Today, I finally had to break down and add up all of my tax deductions from last year. My mom has been bugging me to do it, and she also says that next year (eek!) I will have to do my own taxes! That'll be the day. Looking through all of my old bank statements and adding up gas, costs of printing headshots, and all other acting related expenses, I started to think about the relationship between art and commerce.



For a while, I was going to a service called Reel Pros here in L.A. There are many so-called casting workshops here and in New York. Actors fork over large amounts of cash in exchange for "being seen" by big casting directors....all in hopes of MAYBE getting an audition and then MAYBE getting the part.

Ostensibly, it seemed to be a great way to network. Hey, if I don't know any casting directors yet, here's a good way to meet one! But after about 2 months of paying $50 a workshop, doing cold reads and receiving meaningless feedback from these casting directors, and wasting my time and energy getting to these events......I realized what a waste it was. Of course Steve had been telling me all along that these sorts of services prey on innocent, poor actors, but I am stubborn and I had to learn the hard way. Well, I suppose anything is better than the casting couch!


(image source: Photojenics.com)

But I digress. It's just tough to realize that art and money have become inextricably linked. If an idea isn't perfectly marketable, then nobody wants to hear about it. Isn't the point of entertainment to show something new and innovative? Instead we have to churn out more of the same, safe, vanilla content if we want a paycheck. Most people who become artists are by definition not business people. So there's the paradox.

With Killer Chihuahua!, our problem has always been marketing. I think the problem is.....the internet is a new frontier. The only things that become popular are sensational, shocking, or mindless jumble. True human stories are not what is being sought out. Everyone's just looking for the video to send to their friend for a cheap laugh.

Maybe in the future of the internet, there will be a place for us. For now, we can just keep plugging away and getting better at what we do best -- filmmaking.

Here's a poem that I wrote a few weeks ago about expression....

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awakening
enlarging
I accept: my place as a vessel, my face as nothing but a window, and my mind as nothing but a tool.
the carpenter and shopkeeper of my own reality, I continue.

I must facilitate my instincts
this is not temporary, the impulse born before birth.
My soul compels me to poetry, while life pushes me to work.
The world I see needs humanity, unedited or staged.
Do you know I love you?
every last fault too?
yes.

you in your failed board meeting despair
or she with her newborn baby joy
unanimously we say
yes
love
yes
truth
yes
suffering
no
closed doors.

in a flurry of motivation
I struggle to convey to you -- stop. you have already arrived.
dying to express
living to digress from our everyday torture
and into Being without reservation.

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Katy