial, especially in the major markets like New York and Los Angeles. In the smaller communities, you don’t have the same kind of competition. You have to know that you have something to offer, you are there auditioning for a reason; you are authentic. Let that knowledge be your guiding force. Always remember that they have to hire someone. Why not you?

I have done almost every type of commercial, from being an unknown actor to being a known comedian and actor, and I feel blessed. But when I was asked to be the neurotic spokesman for a Blockbuster Videos television commercial campaign, it struck me as odd because when I started stand-up back in the early 1970s, no one would give me the time of day. No one would have asked me to do anything. I did a lot of scratching and scraping to get here, and anyone can do the same thing. I got all of my jobs the old-fashioned way, by earning them. There is no magic in this business.

For fifteen or twenty years I sat in those audition waiting rooms, for hours on end, with other actors competing for the same one line in a television or radio commercial. I always felt fortunate to be a comedian first and foremost. I constantly had that on my mind regardless of what I was auditioning for—a commercial, a film, or a television show. I always knew that I was probably going to go to some comedy club that night and work on new material. That kept me sane, so to speak. Most Actors don’t have a fall back, don’t want anything to fall back on. That’s fine. I think it is important to keep growing, expanding, reaching for the outer limits to realize your full potential. Most of us operate well below our optimal potential because it is comfortable. Expand, get out of your comfort zone. As the U. S. Army commercials say, Be all that you can be. Trite, but true.

The best way to have a long career in show business without driving yourself nuts is to do what you feel is the best reading for yourself in audition situations. More often than not, you will fail, but I would much rather fail on my own terms than to have to later say to myself, Why did I listen to that suggestion? I should have done it my way.

It takes a lot of years to have confidence enough to do that because sometimes you have to go against an authority figure—a casting director, director, or producer. It is not easy when you’re young and you’re getting a direction to decide to go against it. However, no one can make you say something that you don’t want to say or say it in a way that doesn’t sit right with you. If you have a gift, what’s the use having it, if you don’t use it?

My biggest tip is to do what you do better than anyone else. I remember when I came to Los Angeles as a young comedian. Legendary screenwriter Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and American Gigolo among others, once said in a seminar, I don’t care how many Oscars writers win, if you write what you know, you can write it better than anybody. That’s how I feel about acting, stand-up, and commercial reading. Obviously, there is some direction that you need to take, but there should be a point where your own identity and your own spirit come in, or else you are wasting your time; you are doing someone else.

I have made many commercials in the later stages of my comedy career. I had become, for want of a better word, a celebrity, with all of the sit-coms, films, concerts, and hundreds of TV appearances. My persona as a guy who is a survivor but nonetheless neurotic and stressed out was working for me. So when I did the Boku fruit juice television commercials, I felt lucky because they asked for my input. Same thing for the Blockbuster Video commercials. I got the copy, rewrote it with the copywriters, then the client approved it. That way they knew they are getting the best possible effort from the actor. I was not just walking through it. One has to consider situations like those as gifts. Unfortunately, some of the egos in this business make that almost an impossibility. I have been more than fortunate in my career to be working with very good people.

I didn’t realize how broke I was for many years. I was just getting by and barely paying the bills. I walked all around New York, doing club after club, often twenty to thirty shows a week for usually no money for the first four, five, six, years, almost every night of the year. At least with commercials, you’ll get paid. Working in a comedy club sometimes there was no pay, but I was very driven, as I think you almost have to be. Day after day I would walk by that glorious architectural structure known as Carnegie Hall. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that someday I would play there or any place close to that. Well, some eighteen years later, I proudly sold out that little joint, standing room only.

Despite the fact that I walked by Carnegie Hall in the early days as broke as a bagman, I always went to bed feeling like a wealthy man because when I woke up, I was a comedian. I was doing exactly what I wanted to do. When I started getting paid for it, little money, more money, big money, it really didn’t matter. I feel the same way about being a comedian now as I did when I was penniless. I feel like a millionaire because I feel like I’ve never worked a day in my life—because this is precisely how I want to live my life. That is a place in life I wish on every human soul, actor or not. You have the direct line to your internal dialogue. If this business is something you really want to do, nothing on God’s green earth can stop you. I’ll see you on TV soon.

Good luck.

