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Here's the reality, guys: you save up for years to go 'Out West' and you spend everything you have in six months living in a roach infested hole in K-town, paying for "casting workshops" so you can meet managers and casting directors who don't give two shits about you. You cut your hair a little bit or grow a moustache and you have to get new headshots because people in Hollywood fundamentally lack imagination and can't even begin to fathom 'who you are as an actor' unless your headshot looks exactly like you do on the day of. And headshots cost $300 to shoot (on the cheap end) and $100 for make-up artists and $100 to retouch and $100 to print. Plus, you need a car to get around because mass transit in Los Angeles is a goddam joke. You need to get into class so you can learn how to unlearn all the shit you learned in college theater. Meanwhile, you're in love with the city because it's new and warm all the time and there are beautiful women everywhere. But you start getting this creeping sensation like everyone is a facade of a human being and beneath every beautiful face is spiritual rot, careerism, graft, nepotism, bull shit, lies, fakery, a need to be seen and an overwhelming whorism. But don't worry, guys, because you can always get a job working as a bartender where you can sneak booze from the well and forget for a few minutes what it's like to be on the bottom of the totem pole. That's a lot of fun, especially when you discover that cocaine means you can drink forever and not get too wasted until later. You'll get a DUI eventually, but fuck it, right? Around this time you start to get bitter. Really bitter, which you'll mistake as an 'evolution of your art.' You start looking for edgy rolls. You get a dumb haircut and try to make yourself look ugly. Maybe you hit the gym or start doing improv. Something to give you an edge. You start seeing young kids coming into town all bright eyed and bushy tailed and you say 'good luck' when you mean 'eat shit and die.' You wake up one day after endless commercial auditions that you really need to make rent but can't seem to book because you 'come off as an asshole' or don't smile enough...
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