Let's Learn About Magic

Whips and chains and hand grenades and candy canes and marmalade! Thank you. That was me singing a song about war, singing a song about candy and preservatives. It's sort of a protest song, but it's also sort of my take on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Bang, bang, or sounds you hear that come out of a gun during a war. Chitty, chitty. It's the noise a Mexican chicken makes, I guess. I don't know.

Anyway, this is acting coach Dan Rodandan, teaching actors how to act. Top of the podcast to you. Top of the morning to you. Hi-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti. It's another accent that I can do. It's somewhere in the United Kingdom. My number is 917-214-8DAN. The telephone number, 917-214-8DAN, which is what I just said twice so hopefully you can remember it. Thank you. I will not answer the phone if you call the phone. I will not answer the phone. I cannot answer the phone. It's not an actual phone. It's just a service. You can leave me a message, ask me a question about whatever you like. Anything at all. Ask me about acting or the trades. Dan, we all really want to hear your review of The Chronicles of Riddick. The new one, Riddick. We all want to hear your review of Orange Is the New Black. Whatever, just ask. That'll give you a reason to go somewhere.

I have an email address, you can email me, teachingactorshowtoact@gmail.com. Finally got a Gmail, thank you Gmail. Very exclusive Gmail. Had to be invited back in the day, but not today. Today I was able to hold my head high and say, I would like my own email address. They said, okay. So now I have it. teachingactorshowtoact@gmail.com.

I often plea to have you guys go out there and rate me on iTunes, leave reviews. Number seven. Number seven when you Google acting. I'm ahead, I'm ahead of, I'm ahead of a bunch of jerkoffs and phonies. I also have a website, teachingactorshowtoact.com. Not getting a lot of activity on those either. However, I have begun posting these episodes on Facebook and wouldn't you know it, I got a lovely, I got a lovely little, little, little comment on the Facebook page here. It is for episode 26. It's not your fault. With the very, very handsome Leigh Shriver. What was it? Leigh? Bruce Lee. Leigh Foster? Leigh Foster. That was his name. He was a very handsome guy. Cheerios didn't like him, so he shit in a bucket. I said it wasn't his fault. He said it wasn't his fault. Then everything was happy.

Anyway, there was a comment on my Facebook page. Thank you, Zuckerberg. And it really, you know, it threw me for a loop. Sent me spinning right round, right round, like a record baby, round, round, right round. The Wedding Singer. From a gentleman named Don Baldwin. Don Baldwin says,

This is so much bullshit. Acting is not a thinking process. You don't teach an actor how to act. You show them how to teach themselves. The deep personal magic inside every actor is so well guarded. Most often, they are not fully aware of it. That's so true. It scares them. It is so big, much bigger than they are right now. They are certainly not going to let someone else expose it to them. Most acting teachers mean well. But they were never taught how to be an acting teacher. They studied here and there, and one day decided, well, I'm going to pass this on. Never works out well. Bad habits is all you end up with. I saw a reel the other day of an actor who's probably very gifted. All I saw was several cuts of different emotional states of being. It looked real, but there was not one transition in the whole reel. That is what great acting is. Going from one real human emotion to a distinctly different one right before your eye. One seamless moment to moment.

And he ends it by saying this. If any of you need help out there, let me know. Don Baldwin. I need help out there. If it wasn't for bad habits I'd have no habits at all. That's what they say. So give me a call. Please Don. Give me a call. I looked you up. I looked you up on the Facebook. Saw a lot of pictures of you there. You look like a very handsome man. It looks like you have a great relationship with that dog. It's a really good-looking dog. I wish I had a dog. Even a stray. I'd love to pet a dog for even 15 minutes. Don Baldwin, please give me a call. I need your help. 917-214-8DAN.

Now, I've been reading this to myself over and over and over and over again for the past two or three nights, there's one word that keeps jumping out at me. And it's a word in the sentence that goes like this. A deep personal magic inside every actor is so well guarded. You heard it that time, didn't you? The word is magic. If you want to know about magic, there's only one real source. Todd Raines. Todd Raines! Chaos reigns! Can't stop the Raines. Why would you try? I got to talk to Todd Raines about this. Todd, can you get on the line? Let's talk. You and me, one-on-one. We're going to have a chat. Let's learn about magic. Todd Raines. Todd Raines. Can't stop the Raines. The man with the golden rain. Making it rain with golden showers. Big Todd. The rain man. The rain maker. Big stick. Big man. What's going on, Todd?

Yeah. What's that dream look like today?

But she did eventually find you.

That's good. That's what moms are good for, right?

