Tag: acting

I’m Worried My Lack Of Any Acting Experience Will Hinder My Ability to Write Screenplays

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Being old, I know what I don’t know. And among the things I just don’t know at this point is — how much will my lack of any acting experience hinder my ability to write a good screenplay? I think it’s one of those things where it’s hard to quantify.

While it definitely HELPS to have training as an actor, it’s not like it’s totally impossible to write a decent screenplay if you’re just a regular old doofus like me. And, truth be told, it’s not like I’m opposed to taking acting lessons at some point in the future if that will help me write a better screenplay.

Now, this is where I pause and reflect on how fucking old I am. Age, like race, is just not something you can change. I just can’t help the life I’ve led. And, as such, I’m far more likely to get somewhere with a novel than I am a screenplay. But, having said that, I will note that I’m a really good talker — I love to schmooze, especially when intoxicated and I’m 100% extroverted.

…But I’m 50. I’m 50, poor and short.

And, yet, time and again in my life, I’ve managed to shock the haters by pulling a rabbit out of a hat. It happened in my 20s and it happened when I was in Seoul. When I was in Seoul, I not only was one of the best rock DJs in town for a few months, I also had the lone English-language expat magazine.

This it all went to shit.

Angst for the memories, and all that.

But I’m not dead yet. Though, if I somehow manage to blow up with my DJ money in my 50s and 60s, it will be a very bittersweet experience. On one hand, I will at last have the success I feel I deserve, but on the other I will be so fucking old that I can’t, like, go clubbing all night with twentysomethings without coming across as a freaky weirdo — or worse yet, a dirty old man.

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

I hate being 50. I want to be young again.

Acting — The Creative Path I Didn’t Take


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me be clear, the likelihood that there is some alternative universe out there where I went into acting instead of journalism as a young man is very dubious to some extent.

Some pretty big things would have had to have changed at a very early age for that to have happened. I knew from a very young age that I wanted to make a living off of writing. And, for sold 20 years of my life, I thought that meant being a journalist.

But there were a lot of problems. I’m 100% extroverted. My personality is too out there. I’m something of an eccentric. I like to daydream too much. All the successful journalists I’ve ever met were introverts with very “dry” personalities. They see journalism as strictly a job, not a part of their identity like I did.

And, yet, as I grow older, I do sometimes idly think that there was, a small possibility that under the right circumstances that I might have gone into the creative arts such as acting. Of course, all the other problems in my life that eventually threw me for a loop would still happen, but I might have gotten farther in my career before they happened.

There are other problems. It’s just not in my DNA to be able to quickly memorize lines. So, that obviously would be a problem. I also just wasn’t focused for much of my youth. I was all energy but no direction other than the general one of writing.

I guess why I think about what could have been is I’m a decent entertainer and I enjoy the spotlight a great deal. And now that I’m trying to break into showbiz via novel writing (and maybe eventually screenwriting) I long to live in New York City or LA. Ugh.

I know that even if I one day get my wish, I’m so fucking old now that the context will be totally different. It’s not like I’ll be Young In New York City or LA. I’ll be just another old fart. Or, even worse, if I become as successful as I hope to be, that, in itself, will be part of The Story.

Old Man Makes It Big, At Last will be the hook that book journalists (or whomever) will use to explain what happened. Or they’ll make comparisons to Stieg Larsson. Hopefully without the dropping dead at 50 part, of course.