Richard Lewis

Introduction

Commercials

A Brief History

On Monday August 28,1922, at 5:00 P.M. the Queensboro Corporation, a New York real estate firm, attempted to fill some vacant apartments in Jackson Heights, New York. WEAF (later known as WNBC), a three-week-old company, was owned by the AT&T subsidiary Western Electric. They had been soliciting use of this new technological form called radio for advertising purposes. At the unheard of fee of $50 each, The Griffin Radio Service sold four fifteen-minute commercials to the real estate concern. This business transaction was very successful. Radio multiplied and divided. Then it had its first child named television. There was no question how the propagation of the medium was going to be financed: with commercials.

The number of cities with television stations grew from eight to twenty-three, and the number of stations went from seventeen to forty-one. Television expansion was rapid but was suspended during World War II.

In September 1948, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ordered a temporary freeze on the creation of new stations, which lasted until June 1, 1952. National political conventions started appearing, as did entertainment shows such as Toast of the Town, hosted by a writer for the New York Daily News named Ed Sullivan, and Texaco Star Theater, hosted by a young, vibrant comedian named Milton Berle. Television executives were beginning to think of ways to sell this new medium. Placing the name of the sponsoring client in the title of the show was a brilliant way to soft sell Texaco Star Theater. People were being sold to without knowing it.

As network radio advertising was declining, the opposite was happening to television. For example, the Hazel Bishop cosmetics firm was grossing about $50,000 a year when it bought its first television commercials in 1950. By 1952, it was grossing around $4.5 million. Television, with its enormous commercial power, has not looked back since.

Commercials are something we cannot escape in this society. Commerce is the very foundation of our country. For some individuals in the acting community, the very thought of selling their wares is repulsive. These are often the people who would rather wait tables in a restaurant or take jobs in a temp agency than work in television and radio commercials. Many of them consider working in commercials to be compromising their art. The argument of art versus commerce has gone on for decades and will continue for many more to come. If people are willing to offer their hard-earned income for a piece of your art, then you have struck a nerve. People pay only for items or services they want or think they want.

Anything and everything that concerns the exchange of goods or services for money is commercial. I once managed a jazz/rock band. They didn’t want to perform any material they considered too commercial, but they complained because we were not playing to sold-out stadium crowds. It was because the music was not commercial enough.

Commercials are everywhere we look. Anything that has a company or commercial entity’s name on it is a commercial. The car you drive that says Ford; the handbag you carry that has the double G for Gucci;

the soda you drink that says Coke; the CD or tape you bought that says Columbia Records or Mozart, the shirt you wear that has a little green alligator on the chest. We are surrounded by commercials, copy, and scripts just waiting for us to read and practice them.

The easiest, most memorable way I can describe the acting business is: Everything is right, and everything is wrong, and anything could happen. It is a business where men get celebrated for playing women, women get celebrated for playing men, musclemen who can hardly speak English become major movie stars, and even well-trained dogs can make millions of dollars.

Looks are not necessarily important in acting. I once had dinner in a restaurant in New York seated next to Martin Balsam. When I finished my meal, I got up, look him in the eyes, and moved my head around slightly as if I was looking for something behind his eyes and said, "Gee, you are better-looking than Ernest Borgnine." He then let out the biggest yelp of a laugh. In Hollywood, neither of these gentlemen was considered candidates for the cover of GQ Magazine. Karl Malden had the second most famous large nose in film next to Jimmy Durante and he was a pretty big star at one time. Gene Hackman was a sight to behold as a very ugly woman at the end of the movie The Bird Cage. Whoopi Goldberg, a beautiful but unusual type, got her big break in a one-woman Broadway show where she put a white shirt on top of her head and referred to it as her long, luxurious blonde hair. Then there is actor Ru Paul, an African American male with long, luxurious blond hair and a skirt. It is definitely a business for the bold, courageous, and thick-skinned, but the meek and timid have been known to survive. All types are needed to participate. There are roles for everyone.

Elaine Brody, executive administrator of Affirmative Action of the Screen Actors Guild of New York said: "All actors have a tough road to go.

