HOW TO DO IMPRESSIONS

The most common question I get asked by audiences after my show is “how do you DO that?”

Of course, that’s a question I’m trying to answer in the show.  I’m demonstrating, as much as I can, how I do it.  I guess if I had some kind of high-tech surgical micro-camera, I could show precisely how I change the inside of my face and throat, but then, even I don’t know exactly what I’m doing.

Physically, I’m flexing ligaments, closing off airways, restricting breath, pinching, opening, tightening and loosening a lot of mysterious things in my head, throat and chest, all of which have unfamiliar Latin names.

But it is like asking a professional athlete which tendons he runs with; he probably doesn’t know and won’t care until one snaps and puts him on the bench.

The most important thing to me is viewpoint.  When I am familiar enough with a famous person to be able to adopt their point of view, then I am getting somewhere.  That’s also the most interesting part.

We all get used to a artist’s viewpoint by being exposed to their ideas and thoughts thru writing, visual art or performance.  In the case of a close relative, or people we spend years with, we understand their viewpoints very well- sometimes even to the extent that we don’t recognize that we have started looking at the world thru THEIR eyes more than our own.  (see Dianetics, The Modern Science of Mental Health.)

In the case of a world famous celebrity, we often know “all about them” from the opinions and comments of others, as much as from what we’ve heard or seen them do on TV or in films.  This of course is complicated by the fact that actors (and quite a few politicians) are generally pretending to be someone or something different from who they really are.

People are often surprised by what they discover when they actually come into direct personal contact with a famous person–they aren’t what they seemed like on the big screen.

So, even viewpoint is a bit of a conceived thing.  Yet to communicate a star’s personality, impressionists draw upon what we all are familiar with to create a duplication which we call an “Impression”.

The vocal aspects of the performance are actually secondary, but also very important.

In my case, I can hear the voices I do in my mind, and also feel where the sound would have to come from, were I to try and match those sounds.  It’s entirely mental at that point.

Usually an impression for me starts there, listening to a recording I have made in some file in my mind, and determining if it bears enough similarity to tones I know I can produce, to pull off a reasonable copy.

Unlike most people, I get about half a dozen requests or opportunities a day to see if I can match the vocal quality of another person.  After about thirty years of playing that game, I’m very familiar with what I can do, and what I can’t.

I’ve also been very fortunate in my life to meet and become friends with people from countries all over the globe, so I have a passing familiarity with a lot of accents and dialects.  (I envy my friends, like the brilliant Phil Proctor) who have taken the same opportunity and actually learned lots of languages; an infinitely more useful use of time.)

I’ve also worked beside many amazing voice actors, who love to share their newest voice, or some perennial favorite; you can extrapolate a lot from the changes you observe another making to create a sound.

So, here’s what I do- I listen, adopt the viewpoint, then feel where the sound might be coming from, then I try to make the sound.  Maybe one word, maybe a short sentence.  Then more, as needed.

Usually it doesn’t take too long to get the “DNA” of the voice.

And I can either get it quickly or not.  If I don’t feel it’s in my range, or if I don’t yet have the knowledge, in the case of an accent with specific rules, then I either do an intensive study or I put in on a back burner.

And that’s about it.

Performing it for YOU is another exercise, and requires taking all that I have learned about show business, which generally boils down to “practice, practice, practice.”  Even the videos I do with my JIMPRESSIONS require a lot of rehearsal to make them look effortless to you.

If I can hear it in my head, I can usually, eventually, perform it for you.  And I look forward to it!

Any other questions?

By the way, I will be performing in 2013 in various venues and countries, but generally I will be in Hollywood at The Acting Center every first Saturday of each month, at least until June.  Hope to see you somewhere!

What the Hell am I trying to do?

What the Hell am I trying to do?

Readers of this blog will perhaps not be surprised that I like to entertain people and have found a few ways to do that through videos, audio projects, live performances and even illustrations and paintings.

And it might seem obvious why I have chosen this path.

But to be honest, I sometimes have to back up and look again to examine my motives.

