Connections Missed and Made

What I especially love about the New Media is the incredible variety of original material being produced, including new and thoughtful takes on old themes.

I met New York actress Melissa Center a few weeks ago through “Hollywood Happy Hour,” an online acting discussion group founded by author, producer, and casting director Bonnie Gillespie.   Melissa as it turns out has a hit series on the Web, Missed Connections Live, based on ads in the New York Craigslist Personals column, “Missed Connections.”

Personals can be a goldmine of social commentary, as Brooklyn blogger Sophie Blackall discovered in compiling a selection of them into a soon-to-be-published book Missed Connections: Love, Lost & Found.  But as an actress, Melissa took a different approach.  For her, each post was a comedic moment in time that she could expand on in scripting a series that is quirky, funny and a showcase for her considerable talents.  

And even though she embellishes the source material, Melissa says the main idea is to stay true to what has been written by real, everyday people.  I suspect that’s why it resonates with so many viewers.  She’s fresh.  She’s charming.  It's real.  I love her clever opener.  Watch it.  You’ll get hooked.

Missed Connections Live has been the featured series on Blip.TV and was recently nominated for an Audience Choice Award.  Plus Melissa herself is up for a StayTunedTV Award for Best Actress in a web comedy, winner to be announced in conjunction with the International Television Festival, August 5-11 in Los Angeles.  She's planning to fly out for the festivities.

Far from missing connections, I’ve made a few in the last couple of weeks. I’ve just been cast as a Faye Dunaway-type radio network executive in a SAG short – The Louder the Better – that examines how conscience is often the first casualty in the radio talk show ratings wars.  Script by Michael Toscano.  We start shooting it August 13th.

Then a comment on Facebook prompted a note from director Paul Awad at Diesel Films about an original Western series he and screenwriter Kathryn O’Sullivan are producing for the Web (a “Web-stern” as he calls it).  I read for a role and was cast as Pearl Thurston, whose husband has just met a violent end in the town of the same name, Thurston.  This is Diesel Films 11th creative project.  Very excited to be doing a Western.  It starts filming in September in Virginia.

News of that role led to an email from actor friend Richard Cutting and an online introduction to writer/director Wayne Shipley whose recent Western feature One-Eyed Horse was filmed in nearby Maryland.  (Funny how this business works.  Success really is about who you know and how they know you.)  Shipley has a new film in preproduction, Day of the Gun.  Hoping I’ll have a chance to audition.

Commitment, a thriller short I shot last summer, gets a screening at the New York City International Film Festival on August 19 and I’m still hoping to get tickets and get up to New York to review my performance as Special Justice Helen Rider. Writer/director Richard Volin did a terrific job with it and I look forward to adding a clip to my demo reel once it finishes the rounds at the film festivals.

But for now, to bed.  It’s late.  The day job will have me up at 5 a.m.  Boo.