My Awesome Experience on Anger Management!

Being on the show Anger Management was a really fun and exciting experience.  I was the only kid there and I got to meet a lot of nice people. Pretty much everyone on set was really nice but the two people who really stood out to me were the director and the studio teacher.  I have actually had the pleasure of meeting the director a couple of times before this day. I met him when I just started doing background work.  He was the director for Disney's Good Luck Charlie. The second time, I met him on the show Jessie. He had me do an impromptu audition and later told me what I would be doing in that particular scene. When the PA first took me to meet the director on Anger Management, I was pretty excited.  When I saw who it was, I was thrilled. I recognized him instantly. His name is Bob Koherr. When I first shook his hand, I said something that I guess he thought was kind of funny.  He sorta chuckled when I said, "Hi Bob, nice to see you again."  It had been a while since our last meeting so of course he didn't know who I was but he was nice about it.  After our introduction, he brought me on the set and told me what I'd be doing.  I was supposed to be the grandchild of Cheech Marin.  All I had to do was sit at the dining table and pretend to color which I enjoy doing.  Bob kept making sure I was okay and asked me if I was having a good time. He was super nice and when a person finished their scene, he'd thank them and have the crew clap...pretty cool.  The other person who was really nice and stood out to me was the set teacher. She was really nice and pretty easy-going.  We mostly hung out and chatted.  I feel really bad that I can't remember her name for the life of me.  Overall, the day was pretty easy and quick which is always nice.

My Awesome Experience on a Christopher Titus Music Video!

Being on a Christopher Titus music video was very different from what I was used to. For those of you who don't know who Christopher Titus is, he is a stand-up comedian who's had a rough life before he actually got picked up and noticed. He kind of incorporates his bad childhood with his comedy.  I got called for his music video called "Arm the Children."  It is exactly as it sounds.  It's a music video about gun control.  You wouldn't think so because he arms all the kids with fake guns that look like real guns.  When they first explained this too me, I wondered if this was for real and if this was even legal (this was a few years back and I was really gullible). When they brought me on set to start filming my mom and I were cracking up. There was this guy dressed up as Jesus holding a bucket of guns that he later hands out to the kids. He eventually he takes out this fake big shotgun and hands it to like this eight year old girl. The message he tries to get through his video is to end gun violence by kind of making people realize how horrible guns are and that since so many people have them in the world why not just give them to children.  Of course he's totally kidding.  He is really trying to prove his point on making people realize what a bad idea guns are.  He had us sing a song "Arm the Children" while we jumped around waving the fake guns in the air.  Christopher Titus was a super nice and funny guy who just talked and talked to all of us. At the end of the day he even gave us one of his CDs from his comedy stuff.  He said something really funny that I still remember to this day. We were just about to start filming and one of the guys was joking around and saying something like "This awful what were doing" or something like "Is this even legal?"  Then Christopher laughed and said "Yeah...we'll be remembered for this one. This kids will remember as the day Christopher Titus got arrested. They'll look back at this video in twenty years and say hey remember the day that Christopher Titus got arrested?" Everyone was laughing really hard. Christopher Titus also laughed at his own joke.  It was a pretty short day and somehow he made it fun even though it was a serious message he was trying to convey.                                

My Awesome Experience on True Detective!

My awesome experience on True Detective was a really cool and exciting experience.I actually was really fortunate on being on the show twice. I was on a earlier episode with my younger sister and older brother and then I was on a later episode where I was supposed to be a homeless person with my younger sister on the streets of downtown LA. I wasn't actually with my real younger sister, they just paired me up with a small six year old who didn't even really look like me. Anyway, on the first episode I was on we were filming at this outdoor mall. They paired me up with this middle-aged woman and told me that I would be her son for the scene. For that episode it wasn't particularly interesting but it wasn't boring either. I mainly walked around a lot but I did get to cross behind the main actors (Collin Ferrel and Rachel McAdams) so I got to kind of watch the scene and listen to it so it was kind of like watching a really long repetitive trailer live. We did more shots just like this and then they moved me around a lot so that they could film at different angles. They next time I was on the show was way cooler! That time we had to film at a more sketchy area but there was a lot more action there. When I first arrived at set they were burning a car. It was super cool! After I got checked in they decided to get me ready for the scene. They dressed me up in really trashy clothes and made me look really dirty. They used this spray/liquid type of thing and sprayed and rubbed it all over my face and hands. By the time I had gone through wardrobe and hair and makeup I looked like a legitimate downtown LA bum. My mom couldn't stop laughing. She would have taken pictures but she was worried that she would get in trouble. They were very secret about this whole set. They had a codename for it and everything. On sets that are very top secret they usually don't want you to take pictures, text, call, or use social media. Sometimes I think they disable your phone or they keep them until the end of the day. There have situations where if they found out you posted anything about the set they will sue you. But anyway,when I got on the set I started to get a little scared. They had us film under a freeway in the most sketchiest part of downtown LA and I'm pretty sure I was standing in a real homeless person camp. They even had trash cans lit on fire besides the dirt road and next to every cardboard, dirt, or plastic house. It was also really disgusting. There was trash everywhere and it was really hard to tell who was an actual homeless person and who was actually part of the scene. To make things even more stressful the teacher and the Pa told me that I needed to make sure the little girl (who played my younger sister) didn't get run over by the car that the camera was on or that she didn't light herself on fire with the countless burning trash cans surrounding us. In the end, you could really see no one face except for the little girl which was really disappointing but I'm happy for her because she's actually a really nice and funny little person once you get to know her. After we did that scene we broke for lunch which doesn't sound that interesting but it actually turned out to be really creepy. There was a lot of people that came in that looked like real homeless people and they just served themselves food. I mean they looked exactly like homeless people and kind of acted like them. One of them had a really dirty worn-out teddy bear that he carried with him, he also had a really messed up suit case that he carried with him everywhere. It was weird but I still had a good time. I talked to the set teacher and she was actually really nice. She told me all these cool and funny stories that she had lived through and my mom and I must have talked with her for hours because by the time they told us we were wrapped it was midnight. So this pretty much concludes my blog for this week. I had a great time on both of these days and I will definetly always remember this job.

