Author: Heath

I was recently contacted about being in a short about 2 German immigrants. They asked to just read the English with a German accent for the audition. Luckily I’ve always been really intrigued with accents and tend to pick them up quickly and do fairly decent job. They liked my audition and signed me on. The director then wanted to meet to see how well I might be able to handle the actual German dialogue. I’ve never spoken German in my life, but I have a very intuitive and natural understanding for languages. This was the first time it had ever been put to the test though. He literally just had me read the German script, totally cold (which I found an exciting challenge). He actually was very pleased with my reading and said he felt confident that I could do it and therefore was going to leave the script as it was instead of paring down the German and making it more English with a German accent.

Also lucky for me, my co-star is actually German and from the specific region of Germany as our characters. She was kind enough to send me a recording of all my lines so I had an authentic reference to refer to.

So now I just have to memorize the entire German script and understand what it is I’m saying as well, and act while doing it. I am terribly excited to take this on.

During one of our first Macbeth rehearsals, I sat down at a piano and started singing “Macbeth” to the tune of “Beth” by KISS. This inspired both Brian Villalobos and I to write parodies. I painstakingly recreated the music and we recorded both versions.

Macbeth
Macbeth Duet

Wow, I really have become crap at updating my blog. I’ve written about how since Facebook and Twitter have taken over my poor blog has been neglected. People don’t seem to want to go outside these “walled gardens” to external websites much anymore. The one advantage I’ve found about posting here is that it’s really easy to find something if I go back looking for it later, which is not true on Facebook and Twitter. So today after watching the latest Big Bang Theory episode where Howard sings a silly, romantic song for Bernadette for the anniversary of their first date (a song written by Garfunkel and Oates for the show), it reminded me of this song I wrote for the web series, Heelers. I was surprised to find that I, apparently, never wrote about it here, but I guess only on social media.

Heelers tells the story of a some workers at a veterinary practice. I play Glenn, a sweet if slightly awkward guy who often beings his dog or other animals he’s found to the clinic, at least partially because he’s in love with Brit, one of the girls who works there (who has no interest in him but likes the hunky veterinarian guy). For the last episode I filmed they wanted me to make an appearance at the company Christmas party and possibly play a song, so I wrote what I felt was an appropriately “Glenn” song for his to sing to object of his affection. Kind of endearing, kind of weird. Like Glenn. I found it surprising that apparently a lot of guys outright refused to read for Glenn because he’s kind of weird and unflattering. I loved Glenn from the start because I thought he’d be a blast to play, and to try and make him endearing as well as awkward and a little creepy. It still amazes me when actors are so vain that they don’t want to play a part that is not flattering or impressive. I love interesting characters and playing off-kilter flawed people can be so interesting and fun.

Of course, I’ll post when the web series actually comes out for public consumption but in the mean time, here’s Glenn’s song that he sings to Brit at the Christmas party.

My Best Friend