Like a lot of folks, I find I have to concentrate on doing projects that will pay my bills.  I can get very excited about some job that pays well, when if I am totally honest about it, I couldn’t care less about anyone listening or watching the finished product, and wouldn’t cross the street to experience it myself.

Other projects are infinitely more rewarding artistically, might inspire and even enlighten others, and pay nothing at all, or even cost me money.

Other things I get myself involved with ARE exciting, but to others more than myself, and so I do them, but they remain distant from my own interests.

I’m sure you can think of things in your own life that are similar.  Your allegiance to things depends a lot upon what they might mean to your own comfort and survival.

So, it can get confusing when I look at my career and try to focus more intensely on what it is I truly want to do, irrespective of other considerations like money, approval or fame.

It reminds me of a time when I was on Hollywood Blvd once when I was about ten or 11 years old with my father on my birthday.  He told me we could go in any store around there and I could choose a reasonably priced gift.

Hollywood Blvd was in a little better condition in those days, but not too much better.

“What do you want?” my dad asked me.  I discovered that this was a very tough assignment. I wasn’t actually able to make a choice.  We wound up going to a movie or something.

To this day I have trouble choosing when the choices are “open-ended”.

And so it is with me with the kind of things I get myself into professionally.  I’m a bit promiscuous in that sense, by which I mean I will choose something just to fill the gap, not necessarily wait for the ultimate, proper or appropriate opportunity.

That’s me.  And it keeps me, as you have seen, extraordinarily busy.

But what do I REALLY want to do?

Tough one, that.

I know I like to hear the laughter of an audience.  I know I like to be stretched creatively and work with others on something new and extraordinary.  I love music, comedy and the sensation that I have left people feeling better than when we first met.

I would like to figure out some way to exhilarate an audience.  To make them shout and go, “WOW!!!”  There have to be many ways I can still do this… I’m working on it.

I’m trying to help people convince themselves to be happy.  Shouldn’t be so hard!  One would think that people would want to convince themselves to be happy, especially with so much unhappiness available.

So, nothing profound here.  Just musing about motives, inclinations and desires.  And of course, the “wanting to” will lead me somewhere, probably some unexpected territory.  I’ll be happy to send you a postcard when I get there.

And by the way, you can see me live in JIMPRESSIONS on Saturday, February 2 at 8 p.m. at The Acting Center, Hollywood.  For tickets and info: http://www.theactingcenterla.com/jimpressions

Another Day, Another School Massacre

Another day, another school massacre.

Nothing so turns the stomachs and infuriates the soul than these now all too routine crimes.

As a human being, you have to point a finger at something. We demand answers. We abhor the vacuum of “What the hell..?”

So, guns become a likely target for blame.

But you think about it a bit, and it doesn’t hold up. There are lots of guns, and only a very few people who use them in such a horrific way.

Video-games, Death Metal music, other art forms that are disturbing and violent can also seem a likely source. But after all, they are just “entertainment.” Many of the greatest works of literature, film and music have had disturbing or violent elements. That alone doesn’t seem like the prime candidate.

So, what are we left with?

Disturbed people, crazy people… okay. Well, obviously, that’s a category.

But what about this fact: all school shooters have been on some kind of anti-depressant, or other psychotropic drug. Some have been on several.

Wouldn’t that be a worthy area of investigation? I mean, you can do something about that. There have always been crazy people. There haven’t always been crazy people on mind-altering, experimental (modern antidepressants are “experimental” as far as populations are concerned) substances.

Sure seems that way to me.

One wants to lash out, one wants to correct an abomination. One should demand answers. But let’s point our fingers in the correct general direction, one which will bear some fruit.

Prozac, Zoloft, all these meds carry black box warnings about side effects like “Suicidal and/or Homicidal thoughts and actions.” Should those be acceptable side effects?

If a car manufacturer put out a car with the warning that “A certain percentage of vehicles will drive suddenly off a cliff or explode without warning”, wouldn’t it become the target of scrutiny? Heck, it happened to Toyota with the stuck down accelerator, and they got run through the wringer, and rightly so.

