Acting for Adults

The Masterclass format was new when we recorded this, so Shea, Brian, Joey and I talked about what actually happens in that room: 20-minute scenes from Pulitzer and Tony winning plays, four days straight, and the year and a half of monthly failures it took to earn it. Then the rocks we hiked for yesterday, and the note Brian gave himself that changed his teaching: teach the person, not the piece.

Tony Calvis of Nextiva in the studio on a Saturday: why you make the next sales call when the clients are already rolling in, why conflict is the energy for growth, and what a producer is really looking for in an audition.

Jared Mishlove of Altered Athletics joins Shea, Brian, Joey and me. Why he walked into a gym with no confidence and what he found there, stick to the basics and progress from there, the first thing to do at home if you’re not training at all, how my wife manifested a trip to Disney World, my fail day alone with the kids, and the phrase my daughter now uses on me: would you be my hero?

Chapter three of the book I’m writing is called Focus, and I had spent two weeks unable to focus on it. Joey and me on the L.A. masterclass where a teacher told me to start over and I memorized a 20-minute scene in 48 hours, why every moment of your life is a photograph with one thing in focus, hyper focus and the 13 minutes it takes to get back in, and what you feed the machine coming back to you.

Shea back from her best friend’s wedding, Joey after his first night teaching, and a conversation about the most obvious form of listening: what happens when you stop talking. The sales script that lost every time, why real presence is exhausting, the sentence that washes away resentment, learning to say no, and thoughts plus emotions equals movement.

A Friday night after hours with Brian and Joey. Why the podcast is a non-negotiable like brushing your teeth, the callback actor who memorized both roles, what I did my best really means, the night Leeann called me out on the book, and why the hardest thing in the world is to say thank you to the person who corrected you.