talk the talk

back in july i auditioned for a film being shot in the area. i walked into the air conditioned meeting room with unbrushed hair and no extra copy of my headshot and resume. when i introduced myself, the two producers and director were very nice as they sweetly and passive aggressively asked if i wasn't supposed to have been there the day before...which i found out later that yes, i'd misread the email. but they let me read a couple lines and gave me notes. and that was it.

long story short, i did not get cast.

but someone did. and that someone is a nyc actress and friend of my sister's.

last week she called my sister and wanted her to be her dialect coach because she was just shooting in the dark as far as the dialect went. well, my sister volunteered my name. she sent my bio to the actress to pass along to whoever was in charge of the film and made me sound somewhat professional by writing that i 'specialized in southern dialects.'

apparently it sounded legit because the producer contacted me and i drove an hour and half to the end of a very windy country road and by early evening found myself sitting in front of a film monitor, beside a rusty trailer, next to an electric barbed wire fence that enclosed a very loud bull. they gave me headphones and i listened to the dialogue as the scenes were shot. i felt very important. that first night, i was simply supposed to make sure there was nothing glaringly horrible. (there wasn't.)

between scenes, one of the producers sat beside me and asked how things were going. i said it all sounded okay, and then, very timidly, she asked if i'd auditioned for the film (because i looked familiar). i said yes and that i didn't really know how to bring it up and that i'm not really an actor anymore but if someone is making a film in the area with an actual budget, i love to just be involved, but then i felt like that gave away the fact that i didn't really know what i was doing as a 'dialect coach' and i just kept talking and talking and talking. i seriously couldn't stop. i feared i would be found out. but she just stared at me blankly and said, 'no, i think you were good, but just too young for the role.' hmmmmmmm. anyhoo...

as the evening progressed, i met various people on the crew, and inevitably, during the first words spoken, they would ask me a) if i could tell where they were from (confusing me with henry higgins), and b) how i go about teaching someone a dialect. so i made up my technique as the hours passed and the usual response was, 'that makes sense.' so i guess it made sense.

i went back last night and worked with the actress who first contacted my sister and we talked for a bit. before i'd arrived, the director told her to reign in her dialect because it was too extreme, and while watching the scene one of the producers sat beside me and said she sounded way too strong, but really, it wasn't anything. it sounded like she was from the area, but by no means was it too strong. i tried to explain that 'too strong' would not be understood by the yankee filmmakers. but i talked to the actress during the dinner break and we tried to find a balance of the regional sound without going too strong or slipping back into her northern speech patterns. again, maybe i made everything worse. one cannot say.

i head back on wednesday to work with an actor when he gets in. the producers asked someone to read all his lines so he could copy the dialect precisely. they sent me the voice samples, and this seems like it will be a lot of fun. i like it, but at the same time, kind of feel like i'm making it all up...which i am. but not really. my part in all this is so after-the-fact that there really isn't anything i can do. but it's still interesting and a credit on my resume.

and it is a lot of fun. this is the kind of thing i've done my whole life, but i've just always considered it either mimicry or being an asshole. and actually, i really do have to study regional dialects for the job i'm not legally allowed to talk about, so i suppose i've picked up more than i thought i knew.

maybe there's actually something there.

maybe this is the beginning of a brand new career.