Shouldn’t drug manufacturers and the doctors who recommend these drugs also be censured and encouraged to, I don’t know, knock it off?

I don’t think I’m being unreasonable. What do you think?

These Shorts Are For A Younger Person, Wouldn’t You Say?

By now, unless you watch television that is thoroughly scrubbed for commercial content, you may have seen me in an ad for Sprint where I play an impatient, fault-finding German boss, criticizing one of his employees.

I was very fortunate to book this job. The director, Randy Krallman, is a talented young guy who knew of my ability to do this kind of character, because we had done some very elaborate shorts for Volkswagon about 8 years ago with me in essentially the same persona.

I auditioned, and Randy had to be very persuasive to get the client to sign off on my unusual approach. The part had originally been created for an American, possibly even a female.

I can tell you, it is rare for American actors to be permitted to do any sort of foreign accent in an advertisement; it used to be common, but the “politically correct” wave of the last couple of decades had been quite thorough in expunging this kind of performance from the small screen and radio, too. (Something about the “Frito Bandito”, if memory serves.)

So, I was surprised and delighted by the possibility of playing this part, and also crossed my fingers that it would even run on television at all. The last national commercial I acted in, for another telecom company, coincidentally, never saw the light of day.

We improvised a lot of variations on that last line… I can’t recall who came up with the memorable, “These shorts are for a younger person, wouldn’t you say?”  I did improvise the “uuh.”  I do remember that.

Amazingly, the spot has really “saturated”, as they say. The spot started to run on all the major TV shows like Survivor, American Idol, The Apprentice etc. I have had many friends text me from cinemas saying they just saw my commercial before the blockbuster movie they were there to see, even in iMax theaters, which is a scary thought.

When I first started in commercials, with Quality Inn’s “Man in a suitcase” spots back in 1986, a national commercial had considerable airplay, on the then three major channels, and the budding cable outlets, of which there were maybe about five. Now, a national spot can show up on planes, movie screens, on smartphones, mobile devices, YouTube, Facebook, and of course TVs. That’s a lot of platforms.

It’s a whole new game. One that I was beginning to think I had been invited “Out” of.

If by some chance you haven’t yet seen this spot, it’s on YouTube, and I invite you to watch it and comment how wonderful it is, and how actor Jim Meskimen needs to be used again and again and again, in all his various personas, not just the uptight German one.

Click here, and thanks for watching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drRTJWbxRzg

And of course, come see the JIMPRESSIONS live show, info at http://www.jimpressions.net

Long Gone Stranger

Tamra and I drove up the coast to Santa Cruz one sunny morning last month and I finally got a chance to lay eyes on the university that I graduated from 30 years ago and hadn’t seen since then.

I graduated with a BA in art from Oakes College, UCSC in 1982.  I was a year behind, as I had taken some time off to work at Hanna Barbera in 1978, and to study oil painting in Spain from 1980 to 1981.  By the time I actually graduated, most of my classmates were long gone, on to jobs in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York, Hollywood, Europe.  I didn’t care about graduation at the time, didn’t attend the ceremony; I was just finishing what I had started.  I didn’t think having a diploma or not was going to make much of a difference in the artistic destinations I was heading for. It hasn’t.

I had tried to revisit the University of California, Santa Cruz about twenty five years ago, but the torrential rains kept us inside the rental car the entire trip.  We literally couldn’t see the place for the downpour and the fogged up windows.

After that, I never had any opportunity or strong enough desire to come back and explore.  And very quickly, 30 years fled by.

On this recent trip, I noticed a weird sensation that was dogging me all the way up the coast.  It wasn’t pleasant. Something like one feels when one is making an obligatory visit to a person who might be very unkind.  Like a mean, cranky grandpa.

Over the years I had grown a bit “snarky” about my old school.  I won’t bore you with the natter.   So, as an uncomfortable feeling of quiet dread settled over me, growing more acute as we approached the campus, I attributed it to the myriad deficiencies about the place I had grown accustomed to reciting to myself and others.

