A chat with the guys from NBC.com’s, Fact Checkers Unit!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:24 — 13.4MB)

FCU: Fact Checkers Unit is a new web series from writers and stars Peter Karinen and Brian Sacca. Along with director Dan Beers, the three of them write each episode of the series that’s currently streaming exclusively on NBC.com.

The show follow Peter and Brian as they check each and every celebrity fact printed in the fictional Dictum magazine. In their adventures, they’ve fact checked Bill Murray, Donald Faison, Luke Perry and their idol, Alex Trebek.

I talked with the guys about the show, how they get the celebrities, the future of web-series and yes, Alex Trebek.

For the full interview, click onto the audio link above or download from iTunes.

So how would you describe your show? What would be the best way?

Peter Karinen: This is Pete, I would describe FCU: Fact Checkers Unit as a short form comedic web series as two overzealous fact checkers who take their jobs way too seriously.  They work for Dictum magazine which is a men’s magazine and they are pretty much universally hated around the office because no one else seems to care quite as much as they do about their job.

Could you get into your characters, were these characters that you know of or could relate to?

Brian Sacca: I’d say our characters come a little bit from Pete and myself as comedians. We’ve been performing in New York for a long time and we’re now currently in LA. We started performing uptown and realized that wasn’t our scene and quickly moved to downtown to performing in the backs of bars because we realized that we’re more of the kind of self depreciating people that take ourselves too seriously. And so we kind of fed that into our characters. These are people who work as hard as they can at their job but almost too hard to a fault so you can see that it came us.

Peter Karinen: And what Brian didn’t mention is that it’s a really smooth transition from performing in the back of bars to performing on the back of the internet. So, we’re excited to be on NBC.com which is a bigger website. We definitely take our comedy very seriously much like our characters take their jobs a little too seriously at times. You can just ask Dan the director we pretty much make his life pretty miserable because we are super anal and meticulous and unreasonable.

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Behind The Scenes: A Life in the Theatre

Here’s a behind the scenes look at David Mamet‘s play, A Life in the Theater.

Starring T.R. Knight and Patrick Stewart, the play is a behind-the-scenes look at two actors battling to share both a dressing room and the spotlight.

Synopsis: A Life in the Theatre follows two actors in a repertory company: Robert, an older, experienced performer and John, a newcomer to the stage. John at first welcomes Robert’s guidance, but soon overshadows his mentor. From rehearsals to reprisals, from ego trips to acting tips, the play gives a glimpse into the complex relationship that develops as the torch is passed from one generation to the next—a passing that wavers from love and mutual respect to impatience and resentment.

Extra Injured On The Set Of Transformers 3

This sounds awful. An extra was injured on the set of the upcoming movie Transformers 3.

She was in a car that was being towed by another vehicle when “the cable between the two vehicles broke. It whipped around and sliced through the woman’s car and sliced through her skull, apparently,” said another extra Blaine Baker.

Randee Heller: Mad Men’s maddening secretary

If you watch Mad Men, than you know that Don Draper’s new secretary, the clueless Ida Blankenship, is a fun addition to the show.

The actress who plays her, Randee Heller, tells USA Today that the attention has “been such a surprise. I’ve been in this business for 40 years — you do a show and you don’t know what’s going to come of it. The accolades have been fun.”

She loves that the character “doesn’t have any agenda — she’s not trying to climb the proverbial ladder, she’s not following the rules. She doesn’t know there are rules.”

Heller hadn’t seen the show before her audition. “I didn’t know anything. I was just doing what was on the page, an older secretary with a strong New York accent,” she says. She quickly caught up though with the help of TiVo to “get the tone and the characters.”

Best known for playing Ralph Macchio‘s mom in the original Karate Kid, series creator Matt Weiner had no idea who she was but that “when you see someone working that much, you don’t worry about them melting down or freezing up on the job.”

Screenplay: Inception

Want the screenplay to Inception?

Sure you do!

Click here for the script

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy

Jesse Tyler Ferguson gets ready for the Emmys

Modern Family‘s Jesse Tyler Ferguson grabbed his camera and took CNN behind the scenes as he gets ready for Sunday’s Emmy Awards.

LA: Free Seminar from The Savvy Actor

Here’s a free event from our friends at Savvy Actor!