But there are also many more opportunities to act nowadays because there is so much more television. Today you’ve got production for cable TV shows, commercials for cable, cable movies; and technology has introduced the CD-ROM, the internet, and other multimedia imaging"

This business is for the stubborn nonquitter in all of us, the winners, and those who think they are. This is a business for that 1.23 percent who earned over $200,000 acting in various jobs, that small percentage who believe they can be successful doing this for a living. This business is for the person who does not want to work a nine-to-five job. This is a business for those who don’t want to go to the same place to work every day and see the same people every day. This is the kind of business where you can work for one day on a film set and be paid for many months or years thereafter. If you work in the recording studio doing a voice-over or radio commercial, you will probably work for only one hour and be paid for a prolonged period of time—months, even years. My laundry detergent on-camera television commercial was on for more than three years. If you need a place for your creative outlet or a place to create some additional income, this is the place for you.

The reported average income for the 80,000-plus SAG (Screen Actors Guild) members is about $12,340; it’s even less for the approximately 120,000 actors working in the theater and other performer’s unions. With my techniques, I once made over $65,000 for two days of work in a national network on-camera television commercial. I know you have seen this commercial. It ran so much even I got tired of seeing it. That’s $32,500 for one day of work! I have a friend who once made over $75,000 for saying five words in a beer commercial. He was the voice for a radio commercial that became the voice for the television campaign as well. Seventy-five thousand dollars for saying five wordshow long did that take? He didn’t even have to put on make-up or stand in front of hot lights. This happened because he did the voice for the entire campaign. For a whole series of commercials for this major beer company the producers took the recording of his voice from the first time he recorded it and attached it to all future commercials. For this he received a lift fee, which means pay for an extraction of filmed or voice-recorded work. The producers take the performance from one commercial and add it to another or to several commercials. He was also handsomely compensated because it was a national network commercial, that ran frequently during prime-time. And let us not forget the initial session fee that he received.

I have made several thousand dollars by saying just a few words in a one-hour recording session in the studio. No camera, just voice. You’ll learn more on this subject in the voice-over chapter. On-camera for eight hours on the set—that’s one day’s work. There is a decent living to be made in the world of commercials. The way you are able to make such large sums is through the concept of residual payments.

I am extremely lucky in that I have found something that utilizes my talents, natural and learned, through formal education, daily observation, and application. Many people have not found that thing they love so much that they would do it even if no one paid them. I have studied long and hard and have been rejected and abused my fair share of times. But I haven’t given up, and I won’t give up. I believe that all people are special and have something special to contribute. If your talents and interests can find an outlet in the world of commercials, the trick is to accumulate enough of those special somethings that you can do. You can build a repertoire that will enable you to make a living and not be a one-commercial flash in the pan. This is a great business!

CHAPTER 1

Acting in Commercials:

How Do I Get Started?

Often, after viewing a television program, play, film, or commercial, I find myself asking the same questions: Was that a good performance? Why was it a good performance? Why was it not? What is a good actor? Did I believe him or her? Did I think a woman was good in her performance simply because I enjoyed looking at her on stage or screen? Did I give a male actor credit for a good performance because he represents what I would most like to be on screen or off?

What is a good actor, and what does it take to be an actor? A beautiful face, pretty eyes, long hair, long legs, pretty smile, broad shoulders, deep voice, good memory, polished manner, fearlessly uninhibited personality, insight into human behavior, the ability to re-create various types of human behavior? In commercials sometimes, the more regular or ordinary-looking you are, the better it is for you. This will allow you to fit into a variety of roles. A variety of roles equals a longer career. The answer to what is a good actor can be as simple as:

• A good actor is any actor who has been in movies that make money.

•   A good actor is someone who knows how to promote him-or herself to attract attention from the right people, or

•   A good actor is someone who has the ability to become other people convincingly.

There is no definitive right or wrong answer to this conundrum. That is why people from so many walks of life are able to become working actors. You need whatever the producers think you have that will make them money.

ASK YOURSELF SOME TOUGH QUESTIONS.

It is important to ask and have some answers for the following questions. It will help you on your journey through this business.

•   Do I see my image on television and in film? If you do not, that does not mean that there isn’t room for you?

•   What is a commercial type, and am I it?

•   Why do I want to be in this business?

•   Am I really a performer?

•   Do I really have the ability?

•   Do I have the stamina and determination?

•   Can I afford to audition and wait to be discovered?