But still, it didn’t ring true.

I had been invited back to do a performance of my show, JIMPRESSIONS, and to do a workshop for theatre students on voice acting, or impressions, or whatever I wanted to talk to them about.  It was pretty loose.  I was also invited to participate in a rehearsal and short performance with the resident improv group, called Somebody Always Dies, (that being the trademark ending of their shows.)

This was going to be a pretty full schedule for two days.

One always gambles a bit in doing improv with strangers; the different schools and performance styles that call themselves “Improv” are sometimes incompatible, and I have had some nice experiences and a few really uncomfortable ones… I was praying that this would be one of the nice ones.

And again, this quiet, now gently throbbing dread was making itself known, in dim fantasies of antagonistic students lobbing challenges at me and my wife, making us feel embarrassed, or old, or…

As it turned out, the rehearsal, (which I volunteered my wife, Tamra for as well, to her surprise) was a pleasant one, an example of actors creating well together with cleverness and a lot of mutual support–which is far more important than cleverness–and made for a good time, and familiarized me with the “games” the group would do in performance the next day, after my show.

The improvisors had all greeted Tamra and I politely, introduced themselves and shook hands like civilized young people.  There were far less piercings, tats and facial hair than I expected.  (In my time, the style was very hippie, very hairy and probably not very fragrant.) I was impressed by how quick and sophisticated the references came flying off the tongues of the students, who were all about 21 or 22.  Of course, they were all fresh off of a number of plays, so naturally their literary allusions to Shakespeare and others were right in their back pockets.  Effortless.

They didn’t have a very set structure, less so that I am used to, but the support and regard for one another’s creations was built in to everything they did; it was often quite a magic trick to see them start in spontaneously in the same creative direction.  No train wrecks.  It was damn fine to see.

And in the end, someone DID die.  But she laughed about it.

The next day,  the day of my workshop, I again felt slightly like I was going to be given a cigarette and a blindfold before facing a lethal line of artillery.  This I attributed to… something.  Too much coffee?  Not enough preparation?  Full moon?

I decided to run the workshop by doing drills on a few simple fundamental points about Duplication and Control, things I had found were at the root of most of the work I had been doing as a professional voice actor.  I felt that even if no one eventually chose to follow me down the unique, thorny path I had stumbled onto as an actor, at least they would have some grasp of fundamentals that would pertain to more than just this pursuit.

Again, to my surprise, the assembled twenty or so college students were bright, attentive, pleasant and willing.  They jumped into the drills, were very kind to one another and to me, and didn’t even text!  Amazing.

The phantom dread was starting to slip into the background.

Students reports after the workshop were very favorable and I found my affinity for the students, particularly the ones who were also in the improv group, (who, in this second gathering I now was beginning to become very familiar with) and my affinity for the campus itself was increasing… I was feeling like I actually liked the place.  Very peculiar sensation.

That night, I did my show for a full house at Porter College, and despite the kind of old-fashioned slant of JIMPRESSIONS, full of allusions to actors of a bygone time, I got a lot of laughs and a standing ovation at the end.  Nice!

Then, the improv show.  Which also went off very well, and which I found very easy to fold myself into and contribute to.  The kids all thanked me earnestly and we parted as friends.

A girlfriend from my student days even showed up unannounced, sweet eyes crinkled in a smile, just like in 1982, a face now framed in graying hair.  Gave me a quick hug and disappeared.

By this time, the dread had fully passed, but there was then a strange vacuum in its place; The Hole Dread Leaves Behind.  I felt like someone had left the room, but who?

Later, after I returned home and was trying to relate this story to my friend Tait, I found myself vocalizing what had happened:

“It was weird… I was feeling a lot of trepidation going up there, like I was expecting to run into someone who was going to give me a hard time…”  (Sound effects: BING.)

“Ah.  I was expecting to run into ME.  The person I had been when I left there back in 1982. (Pause.)  But that guy is long gone.”  Big smile.