LA Free Seminar - Find Your Missing Link

Sept 25th from 12:00pm-1:00pm

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Odds are you can relate to one of the following or even have a friend who can -

You’ve tried everything and just keep hitting the wall.
You’re overwhelmed and spreading yourself to thin so you get stuck… or stop.
You’re caught up in figuring out what “they” want and driving yourself crazy!

This seminar is your answer, your reality check, your key to what it takes to get your acting career out of limbo and on the fast track to living your dreams.

“With the Savvy Actor seminar you’ll “cut to the chase” and not waste time, money,
or energy doing things that get you nowhere.” – Ru Flynn

Join NYC’s Branding and Marketing experts for this free hour to learn what no other “acting business” workshop is talking about -

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Register now to meet the team that brought you - the first ever business plan for actors– The Savvy Actor Career Manual! Click HERE for Savvy Success Stories of actors just like you who are FINALLY on the inside track.

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Mark Ruffalo on why he took on The Hulk

from whatsplaying

Mark Ruffalo told Australia’s Sunday Herald-Sun that if he had been offered the role of The Hulk in the first film, he likely would’ve passed.

“I probably wouldn’t have done this movie in the past. But because of what Robert [Downey Jr] had done and where that genre has gone since then, I did it”.

“I have always tried to stay ahead of being stereotyped and the more I felt you could f— with people’s expectations of you, the longer a career you have. I consider myself a blue collar actor that way. What I do really enjoy is that rhythm and style and family and I like that kind of nomadic existence. I have never really been one to go for the cash. If my dad knew how much money I had turned in my lifetime he would kick me in the a—”.

He also said that when he tests for something like The Avengers it has to feel like he’s “going for more than a job”.He says he’s a bit wary at the prospect of the green screen acting and the barrage of special effects he’ll be acting alongside when The Avengers starts filming.

Ernie Hudson on his worst non-acting job, auditioning and more!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:38 — 19.0MB)

Ernie Hudson is probably best known for his role as Winston Zeddemore in Ghostbusters, the warden in OZ or his role in his current series, The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

But, he’s been on stage and screen for years also appearing in Las Vegas, Law and Order, Desperate Housewives, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle and was on Broadway in last year’s,  Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.

In his new film, Doonby, he plays Leroy, a blues musician who quits his life on the road to settle down with the woman of his dreams.

He’s a truly talented guy and gave a wonderfully candid interview. We talk about how he got his start, the worst non-acting job he’s ever had, if he still has to audition (and when he does, his tech savvy way around it), his new film Doonby and so much more!

For the full interview, click onto the audio link above or download from iTunes.

How did you get your start?

Ernie Hudson: I grew up in Michigan in a small town, Benton Harbor. Then through a series of life changes, ended up at Wayne State University and discovered theatre there and just fell in love with it. Started acting back in 67, somewhere around there, and worked in Detroit. I got a scholarship to Yale after I graduated from Wayne State, went there and came out to Hollywood and did a film with Gordon Parks. I went to University of Minnesota for a while because my wife at the time was working on her degree and then when that marriage ended me and my two sons came out to California. And we just got a little place and did what actors do.

Basically, I had got into college and was really trying hard to find– my grandmother raised me and wanted me to find a good job. And I really tried the good job thing and did a lot of different things and never really felt comfortable until I walked in the theatre one night and saw a play and I just felt at home. And I think it was when I did my first play, I just knew how to do that. I think all the jobs I had, I always felt like ‘they’re going to fire me at any minute and if they don’t they should fire me at any minute.’ Whereas, with this I just felt,  ‘okay I can do this.’

What was the worst real job that you had?

Ernie Hudson: Well, probably the worst job I had actually while I was in high school, I was working at a foundry. My brother got me a job there when I was in my senior year of high school and so I would leave school at noon and I would meet him and we would drive up and I’d work from 3 to midnight. And my job was shoveling dirt in a room that was filled with this black dirt that they would use for the molding machine. They had a conveyor belt that just kept going continuously, so I had to shovel through the dirt for nine hours a day, filling these things up. And you never had the satisfaction of filling anything up because the conveyor belt kept going and you were just shoveling all day.

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Michael Douglas discusses his cancer with David Letterman

Michael Douglas was on the Late Show with David Letterman last night promoting his new film, Wall Street 2.

Letterman asked him about his battle with throat cancer and he was pretty candid about it. When Letterman asked about why he didn’t sound like he had throat cancer, Douglas gave a great answer: “Because I’m on stage!” You can check it out at the 3 minute mark.

And it all ends with Letterman giving him a hug.

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