Review: Acting Class - Take A Seat by Milton Katselas

November 12, 2008 by dennisbaker 

“The study of acting is the study of life,” Milton Katselas states in his book, Acting Class: Take a Seat. He expounds on this thought with a quote from Stella Adler: “I’m not teaching acting… I’m teaching actors to be people.”

Previously only available to his students at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, this book presents the knowledge and tools that have impacted actors, including George Clooney, Michelle Pfeiffer, Alec Baldwin, Blythe Danner, and Bette Davis.

He wants actors to be able to do anything that is required and go after the roles that would be the best fit of who they are as actors and people. He understands that type casting happens but you can break out of that if you work hard enough. It all comes down to business.

Actors have to believe in themselves before they can get anywhere. They also have to prepare for any situation and script. There is a time and place for improvisation but not in the preparation of one’s acting career. An actor has to get along with others as well as to cut out the gossip. Readers will feel as if they are sitting in Katselas’ classroom, mainly because much of the book is taken from transcripts of his classes. Broken down into three sections, Acting Class addresses everything an actor needs to perfect his craft.

Section one is on acting and begins with lessons on “The Checklist,” what every actor needs to prepare for a scene, including evaluating the character, specific choices that define a character, and how to make the character believable. This section also includes class exercises in song and dance, improv, monologue, audition, relaxation, and the shoot exercise which allows the actors to feel what it would be like to be part of a film or television scene, with little or no rehearsal.

Section two looks at attitude and what it takes to be an actor who others like to be around and directors will want to work with again. Katselas claims that this not only makes the actor a nicer person, but it also actually increases his or her art, as they are willing to take critique and to grow as a person and an artist.

Section three is on administration, which the author defines as the choices an actor makes regarding his career and life, and determination to follow through on these choices. The choices Katselas speaks about in this section are less artistic and relate more to the business aspect of acting, including: networking, developing relationships with people in the industry, practicing old fashioned courtesy, appearance, promotional tools, and continuing to study.

Acting Class is easy to read, approachable, at times funny, at times earthy, and loaded with practical and helpful ideas. The exercises and tools will help actors at all levels of experience improve their craft.

(This review was originally published on Blogcritics.)

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Win Copies of Milton Katselas’ “Acting Class: Take a Seat”

October 17, 2008 by dennisbaker 

We know you just love the chance to win something, so here at DENNIS BAKER LLC we want to start rewarding our loyal readers.
milton katselas acting class
The first giveaway is of Milton Katselas new book Acting Class: Take a Seat. I try to only giveaway books that I’ve read and would actually recommend. I have began to read it and do enjoy it, a full review will be coming soon.

“Previously only available to Katselas’ students at the prestigious Beverly Hills Playhouse, Acting Class presents the concepts and methods that have helped lead a generation of actors to success on stage, in cinema, and on television. Now for the first time, this all-encompassing book is available to the general public, taking readers and sitting them in the legendary acting class of Milton Katselas, where he not only covers techniques and methods, but also includes valuable discussions on the attitude any artist needs to fulfill his or her dream.”

Now you know you want to win it, right? Good, because we have 2 copies to give away!

How to enter this contest? Simply leave a comment below and we’ll randomly pick 2 winners (deadline for entry is 6pm ET Friday, Oct. 24th).

That’s all you need to do! And, if you’re not a lucky winner, you can be a winner anyway by picking up a copy of Acting Class: Take a Seat for yourself.

Filed under: Acting, Auditioning, Books, Film, Los Angeles, Teaching, Theater/Theatre
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Theaters To Do List

October 10, 2008 by dennisbaker 

Brendan Kiley wrote an article for Seattle’s The Stranger entitled Ten Things Theaters Need to Do Right Now to Save Themselves: In No Particular Order. Below is the top ten with my reactions. Th article focuses on the fringe as the main type of theater that should implement these changes. What do you thing?

1. Enough with the goddamned Shakespeare already. The greatest playwright in history has become your enabler and your crutch, the man you call when you’re timid and out of ideas. It’s time for a five-year moratorium—no more high schoolers pecking at Romeo and Juliet, no more NEA funding for Shakespeare in the heartland, and no more fringe companies trying to ennoble themselves with Hamlet. (Or with anything. Fringe theater shouldn’t be in the game of ennobling, it should be in the game of debasement.) Stretch yourself. Live a little. Find new, good, weird plays nobody has heard of. Teach your audiences to want surprises, not pacifiers.