Mine was hit by a bus. She was really good at finding the front of a bus. Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to talk about is a particular post that somebody put on the Zuckerberg book out there with the face. He said, hey, the deep magic of the artist of the... Let me read it next because I can't remember it. The deep personal artist of the magic remembering... I actually don't even have it in front of me. I'm going to have to try to remember it. Every artist has a personal memory who is themselves and magical. Acting is not a thinking process. You don't teach an actor how to act. We all guard our magical magic. Now, you, as somebody who's a magician, that's a metaphor, but you as an actor, as a force to be reckoned with in the Hollywood sphere, whether you're grounded or not, how do you guard that kind of magic?

Oh, wait, so you're saying that the magic guards the actor, not the other way around.

So you're sort of the Highlander vampire of acting magic.

How many can there be?

I think a very important question before we go any further is how much of this is metaphor and how much of this is literal? This guy that made this posting, he was talking about transitions, being acting or something like that.

So let me ask you this real quick. You say that you can control people's transitions. Why don't you make me transition from thing to thing? As a display of your power, Almighty Christ, turn over the tables in my merchant hall.

The power of Christ compels you.

Well, yeah, I would say maybe 10% you, 90% my dad. Maybe 89% my dad, 1% the bus thing. What can Don Baldwin learn from a man like you, who not only guards magic, but has magic guard him?

And so you could just literally have people trying to help him learn to act, whichever way, his definition or other people's definition. He cannot learn to act now. All right, Todd Raines, let me ask you this. If Don Baldwin came to you, to your home, to the room that you're grounded in, sweaty, crying, and saying, please, Todd, at what price will you return my magic to me? What will it take? I, Don Baldwin, am at your knees begging to have my magic returned. What price do you think you would start out with?

One million dollars for a Don Baldwin amount of magic. That's a million dollar actor right there.

I think you just paid him a compliment. But, Todd, I have to tell you, I think it's very cruel of you to take a man's magic away from him and then ridicule him for not having any magic. That sounds like a bully to me, Todd. You a bully?

It's a good point.

Sort of a genocide of Thespis.

All right. Well, it sounds like you've made your intentions clear. Don Baldwin, I would like to apologize on Todd Raines' behalf for stealing your magic at such a young age. You know, Todd, I've spent a lot of money on buffalo meat.

Well, the year's almost over, so I'll just keep buying it just in case. Todd Raines, everybody. You can't stop the Raines and I won't try. Oh, toddy toddy scottity tighty toe. There I go again with my accent. Tiddly tiddly totally tea tea tattity tee tootie too. Yeah, I started, I started making that noise because I had popcorn stuck in my teeth that I needed to, you to get it out. Speaking of popcorn, let's take some calls. We're taking phone calls. Yes, we are. From an answering machine, not an actual phone. I can't answer it. We cannot have a back-and-forth. First call.

What acting have I done? I called a podcast and acted like an asshole. Oh, wait. No, that's what you did. What acting have I done? The world is a stage. Next call.

All right, Marcus. There's certainly a lot in that call to sink my teeth into. You say you're 350 pounds. That is a large size. I mean, unless you're 9 or 10 feet tall, which I assume you're probably not. You say you have no neck. That's going to be an obstacle for you. That's not an attractive feature, I would say. It sounds like you don't have a neck. Marcus. Marcus is the name. That surprised me because I'd assume that you were probably a female by the sound of your voice. And, uh, it's much easier for a heavyset female to be considered attractive, I think, than a heavyset male. And, uh, no, that's not sarcasm you're hearing, that's racism. Yes, of course. Uh, they, they say that many ethnic men prefer a larger, uh, uh, undercarriage on a lady. They, did you treat her like an object, like a beanbag chair, just plow in there, I guess, as far as, far as what the music tells me that I hear when the cars drive by very loudly in my neighborhood.

350 pounds. That is a large man. But I think the biggest issue is that you said, how do I act sexy? You can't. There is no acting sexy. You can only be sexy. And that has a lot more to do with confidence than anything else. You got to believe you're sexy. You got to have that sexy look in your eye. I don't know who you're trying to attract, but the most important thing is you gotta look at them and just say, hey, in the immortal words of one of those other gentlemen who sings in the cars as they drive by, I'm F-wording you tonight. You know that song? I'm fucking you tonight? That's the look you want to give. Somebody sings that song. Anyway, you can't act sexy, you just have to be sexy, and to be sexy, you have to be rich. So make that money. Get that paper, paper chase. Marcus, I want you to call me back in six months, and I want you to tell me what your net worth is. And then just be sex. Be the sex. Be the sex you want to see in the world. Next call.

All right. Well, first of all, congratulations on getting the part. Congratulations on getting the opportunity to show your nudity off in front of a whole room of people legally and at a school. Great job. Uh, but, uh, there are two words that are going to be the key to your success in becoming the elephant in the room, inflating your image, having your comedy make, make it, uh, making it move. There are going to be, these are the two words, and they are visible inches. You want to increase the visible inches, so that means lack of pubic hair, that's a great way to start. You want to get a jump. You want to get that base in there. Get the base, get the root, get the root of the tree so it doesn't look like a sapling.

