More of Lucian Clark’s work can be found here and here.
Being a werewolf isn’t the only strike against me and my acting career. I am openly queer, and also somewhat on the pudgy
side, thanks to inheriting my dad’s big boned nature. I’ve been approached less for my acting ability, and more as a stunt
wolf, a background piece, or the token minority character. Despite all these downs, with Chris as my guiding light, I thought
I could do anything. If he could be the hero, then why couldn’t I? Child me clung to this idea, and I carried it into my
struggling actor career.
My largest role so far, in
My Sister’s Best Friend, was the token gay man. Not only that, but the gay best friend of the main character, who
was a “you-know-what hag”, as the phrase goes. I can count all my lines on both hands. Did I want the part? Not exactly,
but I was growing tired of living on ramen and whatever else was about to be thrown away from the Speedy Joe’s convenience
store where I worked to make ends meet. Not everything in Hollywood is glamorous. Sometimes you need to take the bad jobs
(and work at a haunted house on a farm at Halloween) and hope you can get the good.
Unfortunately right now, it seems there’s more bad than good. I’ve only had three jobs in the last month, all through my
intern friend Alex Vasquez, and they are mostly B-movie wolf takes and remakes. One quick shift scene, a few chase scenes,
and they CGI the rest. Despite the wonders of CGI, they still cannot make it look as good as an actual person on camera,
so they hire people like me.
These were the exact types of offer emails I was looking through when Chris walked through the doors of my humble workplace.
There was a role in a painkiller commercial, another in
Howling Wind and even an email for a movie called – I am not kidding –
The Howling Howls: The Howloween Night. I didn’t even look up from my laptop to greet him. I had more pressing matters
to attend to, like paying my electric bill, which came before greeting someone in the store at 3:45AM on a Sunday. Yes,
I remember the exact time.
Read the rest in WEREWOLVES VERSUS: HOLLYWOOD. Download the entire issue for any price on Gumroad or Itch.io! Your purchase will benefit all of the contributors to this issue.
Responding to Professor Sir Angus Deaton’s report into the causes of inequality,
economics writer Chris Dillow provides an excellent list of eight ways
in which unequal societies sacrifice overall economic growth and
national prosperity to preserve the fortunes of their elites.
Topping the list is the diversion of investment resources from
innovative products and services into socially useless and inefficient
“guard labor” (everything from surveillance to high walls to alarm
systems to actual armed guards).
Beyond that, inequality produces an erosion of the trust that is a
precondition for growth; unequal access to education and opportunity
which means that poor peoples’ contributions to national wealth are
never realized.
One interesting idea is that high managerial salaries entrench “the
forces of conservatism” as top officials at monopoly businesses balk at
taking risks that might hurt their profits, even if they result in
better companies offering services that are more productive and
profitable in the long run.
Up now on my eBay! Classic indie comic from 1991! David Chelsea in Love #1 by David Chelsea from Eclipse Comics! Also up for grabs: my superheroine comic collection (70’s-80’s stuff), random Radio Comixbooks and various indie comics! My house is super small, and I am still selling off thirty years’ worth of collectibles to raise money for ongoing back taxes & various upcoming large expenses, so every little bit helps. Thanks for looking & sharing!