Goes big right off the bat. I am torn by this one as I both agree and disagree. I am sure we have all seen one too many shows of Midsummers or Romeo and Juliet. But when Shakespeare is done well it is it amazing. There are also so many students every year that see a production and then are turned on to the work. Maybe we modify this recommendation that we put a cap on the amount of Shakespeare a theater company can do. One show per year?  One every other year?

2. Tell us something we don’t know. Every play in your season should be a premiere—a world premiere, an American premiere, or at least a regional premiere. Everybody has to help. Directors: Find a new play to help develop in the next 12 months. Actors: Ditto. Playwrights: Quit developing your plays into the ground with workshop after workshop after workshop—get them out there. Critics: Reward theaters that risk new work by making a special effort to review them. Unions, especially Actors’ Equity: You are a problem. Fringe theaters are the research-and-development wing of the theater world, the place where new work happens—but most of them can’t afford to go union, so union actors are stuck in the regional theaters, which are skittish about new work and early-career playwrights. You must break this deadlock by giving a pass to union actors to work in nonunion houses, if they are working on new plays.

New works are a must! I love when I see a play that I don’t know and it takes on me on a ride of discovery. I think this can also go for published work as well. Maybe poll the audience of what plays they have seen so a theater knows which ones to avoid.

I think the union/non-union issue is the bigger issue. Just coming back from a theater conference in San Francisco this is a major issue for the actors in the Bay area. Most theaters there are non-union which leaves the union actors with little opportunity to work on new works or anything at all for that matter. There is a 99-seat code in Los Angeles and a workshop code in New York. Why can’t we get a code across the board or at least in all the major theater cities?

3. Produce dirty, fast, and often. Fringe theaters: Recall that 20 years ago, in 1988, a fringe company called Annex produced 27 plays, 16 of them world premieres—and hang your heads in shame. This season, Annex will produce 10 plays, 4 of them world premieres, which is still pretty good. Washington Ensemble Theatre will only produce three plays, one of them a world premiere. (An adaptation of… Shakespeare!) What else happened in 1988? Nirvana began recording Bleach—and played a concert at Annex Theatre. By the next year, Nirvana was on their first world tour. The lesson: Produce enough new plays and Kurt Cobain will come back from the grave and play your theater.

I am not 100% sold on producing that many shows in a season. I worked with a theater company in Los Angeles that prided itself on performing two shows in repertory.  I think for the smaller theaters it can stretch its already limited personal and budget. While it might be great for all the actors who want to work, the quality pf the show can suffer, which then effects the perception of the work being done for future shows. Also these artists also have full time jobs and other major responsibilities so while I agree maybe more than three shows per season I think twenty-seven is a bit much.

4. Get them young. Seattle playwright Paul Mullin said it best in an e-mail last week: “Bring in people under 60. Do whatever it takes. If you have to break your theater to get young butts in seats, then do it. Because if you don’t, your theater’s already broke—the snapping sound just hasn’t reached your ears yet.”

I think all theater companies should have some education ties to it. That does not mean that they have this education department that creates a touring show, but they should have a connection with a local English teacher where they can come into the class and present scenes and work with the students. Most kids think Shakespeare is boring until they experience how active the text is and then kids begin to love it. If the kids connect with the visiting actors they will ask the parents to go to that theater. There is you under 60 audience members. Then it is also the theaters responsibility to do work that appeals to both young adults and their parents at the same time. That does not mean you have to produce a fairytale, but you can’t have your whole season be crazy, sexual, avant-guard theater either.

5. Offer child care. Sunday school is the most successful guerrilla education program in American history. Steal it. People with young children should be able to show up and drop their kids off with some young actors in a rehearsal room for two hours of theater games. The benefits: First, it will be easier to convince the nouveau riche (many of whom have young children) to commit to season tickets. Second, it will satisfy your education mission (and will be more fun, and therefore more effective, for the kids). Third, it will teach children to go to the theater regularly. And they’ll look forward to the day they graduate to sitting with the grown-ups. Getting dragged to the theater will shift from punishment to reward.

But when you do produce your avant-guard play that is not appropriate for children, in stead of alienating the parents give them the option of childcare so they can still come see the show. Yes, there are legal issues here that will need to be worked out, but it could be well worth it. How many theaters are offering childcare? Imagine if you were the first. You would be the talk of the PTA and the buzz around all the playgrounds. Get those soccer moms to work for you!

