I Wanna Get PAID

There's a scene in The Blues Brothers, when Jake and Elwood visit Murph and the Magictones at the Holiday Inn cocktail bar, and Willie "Too Big" Hall says to Jake, "What's next? What's happenin'? What you gonna do?….You got the money you owe us, motherfucker?" I feel like that a lot lately when I call my agents. It all stems back to what I once thought was the coolest acting gig I ever booked:

I was back home near Columbus, Ohio for Easter this past year. I got a call from a producer who was affiliated with a non-union commercial I had shot just a few weeks prior back in L.A.; he was wondering if I could come in and do some voiceover work for an identically scripted radio spot. Immediately I think, "FUCK, I'm out of town." This was a real kick in the dick because, when I go out of town, I let my agency know, and they know not to submit me or book any auditions, etc. etc. for the dates I'm out of town. But here was a fucking GIMME, falling literally right into my lap (I was sitting down when I got the call), that I had no option but to pass on because of my geographic limitations. I tell the producer this, and he is audibly disappointed. Rub it in, prick.

So, just to make polite small talk, he asks me where I am. I say I'll be in the Mecca of Entertainment, Athens, Ohio come Thursday, but until then I was in the Columbus area. "Oh, Columbus?! One of our favorite recording studios is in Columbus!!" Now, I was unaware anything other than a college campus, karaoke bars and a huge wig shop were located in Columbus, but what transpired next was pretty fucking awesome, as he called my agents, my agents called me, and in about a half hour's time, I had booked a gig ON VACATION. God, how I loved telling my parents that when they got home from work.

That night I went out carousing about town with some high school friends and woke up hungover as fuck the next morning: a beautiful, gray, cold, Midwestern, April Wednesday. I slouched into this recording studio, talked hockey with the booth guy for a half hour, then recorded my lines for about fifteen minutes, and was outta there well before noon. He even gave me a sports page to read, and I snuck into one of my favorite downtown bars for some hair of the dog and sudoku….I mean box scores. Then I was back home to the warm bosom of suburbia, a more accomplished actor, with my first legit radio work under my belt. All I had to do was sit back and wait for the check (worth more than the TV spot I had done for these people).

Fast forward to RIGHT GOD DAMN NOW and I'm still unpaid for this shit. Now, I know I went off about how criminally easy this gig was, how effortless my preparation; no make-up, no hair, no God forsaken wardrobe days beforehand. I don't care. I did work, regardless of the caliber or level of involvement, and I was told payment would come. It hasn't. I never dog my agents; they're not the ones paying me, but they are the ones who should be dogging the people who pay me, so now I always awkwardly bring up "Heeeeeeeey……how 'bout that check, huh?" every time we speak about anything. I feel like I'm annoying as hell, and I don't like to ever put any pressure on my already over-pressurized peeps, but, well, what the fuck, where's my money?

According to my agents, who have been given a gem of a story from the moneymen, the money is tied up somewhere because the production company hasn't paid the advertising company or the actual company that I was pretending to give a shit about into a microphone hasn't coughed up the fucking money yet or some such similar horsecock. "But," say you, "you must have some sort of recourse, eh Ched?" Well no, there basically is no recourse except for my agents to get increasingly shittier and shittier over the phone because this was a magical, wonderful, Non-Union gig. What does that mean? It means fuck me and whatever was promised to me in a semi-legal setting. These fucks can basically continually give me and my agents the runaround throughout perpetuity and there's no arbitration or "you're really under pressure now" situation to place them under. All we have is these peoples' words. Which, as the fearful Midwestern Biblethumpers assume correctly, ain't worth fuck-all in this town. 

So, one of these days I will get this money, so help me God, but for now I just sit here and twiddle my thumbs and hope every time I get a call from my agency, it's finally about that one check I've been waiting three damn months for now. I've stopped even bringing it up because my people are getting just as annoyed with the whole situation as I am (they also have a lump sum coming their way they haven't seen yet). I've promised one guy he'll be getting a snarky email from me come Halloween, if I haven't seen that shit yet. And the way things are going lately, I bet he will indeed be getting that email. 

What was once an incredible Cinderella Story of the plucky youngster coming up in the game, in his hometown no less, has turned into an annoying as fuck soap opera that appears to have no realistic end in sight. When I finally do get paid, it'll redeem all this waiting and hoop jumping and straight-up bullshit, but until then, my awesome story of actually acting for money in my hometown is tarnished and tainted. Money, as someone wiser than me has probably warned in the past, ruins all the good stories.

But what the fuck would I know, I'm just an actor.