That was the hole the dread had left.  The guy I used to be back then left it, like a footprint on a beach.   Not a villianous fellow, but with an odd, unpredictable edge.  Challenging, aloof, sometimes quite crass.  Uncharitable and prone to belittle.  Glib, smug, unkind.  Afraid, more than anything else.  And fearful, attracting things that threaten one, in the mistaken idea that one will “Just get it over with.”

Not a nice chap.  Certainly not all the time, and though the more positive qualities were there, too, the weak points were the ones that, unanswered and unaccounted for, made them float along in time, seeking resolution.  Like a ghost, I guess.

I wouldn’t have wanted to meet that long gone stranger again.  But if I had, (and he wasn’t me) I could probably have helped him.  At least to control his voice, if not his psyche.

Many things in Santa Cruz had changed, many were exactly the same.  Many new buildings had sprouted up on the campus, huge ones, still small compared to the redwoods.  The trees were taller, I guess.  I’d never been close enough to the top of any to have a comparison.  But trees, especially redwoods, do a good deal of growing in 30 years.  So do we.

LIVE IN ENCINITAS!

Last week, I did my JIMPRESSIONS show for a crowd in Encinitas, CA in San Diego at a lovely old jewel of a theater, the La Paloma.

Built in 1928, this well-preserved theatre is a small spanish art deco adobe & wood marvel, and very comfortable to perform in.  It’s used mainly as a second-run movie house, and I seem to recall when I was a kid visiting my grandma in nearby Cardiff-By-The-Sea, the marquee always had “Endless Summer” on it.

I was contacted originally by a guy I’d never met before, Ken Harrison, who owns several Comedy Traffic Schools in CA.  He grew up in Cardiff By-The-Sea where my grandmother used to live, and where my family has had vacation homes for decades.

Ken wanted to see my JIMPRESSIONS show, but didn’t want to have to come all the way to L.A. to see it, so he got his friend Allen, who runs the La Paloma, to book in a night for me.

Ken was very helpful and outgoing and he made it easy to accept the gracious invitation.  Since I could stay at our family home nearby, and we desperately needed a couple of days off, it was a no-brainer to try and make it work.

Since Ken and his family are big fans of Professor Knestor, I agreed to do the second act with the Virtual Museum, and take audience questions on art and culture as my alter ego, Oxmouth College’s own Prof. Jackdaws.

I don’t have many contacts down there, so we conspired to get on local radio and TV to promote the show, much the same way I did in Sydney, Australia last year.  Ken and I arranged an interview with a local radio personality, Bob “Sully” Sullivan to let me do some of my celebrity impressions on the air, and then did another interview the next morning with another host, Chip Franklin, who also was very generous and promoted the show on his program.

I had also done a podcast interview with Carolyn Fox, which my pal, Phil “Firesign” Proctor had recommended and then happily dropped in to contribute to, and we plugged the show that way.

We were pretty sure with the radio interviews, the podcast, my own YouTube promotion and especially the TV morning show appearance, we could easily fill the 340 seat venue.

Unfortunately for us,  the local TV show in San Diego that had confirmed an appearance to plug JIMPRESSIONS bumped me the morning of the show in favor of candidates from an upcoming mayoral race, which left us no TV exposure at all.  So, Ken, my director Tait Ruppert, my wife and daughter and I took a hitch on our courage and did what actors in that situation always do… we passed out flyers to people on the street!

By the end of the last day we didn’t have many advance ticket sales and I was steeling myself to play to a couple dozen souls in a vast old duchess of a theatre that could hold hundreds more, something I knew I could do, but would regard as a bit of a “Lose”.

As fate would have it, the promotion we had done was effective after all; by showtime, the house had about 120 people, mostly walk ins, and, spread out over all rows made for a very “Full” house, if not a “Full house.”  AND the important part was, they LOVED the show, and I could hear excited chatter afterwards, of people more in communication with one another and very cheerful.  That’s a very telling thing, and one I always listen for after the evening draws to a close.

We made a lot of friends, and learned another lesson: Never Depend on One Channel of Promotion to Do ALL the Work.