6. Fight for real estate. In 1999, musician Neko Case broke up with Seattle, leaving us for Chicago. (It still hurts, Neko.) When asked why in an interview, she explained, “Chicago is a lot friendlier, especially toward its artists. Seattle is very unfriendly toward artists. There’s no artists’ housing—they really like to use the arts community, but they don’t like to put anything back into the arts community.” Our failure abides. Push government for cheap artists’ housing and hook up with CODAC, a committee that wants developers on Capitol Hill—and, eventually, everywhere—to build affordable arts spaces into their new condos. (CODAC’s tools of persuasion: tax, zoning, and business incentives.) Development smothers artists, who can’t afford the rising property values that they—by turning cheap neighborhoods into trendy arts districts—helped create. To get involved with CODAC, e-mail frank.video@seattle.gov.

A definite must. Lean on the government to recognize artists as important and worth the time and money.

7. Build bars. Alcohol is the only liquid on earth that functions as both lubricant and bonding agent. Exploit it. Treat your plays like parties and your audience like guests. Encourage them to come early, drink lots, and stay late. Even the meanest fringe company can afford a tub full of ice and beer, and the state of regional- theater bars is deplorable: long lines, overpriced drinks, and a famine of comfortable chairs. Theaters try to “build community” with postplay talkbacks and lectures and other versions of you’ve spent two hours watching my play, now look at me some more! You want community? Give people a place to sit, something to talk about (the play they just saw), and a bottle. As a gesture of hospitality, offer people who want to quit at intermission a free drink, so they can wait for their companions who are watching act two. Just take care of people. They get drinks, you get money, everybody wins. Tax, zoning, and liquor laws in your way? Change them or ignore them. Do what it takes.

Embrace the idea of third space that made Starbucks what it is today. Third space is that place that is not work or home where people come together to talk, socialize and share ideas. The theater is a perfect place to do that. Make the lobby a third space. If that is not an option work with a local bar that you can encourage your audience to attend after the show. Theater is meant to create ideas and dialogue so lets give people that place to have that dialogue.

8. Boors’ night out. You know what else builds community? Audience participation, on the audience’s terms. For one performance of each show, invite the crowd to behave like an Elizabethan or vaudeville audience: Sell cheap tickets, serve popcorn, encourage people to boo, heckle, and shout out their favorite lines. (”Stella!”) The sucky, facile Rocky Horror Picture Show only survives because it’s the only play people are encouraged to mess with. Steal the gimmick.

I am hesitant to agree with this. I think there are some great shows that this can work and if a theater wants to explore melodrama (maybe Greek plays) than this might be suitable. I am not sure beyond that.

9. Expect poverty. Theater is a drowning man, and its unions—in their current state—are anvils disguised as life preservers. Theater might drown without its unions, but it will certainly drown with them. And actors have to jettison the living-wage argument. Nobody deserves a living wage for having talent and a mountain of grad-school debt. Sorry.

When referring to fringe theaters I agree there is no money to be had for any of the artists there. Work done is for the love of the art and to grow as artists. I do not think this comment should apply to the bigger regional theaters.

10. Drop out of graduate school. Most of you students in MFA programs don’t belong there—your two or three years would be more profitable, financially and artistically, out in the world, making theater. Drama departments are staffed by has-beens and never-weres, artists who might be able to tell you something worthwhile about the past, but not about the present, and certainly not about the future. Historians excepted—art historians are great. If things don’t turn around, they may be the only ones left.

Interesting comment in light of what I have been writing about the Rutgers MFA acting program. I do think more artists are going into financial debt over education which will catch up to them much like the sub-prime loans and housing bubble. Those artists will have to work more to pay off those debts and that means less time creating art. I think all artists need some education how to live financially simple.  And also be encouraged that doing the work is very important.

Filed under: Acting, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Shakespeare, Theater/Theatre
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Free Acting Seminar in Los Angeles

August 22, 2008 by dennisbaker 

Friend and teacher Mick Montgomery is holding a free acting seminar on Saturday, August 30th from 2-6pm at the Actors Workout Studio in North Hollywood.  If you are reading this from Los Angeles, I highly recommend it!  You can click on the image to enlarge it or read the details below.

The title of the seminar is “Discover the Actor You’ve always wanted to be!”

The class will include a discussion on discovering who your inner actor is and will feature an introduction to the Meisner Acting Technique as taught @ the Actors Workout Studio. This is not a sit down and listen to someone talk for four hours seminar. It’s an active and fun class designed to get you rooted in your body.

