Noah Applebaum

Just Tank One

Just Tank One.

Congratulations- you’ve come all this way and you finally have a few auditions. It’s a scary process to have worked so hard to get past one obstacle only to find yourself staring into the jaws of an entirely different beast. This one is bigger, meaner, and more direct. When we set ourselves up with fruitful situations and they finally flower into true opportunity, we have put in the legwork on the business side. Almost forgot about the creative side, eh? How terrifying it is to be judged in a matter of seconds and perhaps roasted over the proverbial fire after much sacrifice.

Sometimes, it is a matter of focus: when all of the conditions aren’t perfect, how can we still dig down and find that concentration to do what we know to be right as it pertains to our craft? To me, if we don’t test ourselves under these circumstances, there will always be some form of doubt which can negatively creep over our subconscious and have quite an adverse effect on our performance. Simple solution: tank one. Read More

Don’t Wait On Los Angeles

Irony. We’ve saved our pennies working our degrading jobs, packed our lives into our cars and set out on a great adventure to Los Angeles to pursue that dream of working in entertainment. We unload all of our belongings into a friend’s cheap apartment and crash on a couch until we get our feet set and move into a dive of our own. We get a quick lay of the land before applying for as many of those same degrading jobs as we can. We are creatures of habit.

Obviously, few to none of us start out towards the top of the heap. Rent is due and you have to eat- you gotta do what you gotta do. But how quickly we forget why we came out here. How quickly this town can eat you up if you let it. It’s a slow grind of frustration; a poison. Luckily, the antidote is simple: do what you came out here to do. Read More

Getting Acting Gigs By Sneaking In The Backdoor

So you’ve moved to L.A. and now it’s time to implement phase two of the plan: get discovered by some chance occurrence while serving a big time director his or her organic fruit smoothee with all natural granola at your unavoidable “day job.”  Simple, right?  My advice to you: put down the apron and pick up a walkie talkie.  If you’re going to work some BS job it might as well be in the same ballpark of the sport you’d like to play.

The truth is that the stakes are extremely high and the competition is ever present in this business.  The long shot discovery is an urban legend.  Careers aren’t made overnight; they take years sometimes decades of constant dedication and drive.  Talent, sure.  But everyone’s talented here- don’t you watch Idol?  Yes, if you have a serving job you get tips and your schedule is open for “auditions.”  But why let someone else be in control of your own destiny?  Not saying agents are a bad thing, but sometimes it’s an excuse for complacency.  I have an agent and I still bust my butt to get my own work, and a lot of my acting jobs have come from working in the film industry.  I know that must sound completely nuts… Read More