So, the JIMPRESSIONS tour continues!  Next: a performance and workshop at my old University, UCSC in Santa Cruz, CA, on May 29th.  After that, I’ll be back at The Acting Center in Hollywood for one night only, June 2nd at 8 p.m.  Then, Sacramento in July, and then… who knows?

For up to date schedule, videos, press and more, visit my new site: http://www.jimpressions.net.  And thanks for reading!

REDEMPTION & PURPOSE

One of the stickiest things I had to resolve for myself early on in my artistic career was a clear vision of what my purpose was.

Of course, these days it might seem stodgy or old-fashioned to have to have any sort of purpose for one’s actions… especially in the arts, where “Hey- just do what feels right, right?”

Well, I had been doing what felt right for a while, when I was in college, and I became aware that there might be a higher purpose to operate with.

In the sometimes desperate and anxiety-provoking field of acting, for example, having a purpose might seem like a nice fantasy; the reality being that one is usually happy to take any sort of part, as they are few and far between.  (When I see actors interviewed with the inevitable “What made you choose a particular role?” , I always dub in “Because somebody wanted to hire me” as the non-PR answer, not “I’ve always been interested in the dynamics of the world of people working at a Dude Ranch…”)

But to my mind, if I was going to hunker down and become a professional actor, instead of a painter or illustrator, I had to know what direction I would head in, irrespective of what opportunities would be offered me based on my appearance, status, etc.

So I labored to find some kind of answer to the question, “What is honorable about being an actor?”

I had certainly, by about 1981, acquainted myself with the dishonorable part, (it is odd that there doesn’t exist a “dishonorable discharge” from the acting profession, probably because there is always some reality show waiting to scoop up and hire former stars who might have, in earlier times, been put in the stocks for a fortnight for their misadventures.)

The worst thing I ever did, the one that really ushered in my interest in an answer to this question, (and for which I should have been put into the stocks for a night or so) happened in my next to last year of college.

A fellow student who was a theater major asked me to appear in his senior thesis production that he was directing– Easter, by August Strindberg.

Feeling very full of myself to be courted, I decided to be magnanimous and agree to do the role.  I had tremendous feelings of undeserved confidence at that time, much of it brought about by a regular consumption of inappropriate chemicals.

The role, naturally, was a character role, that of Lindquist, “The Creditor”, a grey-bearded old Swede.  It was the kind of part Orson Welles would have called a “Mister Wu” role– a character that everyone speaks about and foresages throughout the first acts of a play, and then, once he arrives, hardly has to do anything at all to have an enormous impact.

Welles had played the part of Mister Wu in a play by the same name, was spoken of exhaustively by the players in the first act, and didn’t actually appear on stage until a moment before the curtain fell before intermission, saying nothing but simply appearing in the distance. Welles said all that was heard out in the lobby at the interval was, “… And wasn’t that guy who played Mister Wu great?”

The Creditor, in Easter, a depressing Strindberg play (to be redundant) was such a character; feared, dreaded and bemoaned about in great detail until the final beats of the last of three acts, when he enters and… well.

I didn’t like standing backstage for two and a half acts.

We did about four or five performances, and with each succeeding show, I grew more and more restive, despite my commitment to “do a favor for” my friend.

Not knowing at that time the story and lesson of Orson Welles and Mister Wu, and being possessed of enormous resources of ill-placed self esteem, I contrived to sabotage the last night of the production.  It was going to be my “pay” for waiting around backstage so much, wasting the valuable time I could have been spending investigating how much beer I could get into my stomach.

My purpose as an actor, it might be said, was under-developed at this moment.

Lindquist, arrives at the door at the end of the last act, confronts the propitiating male lead who owes him a lot of money, and in an act of far-fetched mercy, forgives him the loan, supporting the redemptive theme of Easter, the title of the play.

I worked it out that instead of being admitted to the house through the front door, on the final night I would come crashing in thru the window.  I even made a make-shift ramp out of a low table so that I could really catch some major air before I entered.  Premeditated.