Space is limited so sign up today! You can call 310.754.9121 for any questions about the seminar. Also, feel free to send this to any acting friends who may be interested in attending.

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Burbank students protest to perform Laramie Project

July 1, 2008 by dennisbaker 

About a month ago students from John Burroghs High School in Burbank performed The Laramie Project off campus at the near by professional Colony theater after the principal prohibited them from performing the play at school. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the students did not take no for an answer and begin to rehearse the play at a student’s backyard. “They dubbed themselves the Don’t Tell Bailey Theatre Company in honor of their drama teacher — who could not be involved because it wasn’t school-sanctioned — and started to advertise the play via e-mail and a MySpace site. That brought an unexpected bonus: Leigh Fondakowski and Kelli Simpkins, two of the creators of “The Laramie Project” as members of the Tectonic Theater Project, decided to join the 23 cast members for three days of rehearsals this week, flying in from New York City and Chicago.” The students asked the Colony theater if they can perform on their stage and the theater not only allowed it but provided them with costumes, props, programs and help with sound and lighting.

This feels like a small world as I substitute taught for four years in Burbank and subbed specifically for Scott Bailey’s drama class. As an actor and teacher his class was one I always enjoyed having the opportunity to teach. The students were excited and serious about theater. They had fun and enjoyed the class. This was all a reflection on the good job Bailey was doing.

With al these thoughts I was shocked by the lat paragraph of the article. Principal Emilio Urioste Jr. took away Bailey’s drama assignment for next year, although Bailey will remain on the faculty teaching English. The article states that Bailey is challenging the decision with a union grievance. I hope this is continued to be reported on because I feel this news to be just as shocking as the students’ story. The only details given about the reassignment was that Urioste “noted that he and Bailey have disagreed over the direction of Burroughs’ drama program — Urioste hoping for big musicals that can merge talents from the drama, music and dance departments, while Bailey has stuck to his preference for more intimate and adventurous plays.” Something more had to happen for Bailey to be reassigned or was media scrutiny enough for Urioste to not only recount his decision regarding the play, but to also remove Bailey as some sort of threat. Hopefully the decision will be reversed.

UPDATE: Scott Bailey He has taken a post at Charter High School of the Arts — Multimedia and Performing, which is also known as CHAMPS, where he’ll teach English and be involved in the theater program this fall as reported by the Burbank Leader.

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So You Wanna Be A Star?

January 21, 2007 by dennisbaker 

Here is an article that I had saved in my inbox:

Q&A with Anna Deavere Smith: So you wanna be a star?
By Marc Silver
Posted 1/21/06

In our celebrity-besotted culture, the arts have an irresistible attraction for young people. But jobs in the arts are not as plentiful as stars in the sky (or even as stars in Hollywood). Actor and playwright Anna Deavere Smith offers guidance in her new book, Letters to a Young Artist: Straight-up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts. Smith, a Tony Award nominee and Pulitzer finalist, writes and performs one-woman shows that capture diverse voices from a place of crisis: Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, about the riots, for example. She also portrays the national security adviser on West Wing.

Shouldn’t you really be doing a book called Advice on Not Making a Life in the ArtsWell, you know, artists just have always been on the fringe of society. Plato kicked us right straight out of the republic.

So it’s never easy to be an artist.

You make that decision to be an artist cautiously. You won’t have the same options for survival that your friends who are as educated as you have. You have to educate artists to be cagey, smart, mobile, flexible. Don’t get in a situation where, if you’re an actor, all you can do is audition.

You talk about renting yourself out but not selling out.

I am talking about understanding that your identity belongs to you. It’s seductive to have somebody tell you what you should be doing. But in the end, an artist has to take responsibility for his or her own voice and destiny.

What kind of choices will lie ahead for young artists?

You may have to decide not to go forward with a project. You may have to decide to do something commercial at a moment when you might want to do something not commercial but that isn’t going to make you a shred of money. You may have to end a romantic relationship because that relationship is requiring more of you than you can give. On the other hand, you may decide to have a romantic relationship or get married or have a child because those things are going to make you a more whole person.

Does a thick skin help? In the book you tell of being turned down for a role in a sitcom because you aren’t three-camera funny.

You have to move on to the next thing. But yeah, yeah, it hurts. You have to get used to the fact that hurt is a part of it.

You say a great deal about the power of presence.

