Aaron Marcus, an actor with 30 years of experience, took a low-paying out-of-town shoot and arrived with a wet shirt. He dried it before call time, handled the problem without complaining on set, and learned that staying calm and professional matters more than the paycheck.
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Hi, I'm Aaron Marcus, and I've been a full-time actor and a commercial model for over 30 years, booked over 1,200 jobs so far. Perhaps you saw my recurring role in House of Cards. I've been on Halt and Catch Fire, Mr. Robot, Gotham, West Wing, The Wire, done independent films, feature films, training films, tons and tons of TV commercials, commercial modeling ads, radio spots, narrations. And What I want to share with you today is a really interesting experience that I had. And by the way, if you haven't done this yet and you are watching this on my YouTube channel, please click the subscribe button and the notification button, and that way you'll always know when a new video is uploaded. A lot of my videos, I share specific things that were helpful to me. I want to talk to you today just about a situation that actually was a little bit tough. As it turns out, the job was phenomenal. It was great. But let me share it with you because there were some problems that came up. And number one, I want to share with you how to possibly avoid them, and if they do happen, ways of dealing with them. So, very first thing is I was offered a job. It was out of town. It wasn't a really very high-paying job. It would be about, I don't know, $8,000 8.5-hour drive for me each way to do the job. Like I said, it wasn't a really high-paying job. And the first decision was, well, do I take it? Look, everybody has different philosophies. I can tell you what mine is. Certainly, I'm not going to lose money on a job. I'm not going to, you know, drive 9 hours for, you know, $50 or something like that. But I just find that work brings on work, and I never know who I'm going to meet on a set. New contacts might be incredibly helpful to me. I'm assuming that the job will go really well. Why wouldn't people want to hire me again? And the other thing too is as a union actor, I mean, and I know this might not apply to you, but if you earn a certain amount of money each year, you have money that goes towards your pension. And, and so I'm always trying to increase that. So that's another thought. But I never have accepted or turned down jobs based on money. I like to work and, You just never know what can happen. So I needed to leave the day before the shoot just because it was such a long drive. I wasn't going to get up at, you know, 12 o'clock and, you know, midnight and start driving. Actually, that wouldn't even have got me there 'cause the call time was at 6:30 AM. So I was leaving the day before and I didn't know exactly what the wardrobe was. I didn't know exactly the location. I asked the agent. He didn't have information about location. I knew the state, where the agent was, so I just assumed that's where the shoot would be. He gave me general ideas as to what the wardrobe should be, but he wasn't 100% sure. So fortunately, I was contacted by casting, and the night before I left, I got full wardrobe. And there was a lot, a lot to bring, 3 different setups. So because of horrible weather, they were calling for snow and ice and rain, I left really early in the morning. And so drove down and got to the hotel. And later on that evening, I was checking emails and I got very nervous at first because I noticed that the shoot location was in another state. And it was a 6:30 AM call time. And I'm thinking, Oh my gosh, what, I'm gonna have to wake up at, you know, 12 o'clock to get to the shoot? And as it turns out, after initially getting very nervous, it was about an hour away from where I was. So it wasn't bad, still really early call time considering what time I had to be there. I decided I was going to bring in my wardrobe that morning before taking a shower and stuff. So I did that. And then I realized as I'm getting ready to leave, The wardrobe got wet. I'm not really sure exactly how. Maybe it was carrying it in and out, but the shirt that I had to wear for the initial shot, which they asked to wear when you first arrive, it was really wet. And I didn't have time to sit there with a blow dryer and try to dry it out. So here I am in my car. It's really dark out. I have no idea where I'm going. All I know is it's in another state. I mean, I had it in my GPS and I've got my shirt sitting on the dashboard. I've got all the vents blowing hot air on the shirt and I'm moving it around to try to dry it out a little bit. My pants were a little bit wet. It was a tough beginning. And, you know, once again, there are different ways that you can handle it. Either you just start screaming and you just say, hey, look, here's the problem. There's an issue here. I've got to get things somewhat dry and this is how I'm going to deal with it. And that's exactly what I did. And as it turns out, by the time I got there, the shirt was pretty much dry and I had it hanging up in the holding area as well. So by the time I walked onto the set, I was pretty good. A little damp, pants were a little damp, but that worked out fine. And, and as it turns out— no, actually, I even forgot to mention, as I'm carrying everything out to my car, my shirt drops, falls on the ground. I'm thinking, oh no, it's going to look muddy. It's going to be— As it turns out, it was It was still clean, but just a lot wetter. So it was a little bit of a tough start. And as it turns out, everybody on the set was really nice. I met people who had taken workshops with me there. I met some people who had been corresponding with me who I never met. They knew who I was because they recognized my face. And it was a lovely day. And so— I just want to share this with you. Look, at some point you're going to run into some problems. I mean, that's just the way life is. And you've got, you've got a couple choices. You can have hissy fits, you can scream, you can yell, you can kick, um, or you can just say, yeah, there's a problem, this is what I need to do to handle it, it's going to get handled. And the other thing too, uh, you never want to start complaining to people on the set. It just doesn't It doesn't sound good, it's not professional, and it's not in your best interest. You know, if later on in the day you've had a really tough day, share it with your dog, share it with a spouse, share it with a sibling, share it with a parent, whoever is around, talk to them about it. But on the set, hey, everything is great, I'm here, because honestly they don't want to hear about it. And you don't want to have the reputation of being the complainer, somebody people just don't want to be around. Because People just don't want to hear that kind of stuff. So if a job comes up and it's not a great-paying job, it's completely your call. I know some people who will not roll out of bed for under $500 for a job, and that's fine. That's how you want to do it. I like to work. Certainly, I'm not going to lose money doing a job, but I just find that work brings on more work. And yes, sometimes there are really long days and sometimes there are issues that come up, but as long as you are thinking positively and you think This is the problem. This is how I'm going to handle it. And you take care of it. It can make life great. Hey, the very last thing I just wanted to say, as you can imagine, it takes a lot of time putting all these things together, and I do have to hire people to help maintain my channel. If you are watching this on my YouTube channel, if not, I'll post the link so you can see it. I'd like to ask if you would be willing to make a donation. It would be really helpful for me just to help maintain the channel. I do spend a lot of time with it. There is a PayPal link that you can use even if you don't have a PayPal account. You can just use a credit card and whatever you can afford, whether it's $1, $10, $50, whatever you want to do. Greatly appreciate it. And if you have any questions at all, you can always reach me through howtoactandmodel.com/home. That's a great way to reach me. And I'd love to hear your comments too. If there are some things that have come up for you that were difficult that you have taken care of and you solved, Love to have you share that because that's what this, the channel is all about, sharing information with other people and then actors and models just helping each other. To me, that's a good way to run your business. Anyhow, I'm Aaron Marcus. This was fun and I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya. See ya.