Where did I get that idea?  Who the hell knows.  It became a kind of private dare, one I couldn’t resist taking.  In those days, any feeling of giddy anticipatory fear was a kind of command to obeyed.

So, on the final night, an audience of students, friends and faculty were treated to the surrealistic and jarring event of a grey-haired and bearded man in Victorian garb crash splinteringly through the wooden mullions and delicate lace curtains of the front window and land with a thud onto the floor of the stage.

An act of terrorism, as far as the world of theatre is concerned.

The remainder of the play, including, of course, it’s timeless message of redemption and personal integrity, was washed away by a flood of senseless improvisations by the other actors, who rightly assumed that nothing could salvage the show, and valiantly struggled to save themselves until the lights came down.

Afterwards, I felt very self-righteous about the whole thing, even though some distant warning bell in my psyche clanged a signal that perhaps this was not my finest hour.

The young director, whom I ostensibly was doing a big favor for, didn’t speak to me for about a decade.  I think it speaks very highly for him that he ever spoke to me again at all.

That ignoble event, unique in my career, I’m relieved to say, marked the beginning of my search for a worthwhile purpose as an actor.  I think deep down I did not want to continue to lead a life of artistic crime.

I then began the lonely search for a reason why being an actor was a noble pursuit, and how a flawed chap such as myself might participate in such a purpose.  Luckily, I got some valuable help along the way.

About Acting

I have such a weird career.

It sometimes doesn’t even feel like a “career”… more like a series of drills.

Drill #42: Practice being industrious.  Drill #77: Be something you’re not, and fool ‘em.  Drill #139: Resist becoming humbled.

Drill #985: Work your way out of it… that’s a good one.

I’m an actor, and my palette is made up of emotions, reactions, and the subtle orchestrations of human character.

Sometimes I use them to sell telecommunications, cars, soda.  Sometimes I’m trying to be funny, so that somebody somewhere might get a laugh, have a little fun.

Mainly, I think, I get hired to distract people from one thing or another.  That’s a double-edged sword.

At my best, I use my acting to forward ideas, get the audience to stretch out in a direction or to a degree they never knew they could, to their benefit.

I like being stretched by great acting, great art.  It’s a way for me to feel hopeful, less hemmed in.  I’m willing to go somewhere I never heard of before, as long as there’s some enlightenment waiting for me at the end.  Or even a chance of it.

The best impressionists act that way, they shock people a little- “I never knew anyone else could be that way…”

I enjoy narrating fiction audiobooks.  It’s great to have to bang around from character to character, occupying their viewpoints, plus maybe the omniscient author, or the lead character whose main point of view drives the story.  After a while, you get very loose at switching from your viewpoint into someone else’s.  It feels good.

I maintain that that is very good for you.

Anything in life that ties you more firmly and inescapably into a single, immutable viewpoint I don’t like.  I like being fluid.

Spontaneous.  Changeable.

So, my career hasn’t been much of a straight line.  Sometimes I wish it was, but other times, I can see the advantages of a less predictable course.

Do I sound kind of … maudlin?  I just watched Christopher Walken’s interview on “Inside The Actor’s Studio”…  It’s apparently catching.

How’s your life going?

Presenting at EG

Tamra and I are heading up to Monterey to go to the EG Conference, (which is not, as I had supposed, a gathering of people who are fans of the actor E.G. Marshall) where I will be presenting about 20 minutes of my Jimpressions material for an eclectic audience of interesting and interested people.

I’m still trying to work out how best to fill my time and create something that is a bit deeper than my usual celebrity voices “tour”.  There’s something sort of daunting about being asked to go to something like this, where I’ll be basically sharing the platform with physicists, filmmakers, polar biologists, architects, violin makers, designers, the royal calligrapher, and a woman who rows across oceans.

The temptation is to try and create a talk that somehow positions celebrity impressionists as being on the same level as Dr. Linus Pauling.

On the other hand, there is an terrific opportunity here to explore some of the more subtle and personal aspects of doing other people’s voices for a more sophisticated crowd that isn’t just interested in hearing a guy do a Christopher Walken imitation.