My Awesome Experience on Jane the Virgin!

When I was on the CW show "Jane the Virgin" it was really fun and exciting. The set we would be filming at was an actual operating Target store. So they had a major portion of the store reserved for us which was really cool. We got to walk in through the back door and film in a roped off area of the store. A lot of people tried to look and many just stopped and watched us. I was with my sister on this job which made it not as great as it could have been but it was still fun. Our part in this episode was to be the kids of a latino family shopping on Black Friday. We were called Team Fuentes. Team Fuentes consisted of a lady who played my mom, a middle-aged man who played my dad, my sister (sadly), and me. The scene we were doing was basically where our family was just walking around with a shopping cart on Black Friday looking for some stuff to buy. We ended up walking by the main actors a lot and crossing in front of the camera a lot (but I don't know if we were seen because I never got around to watching the episode). In fact during one of the takes we got to talk to the actors! We got to talk to Jane Villanueva (Gina Rodriguez), Rafael Solano (Justin Baldoni), and Alba Villanueva (Ivonne Coll). We got to talk to Ivonne Coll many times because she was so happy go-lucky and she would always ask us if we were ready and she would always say hello. She was also really funny. The rest of the cast was great too! Gina Rodriguez and Justin Baldoni said in a really excited and friendly voice "Hey it's Team Fuentez"! Then we all laughed and they asked us for our names. They also asked us if we were having a good time and if this was very exciting. They were really nice people and we got to talk them until the camera was ready to start filming again. Another cool thing was that I got to see one of the PA's from a movie I had done earlier that year called "The Jungle Book"! Her name was MC. She was super nice both on the Jungle Book and off. It was really great to see her and it was great talking to her. She told us about what she had being doing lately and the progress of the Jungle Book lately. And we could've talked for way longer but sadly she was super busy and we had to get back to set. But she did wave at me during one of the camera breaks which was really nice of her. Anyway, we basically did a bunch of scenes like the ones we were doing which got a little old after a while but not boring. But then during one of the shots we got to say "hi" to Andrea Navedo who plays Xiomara Villanueva on the show. She was nice but we didn't really get to into a conversation like we did with the other actors because the camera had just started to film. It was still pretty cool though. After we had finished the scene we were going to a shopping cart race against the Villanueva family but they were running behind schedule so they had to cut it out which was really unfortunate because it sounded really cool and it also meant we would have been seen more and got to be with the main cast more which would have been cool but I was still happy that I was there that day at all. So then we drove back to what used to be the Marvel Studios (it now is Manhattan Beach Studios or MBS) because that was where we had parked. We said bye to our "mom" who was actually super funny and energetic so that was cool and also made the experience way better. So I guess this is the end of my blog for this week. Like I always say, I had a great time on this job and I hope I get to do something like this again, and I mean it. I always have fun on these jobs and this is really the type of stuff I like to do which make the job way better. I also like doing this because I get to meet new people who are very happy because they love their jobs and everything about it. So that is why I always say I had a great time and why I always say I hope I get to do something like this again.                                              

                                   ^                                       The Villanueva Family and Rafael Solano with my sister in the yellow Team Fuentes shirt to the far right  behind Alba Villanueva. 

< Chapter Twenty-Nine: The episode I was on and this is a picture of the Villanueva family at Target.