Some people are just not aware of what they’re doing physically. When I teach a class and people are sitting as if bored to tears on the first day I expect you to look like you want to be there. Everything’s [about being] so cool and hanging back now. I do think presence is a kind of energy level that can be cultivated.

I have a 17-year-old daughter who wants to act. What advice do you have for her?

I think the most important thing and this sounds kind of churchy she should practice every day finding the joy in what she’s doing. Because it’s that joy and that real desire to communicate that is going to keep the whole thing alive for her no matter what happens. We think of the clown as the figure who, no matter how tough authority is, keeps coming back. The clown is irrepressible. What she should cultivate is that irrepressibility.

And how should she pick a college drama program?

She should go to a school where she sees that irrepressibility in her potential classmates. And where there’s a lot expected of her, and where she can practice failing as well as succeeding. And someplace where questions are valued as much as answers. She should use her education to discover her questions as in a quest not the answers.

Filed under: Acting, Auditioning, Film, Los Angeles, New York
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Bradley Whitford

September 20, 2006 by dennisbaker 

I just watched the pilot episode of “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip”. I feel I connect with Bradley Whiford, as an actor, first on the West Wing and I think he will go a good job on this show as well. I am a fan, but I think this goes to a deeper connection from one actor to another. I can not truly explain it but there is something I relate with him. I admire his beginning in the New York theatre and his desire and struggle to well rounded work in film and television. I truly see him as a working actor show in the story of how he had to fight for the Josh Lyman character on the West Wing. Every actor should read how he prepared for the role. It did not matter that he was friends with Aaron Sorkin.

While preparring for auditions, my coach recommend that I read “Three Days of Rain” as he thought the role of Pip was perfect for me. I opened the script and saw that Whitford had originated the role. It experiences like that that make me excited to watch him perform. I do hope one day I will get to see him on the stage. I found an unofficial website for Whitford and loved the article his brother wrote about him. Below is an excerpt, click on the title to read the whole article.

The Secret Life of an Actor
By: David Whitford
Source: Esquire
Date: May 2001

But my brother would still have to audition, and he prepared as if it were the biggest audition of his life. “I was determined to prepare beyond overpreparedness,” he says. “To prepare it enough so that when I went in there, it would be as if I’d been doing this ten-minute play for six weeks. When you rehearse a role or even memorize lines, it’s like the process of having a stroke and recovering from it. You go to the first read-through of a play and it’s great. Then you break it down and the Zen gets sucked out of it, and you can’t even put words together. And slowly you get better, and then all of a sudden you’re up. For me, its a sensation of feeling like your blood is moving again. In this case, I knew the lines cold. I would imagine myself being in my worst emotional state and try the scene. I’d act as if I was acting badly and try to do the scene well. I anticipated being very uncomfortable in the room so I would be comfortable. I desperately wanted this.”

The audition took place in the office of John Levey, the casting director at Warner Brothers. Sorkin was there, too, along with one of the show’s other executive producers, Thomas Schlamme, who directed the famous live episode of ER and was Sorkin’s collaborator on Sports Night. Sorkin was the only one who’d already made up his mind. To the others, my brother was not exactly a stranger - they remembered him especially from an Emmy-winning 1995 episode of ER, filmed at Warner Brothers, in which he’d played a young father whose wife dies in childbirth - but, frankly, he was just another name on the list.

My brother used all the tricks experience has taught him. He politely cut short the small talk at the beginning (”Can I act now?”). He turned to leave immediately after he was finished so as not to seem like a “needy actor”. And though the lines by this point were all but written on his heart, he did the entire scene holding the pages in his hand, occasionally glancing down at them, hoping to imply, “This is where I am now. I can go farther.”

He nailed it; they laughed out loud. When my brother was on the way out the door, Levey’s assistant whispered in his ear, “Nobody has done it like that! Wow! Wow!” When he got home, there was a message on his answering machine from Sorkin: “You hit it out of the park.”

And then… nothing. Just weeks and weeks of silence. As it turns out, Levey wasn’t persuaded that my brother had the sex appeal to play a leading man on network television. Schlamme wasn’t sure he had enough depth to carry off the scenes he knew Sorkin would eventually have to write if The West Wing were ever going to be more than a simple romantic comedy. “There’s a place that he doesn’t sometimes go in his writing,” says Schlamme, who viewed his role partly as nudging Sorkin in that direction. “It’s not about naked people fucking. It’s about going to a place that is a man absolutely standing toe-to-toe with a woman, getting his heart broken if that’s what’s going to happen, and dealing with the sexual energy of a relationship. I knew Brad had the comic timing. But in my experience as a director, people with incredible comic timing sometimes have a very hard time going to that place I just described. Because comedy is the deflection of having to be revealed, having to be hurt.”