It’s also going to be streaming live on the web, and I will be helping  interview the participants in between presentations over the three days.  If you are interested, and I can guarantee that there will be much to be interested in, go and check out the website: https://www.the-eg.com/ and sign up for the webcast.

And I will let you know my experiences when it’s all over!  Maybe E.G. Marshall will actually be there…

ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!

Jim Meskimen by Ray Kachatorian

I had to check my iCal calendar, but I was right- this last weekend marked the one year anniversary of live performances of JIMPRESSIONS, my one-man journey through my obsession with celebrity voices.

(Actually, it’s more a strong professional interest, but “Obsession” is much more compelling, don’t you agree? Who would watch a movie called “Strong Professional Interest”?)

I have performed JIMPRESSIONS at least twice a month, sometimes as many as eight times a month since it premiered on March 25, 2011, and as I have noted elsewhere, in cities all over the U.S., as well as Sydney, Australia, Toronto, Canada and London, England.

As you might imagine, I’ve learned a lot along the way.
The best thing about being in a one-man show, particularly one that you have also written, is that you can make ceaseless changes and updates, which with luck are improvements. I haven’t felt the need to ask anyone’s permission, and every show was a learning experience for me, as all live theatre is.

I owe a lot to my friend and director, Tait Ruppert, who has made many invaluable suggestions along the way and knows the show backwards and forwards.

It has also been rewarding to listen first hand to what people have to say about the show, which is always gratifying, particularly when it had some special resonance for them.

One woman thanked me very warmly for directing her attention to the fact that one can always draw forth in memory the sound of a loved one’s laughter; she had recently lost her mother and found a lot of relief by doing that.

Others have remarked that they had no knowledge of particular actors that now they felt interested to seek out in films and enjoy first hand. That’s cool.

Quite a lot of people remark that they think it it entertaining to observe the transitions I go through to rapidly become another person… this seems to be one of the favorite parts of the performance, and that has made me think about what it is that people find so fascinating about this style of entertainment.

I think there is something very helpful to audiences, even perhaps mildly therapeutic, with watching someone adopt different personas and identities. Of course, it’s a sort of magic trick, but it also speaks to a basic ability that anybody has, however un-exercised, to BE someone else on one’s own whim.

It’s akin to watching a dancer and realizing that one has the same physical parts, and that expressing oneself with arms, legs, hands and feet, instead of just thru the voice or the keyboard, is an unexploited possibility.

Of course, actors know how satisfying and pleasant it can be to shuffle off our own personalities and become someone great or stylish or interesting… in many cases it’s that sensation that got us interested in acting in the first place.

In the case of impersonating celebrities, our desires for a better, more fulfilling life come into play I think, in that these individuals symbolize not only the characters they portray, but also, as movie stars or leaders in some walk of life, they come to represent an advance into a state that is closer to immortality. If somebody can BE a movie star, even only for a few seconds, that person seemingly is sipping from some fountain that a lot of us wish we could drink deeply from.

I realize of course that I’m speaking in a very formal way about something which, after all, owes more to the Las Vegas Strip than the Veda, but still…

It just amazes me, having done this kind of entertaining now on and off for almost thirty years, that people are dazzled by the art of impersonation as much as they are.

But then, I’m being hypocritical, too, because I am equally dazzled by brilliant impressionists when I see them. And I’m lucky to know quite a few that are much more talented than I.

But as JIMPRESSIONS is about MY journey, I guess nobody would be able to do a better job of this particular angle of the story as I can, even if some of my renditions leave something to be desired.

Anyway, that’s all very sober and psuedo-academic, but the point is, it’s been a year, I have had a blast doing JIMPRESSIONS, and, as people seem to enjoy watching me doing my “Infinity of Celebrity Voices,… I have no intention of stopping.

See you at a performace soon, I hope!

If you are interested in the DVD of my live JIMPRESSIONS show at the historic Capitol Theatre in Clearwater, Florida, visit this site: http://appliedsilliness.com/jimpressionsdvd.html