Then there are the practical business questions. The most commonly asked questions about the commercial acting business are:

•   How do I get into the business?

•   Do I need an agent?

•   How do I get an agent?

•   Do I have to study? Go to classes? Take seminars?

•   Can I make good money?

•   Do I get paid every time the commercial airs on television?

•   I know my face won’t last forever; what else can I do and stay in show business?

•   I know I can’t be a dancer forever, how can I protect myself, stay in show business, and still make money?

•   My friends tell me I have a terrific voice, I’m considering getting into radio, how do I do it?

•   My friends tell me that I’m good looking and I should be in commercials, how do I do that?

I will tell you how you do it: study, practice, rehearse, watch people, and read out loud.

ACTING SCHOOLS AND PRIVATE TUTORS

Anything you can learn will help you develop skills to compete in the acting business. This book will teach you things that will probably not be taught in a class, but acting classes are a good way to get up to speed quickly. There are as many opinions about acting and acting schools as there are actors. I believe in a varied education. Learn as much as often as you can; never stop learning. I wanted to learn the techniques of acting in commercials, so I first attended The Weist-Barron School of Television, a commercial acting school. I then went to HB Studios, a dramatic theater acting school, then to The Actors’ Playhouse, another theater arts school. I went back to a commercial acting school after that and then a couple of private coaches.

Why did I go to so many places to learn about acting? It is my opinion that when you study at one place or with one teacher, you become a specific kind of actor or rely too heavily on the traits and techniques of one teacher. I did not want to be labeled a certain type of actor; if acting is re-creating human behavior, then there is no single way to be a person. There are as many ways to be human as there are people.

It is important for you to constantly observe human behavior. Observe how a woman holds her cup of coffee just before she takes another puff of her cigarette during her lunch break; observe how a man pays the bus fare as he gets on the bus; observe how the cashier rings up the sale when you are shopping for your groceries; observe how people write out their deposit slip in the bank. Observe and study these acts as they unfold before your eyes in everyday life. This is extremely important, and it is free. Millions of dollars are spent to learn how to do things in front of a camera or an audience that we already know how to do in everyday life.

Private tutoring offers personal, one-on-one time and attention to your individual problems or concerns about your work. Private tutors are there for you with no interruptions, and you can really pick their brains. If you find a teacher in your city or town with whom you connect, someone you think is a good teacher who understands you, ask whether he or she teaches or consults privately. After you have some training under your belt, private instruction from a good tutor is money well spent.

I recommend studying at a variety of schools and with private tutors and always going back to study for tune-ups. You become a more well-rounded actor and person when you learn from a variety of sources. You should be constantly studying everyday human behavior and reading things aloud. We all get lazy and develop bad work habits. Assume you have some bad habits and work to correct them.

A word of advice to high school and college acting students

Don’t rule out a career in commercials. Most film and theater acting programs in colleges, universities, and high schools around the country do not offer any commercial classes or education of any kind about commercials or the business of acting. Many theater and film acting students who are performing in commercials believe that commercials do not require real acting, and commercials are something real actors would never do. They are terribly mistaken. This belief is the reason many actors are waiting tables, pumping gas, or shining shoes (not that anything is wrong with those jobs). Commercials require all of the same thinking and acting skills as any $50 million feature film or major Broadway show, plus you are working on and in your craft.

I had a conversation on the subway recently with a well-known actor who is the son of a famous actor. He does a lot of theater work in New York and sometimes goes to Los Angeles to work in movies. I asked him, How is business for you these days? He said, Well, I am rehearsing a play at the Public Theater right now, but you know that stuff just doesn’t pay. With all of the rehearsals, then the run itself, this just does not pay, I’m getting tired. At this point I was just about to suggest, Do some commercials, but I know that an actor of his caliber has been around long enough to know about commercials, so I did not say anything. The moral of the story is to develop yourself in every area of the business so you have a fallback position. Now I sound like my parents (and possibly yours as well), Always have something to fall back on, son.

I think it is far more fulfilling, nurturing, and gratifying to work in your chosen field of endeavor. You can spot someone who does not enjoy their work (no matter what they do for a living) a mile away. They can be angry, bitter, and unpleasant to be around. Commercials have provided tremendous launching pads for the