10,000 NOs. Matthew Del Negro
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when I kind of dropped it all out and went out to Colorado. I cleaned Greyhound buses on Eleventh Avenue from eleven at night ‘til seven in the morning in summers while I went to school. No, I didn't start making a living for real until my son was born.”
—Richard Schiff, Actor, Emmy Award Winner, The West Wing
That experience in Italy, when everything bubbled out of me, made me certain that I wanted to pursue something that required all of my faculties. I wanted to somehow relieve the knot of emotions and unfulfilled desires tangled in my gut. Thus, my why was a desire to express myself psychologically, spiritually, physically, and mentally and the way I guessed I could do that was through acting. But just because I'd found my why, did not mean I knew exactly how to start.
Everybody Needs Some Billy Sometimes
The challenge for me to begin my pursuit as an actor was that I had almost no experience. Everyone needs to start somewhere and I was no different. The pain of not acting, for me, outweighed the fear of falling on my face in front of others. I wanted to start as soon as possible, so I scanned a local paper and found a casting notice. A community theater a few towns over from where I grew up was doing the musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The audition required each hopeful actor to sing 16 bars of music, accompanied by a pianist. I called the phone number and admitted that I didn't have 16 bars of music to sing. I explained that I could play a little piano, even less guitar, and I could carry a tune. When I asked if it would it be okay if I just “sang some Billy Joel” there was a long pause. After what felt like an eternity, I heard, “Sure. Just bring the sheet music.”
The following week I drove over to the theater after a full day of my summer job laying patios with a mason. I'd had time to shower and change, but my choice of wardrobe was hardly appropriate for a musical set in the 1860s. I entered the theater in jeans, a white t-shirt, and a pair of beaten up, low-cut Converse Chuck Taylors. To say I stuck out like a sore thumb would be an understatement. I looked like I was headed to a frat party while the rest of the hopeful actors wore some semblance of period garb similar to the setting of the musical. The way the audition was set up—which I have never experienced since—was that every person who went up on stage to sing did so in front of everyone else waiting to go. Once you were done, you were free to leave. Suddenly, I wished that I had showed up late so there would be no one else to watch this potential debacle, but I hid my insecurity and sat seemingly confidently in the back of the theater waiting for my turn. Heart pounding underneath my increasingly sweaty t-shirt, I began to coach myself. Running through a list of things I'd accomplished up until this point in my life in a desperate attempt to quell my nerves and convince myself this was nothing I couldn't handle, I began to find my confidence.
This lasted until the first girl got up on stage. She was beautiful and blonde, a few years younger than me, but she appeared older because of her formal period wardrobe and the way she carried herself. She handed her sheet music to the pianist as though she'd done this a million times before. The pianist began to play. When this young woman began to belt out her tune, all my insecurities came rushing back. She was amazing. I sat questioning my decision to volunteer for this torture and wondered why I thought I deserved to be here. Somehow, by the time her 16 bars came to an end, I had convinced myself that she was just a fluke. I told myself the rest of the auditionees would be normal, like me.
This theory crashed to the ground when the next person was called to the stage. This young man, dressed appropriately in a suit, was also classically trained. He had the kind of voice you hear on Broadway, and as his song hit its climax, I realized they might all be like this. That realization proved to be true when the next three or four actors, even those who were considerably younger than me, blew the doors off the place. I was looking around for the exit and thinking about sneaking out when my name was called.
Oh boy, I thought, here comes the moment of truth.
I walked up to the front of the theater, feeling all eyes on me. Hopping onto the stage as casually as I could, I thought if I wasn't the most classically trained, I was at least going to appear the most confident. Fake it 'til you make it, son. When I hit the stage, something shifted inside me. I remembered why I was there. I might not be classically trained, but I loved to perform. I remembered my plan to stick out by embracing the fact that I was different. I walked to the center and planted my feet. The pianist asked for my sheet music and I stared back. Mustering all the confidence and courage I could, I told him I'd be singing a cappella. The sheer audacity of it, knowing I was outclassed but forging ahead anyway, was like a rush of adrenaline. After taking a deep breath and exhaling, I began snapping my fingers and tapping my foot. I fell back on what I knew: Billy Joel.
While I didn't have much real stage experience, I did spend many a day and night in junior high and high school, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone, playing piano and singing. Somewhere inside me was a performer dying to get out and all he needed was for me to take this first step and give him the opportunity. I was alive. Whereas just minutes before the attention had nearly crumbled me, as I sang now, I felt everyone's eyes on me and I liked it. I was where I was supposed to be. And even though the odds that they'd think I was right for this play were slim to none, I didn't care. I had taken the leap and I'd be right for something, some day.
In a beautiful twist of fate, my courage was rewarded and I was offered a role. And not a small role, either. I was the Chairman. The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a play within a play, so prior to the curtain going up they needed someone to improvise with audience members as they entered the theater, in a British accent, no less. Breaking the fourth wall of the theater and speaking directly to the audience throughout the play, the Chairman was to introduce the play, narrate it, and jump into the action as Mayor Sapsea for several songs and scenes. He was one of the leads and I had the time of my life.
At the end of the run, the director pulled me aside and told me she had worried about finding the right person to play the Chairman because it required different skills than any of the other roles. When I had hopped on stage in jeans and a t-shirt and started snapping my fingers, she knew immediately that I was her guy. My differences, the very thing I feared would embarrass me, were the reason I got the gig. But I never would have learned that if I hadn't taken the first step to get started.
Too many people I speak with get in their own way because they're judging themselves as if they're at the finish line even though the starting gun has barely sounded. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was any good business, physique, or skyscraper. Things take time to grow, and usually that timetable is a lot slower than you hope for it to be. Self-judgment and crippling self-criticism are not the path to your goal. There are many paths to success, depending on who you are and what you want to do. Those paths are as varied and different as the number of people in the world, but they share one thing in common: each one begins with a first step.
Top Three Takeaways
1 Before starting something new, remind yourself that “failure is built into the game.”
2 You don't need to know how to do something. Often the things that people think make them qualified for a job or a calling are not really the deciding factor anyway. The most important factor is why you are chasing this goal in the first place.
3 If you say “no” to yourself, you never give them the chance to say “yes.” They usually don't know what they need anyway, until they see it.
CHAPTER 2 Work Ethic
“If the best guy, the most talented guy, who could make it just on their talent, has the work ethic of someone with no talent, that's scary. And that's Prince. And that's Michael Jackson.”
—Jimmy Jam, Music Producer
Producer of the Year 1987
Most nominations for Producer of the Year
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