What you're going to want to do is, there's a few other tricks. If you have a little bit of time, how long are you going to be naked on stage for is the question, and how much time do you have to prepare? Lance Armstrong. Lance Armstrong had a lot of success. Blood doping. Well, maybe we could do some blood doping for you. What you do is you take yourself a hypodermic needle full of blood, maybe your own, maybe somebody else's, and you inject that into the bottom right next to where the, I guess the vein, I guess you would call it. You fill it up. And the great thing about that is that nobody's going to be able to see it because it's on the bottom. It'll swell it up. And since it's not, you know, blood rushing there because of arousal or anything, it won't even make the guy stand up. It'll just look like a heavyset water balloon, which is, I think, what you want. You don't want it to be discernibly turgid, as they say in the FCC guidelines. You want it to just sort of hang out, like Jason Segel.

Another thing you could do is, if you're only going to be up there for a short amount of time, arouse yourself, but don't touch yourself. That's the trick. Look at something exciting, let it do its own work, and then walk out there. Because, you know, you'll be nervous, and then it won't, you know, the tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick of the second hand standing up that we all, you know, scientifically look at, that'll walk away from itself, and it'll just be kind of full. Or if you do want to touch yourself and you're worried about bruising, just cover it in makeup. Maybe make it a different color. Have you thought about that. Maybe paint it black. That could help. I mean, yes, black is a slimming color, but it's also, it's, you know, psychologically, you see something like that. Oh, it must be, there it is. Look at that. He's a magnum man. And he sells cornets to the kids in the town with the rat-a-tat drums. I don't know if you're doing the music man or not, but is there a nude scene in The Music Man? Anyway, that's a lot of good advice there. I would say probably blood doping's the best idea. Next call.

All right, well, I guess, what can you say except what a coincidence. That's amazing that so many actors and so many different schools seem to be having this issue. Coming at it from a managerial standpoint, where it's not a problem that you see in yourself but a problem that you see in others. It's a tightrope that you're going to have to walk there. So maybe a fluffer. Maybe you hire a nice young girl or guy, I don't know, he's an actor or so, a nice young girl, or whoever's around, really. And so right before that scene where he's got to walk out there, maybe you find somebody who can, you know, ruffle his feathers a little bit, puff him up, give him a great big kiss. You know, either maybe just a kiss. And maybe they'll stand up at attention.

Another thing you can maybe do is recommend that this character that he's playing would be somebody who would probably, in his backstory, he's a swimmer. He's an Olympic swimmer, so he has to shave all of his body hair, all of it, you know, visible inches and all that. There's also what you can do is you can maybe set up a system of magnifying glasses that would be invisible to the people in the audience, but would make certain things look quite a bit bigger. I don't know if you've seen The Lord of the Rings, but they had these forced perspective. You know, they take a small guy and make him look big and vice versa. You just get, you know, get a couple of mirrors. Maybe a projector or something. Or you get a balloon. Yeah, you just stick a balloon on the end of it. I have a star, I have a star, I have a star, I have a big bright shining star, like the man said at the end of the film. You know, what do they call that? The Big Lebowski? What was that one? Boogie Nights. That's the one. That's the one where he, at the end, he shows himself off in the mirror. He talks about being a great big shining star. And hey, if Mark Wahlberg can do it, you know, if Marky Mark wore a fake hog, then I suppose whoever this guy is, just buy him a fake dick. Simple as that. Get a fluffer or buy him a fake dick. And if you can cop me tickets to this play, I would love to see it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I was trolling one of my favorite websites, and I came across a poem that I'd like to end today's show with. A poem called, What Does This Mean?

I'm still falling. Long spiral downward rushes away from your heart. I thought I knew you, but walked right past you. No one seemed to notice my fear, least of all me. My joy turned to tears. My days into years. My youth is still there somewhere. I will live again and again and again to place at your feet my wilderness, the vast rolling landscape that I become. For you, I thought I became it. It became me for a little while in my mind. That heavy treasure that no one seems to want but you. And I can't see you anymore. Down here. Look behind you. Below your heels. I've lost! But I know how I got here. All I ever wanted was you. Place my heart into my mind. Now my eyes don't work anymore. You're the one I wanted to be. Afraid to be me. Please help me out of this trap I set for you. What does this mean?

At the end of the day, you gotta take all that. You gotta take all that advice. You got to put it inside your head. You got to let it percolate. Think about it, dream about it. Talk to a magical man inside your head. Whether it's Todd Raines. Or whether it's Don Baldwin. Or whether it's Dan Rodandan. One of those guys worth listening to. We all know it's Todd Raines. Or Don Baldwin. Or Dan Rodandan. We don't know which it is. Whips and chains and whips and James and let's go to the circus. There's a bear on a horse. Karate. Simple as that.