My brother might have had something to say to Levey’s and Schlamme’s concerns if he knew what they were, but he didn’t. All he knew was that they were standing in his way. Reluctantly, he agreed to a second audition in front of Levey and The West Wing’s John Wells, probably the most powerful producer in television (ER, Third Watch), this time with Moira Kelly, whose character, Mandy was originally conceived as Josh’s love interest. It did not go well. Afterward, Levey told Brad’s agent, Adena Chawke, that her client had “receded” in Kelly’s presence.

“I don’t understand,” Chawke said.

“What part of my English don’t you understand? It’s not going to happen for Brad.”

Meanwhile, it was getting to be pilot season. Other people were calling. Fox was interested in him for an hour-long dramedy. “They wanted to pay me a lot of money,” Brad says. “A lot more [than West Wing]. And if I wanted to do it, I could have done it. None of this bullshit of jumping through Tommy fucking Schlamme’s hoops, you know? At this point, I’m furious at him. It’s like, I know, I know, I know I can play this role! You feel like a crazy person in an asylum trying to convince the orderly that you’re sane. ‘I know this is ridiculous because I’m an actor trying to get a part, and, of course, this part would be great for me, but seriously, I am really built for this!’”

It came down to the Friday before production was to begin. Chawke called my brother. Good news: He’s been offered a part on The West Wing. Bad news: It’s Sam, not Josh. “I was just, Nooooo. No, no, no, no,” Brad says. “So I called Aaron. You don’t know if you’re going to be articulate or pathetic. I honestly did not know. And I just said, ‘Aaron, I just feel this very strongly. This isn’t about me wanting a job. This is the only time in my life I will play this card. I am this guy; I am not the other guy.’ And Aaron’s point is, ‘Don’t worry about what you do in the pilot,’ and I was saying, ‘No, no, no. There is a difference. There is a difference starting with the pilot. Josh isn’t sexual-high-jinks-boy. Josh is, You know what? I had to tell the fucking Christian Right off! Because it’s ridiculous. And I lost control!’”

Sorkin was impressed. (”That’s sort of when we knew, Gee, we really do have a good marriage here.”) Sometime over the weekend, Rob Lowe got what he was asking for, including first billing and a lot more money than anyone else in the cast except Martin Sheen. Which meant Lowe could play Sam and Brad could play Josh.

Filed under: Acting, Film, Los Angeles, Theater/Theatre
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Honest Article

August 9, 2006 by dennisbaker 

I recently found Frances Uku’s blog. She is a Harvard MFA grad who is working in LA. She recently posted an article by Jenna Fischer of NBC’s The Office. She talks about what it takes to be an actor in LA and I am impressed by the honesty and detail. With most actors who are asked to explain how they got to a certain point in their career, the reader gets these vague answers that make you think that one day they just got “discovered” walking down the street of Sunset Blvd. Jenna explains the process of relationships and coming into auditions for the same casting director time after time after time before they cast you. I highly recommend it…

Filed under: Acting, Film, Los Angeles
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C.S.I. Submitted

June 16, 2006 by dennisbaker 

We have mailed C.S.I. Sierra Madre to three film festivals. We have chosen to focus on the below six film festivals and see what will happen from there. Detailed information is on the website.

C.S.I. Sierra Madre Website (csisierramadre.blogspot.com)

Film Festivals:
DC Short Film Festival
San Diego Film Festival
Hollywood Film Festival
Big Bear Lake International Film Festival
FAIF International Film Festival
Hermosa Shorts

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Beginning of the last…for now

June 13, 2006 by dennisbaker 

It is slowly coming to my attention that Karen and I are beginning the last things as we plan to move to the east coast in August. One of those things was going to Vegas. We went for the weekend with our good friends Jonathan and Carissa.

We had a great time hanging out, going to Red Rock, eating and laughing alot. Being only four hours from Vegas, we have been going enough times for me to be done with Vegas for awhile. What hit me most was the fact that we will not have the option or our friends around. Jonathan and Carissa will be moving to Nepal for six months in October. Therefore this time with them was special in that we will not see them consistently for a long time. So this was a great way to kick off the beginning of many last things that will come in these next few months.

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