Bonnie Gillespie is an author, producer, and casting director. She specializes in casting SAG indie feature films and has been named in Back Stage West’s “Best of Los Angeles” Issue multiple times. Founder and producer of Somebody’s Basement, Your Actor MBA, and Hollywood Happy Hour, Bonnie’s weekly column, The Actors Voice, is available at Showfax.com and her weekly podcast, The Work, is available at PodcastingTheWork.com. Her books include Casting Qs: A Collection of Casting Director Interviews, Self-Management for Actors: Getting Down to (Show) Business, and Acting Qs: Conversations with Working Actors. Bonnie has been interviewed on BBC Breakfast, on UTV-Ireland’s Gerry Kelly Goes to Hollywood, on CBC Radio One, on Judy Kerr’s Internet series, Acting Is Everything, and for E! gossip column The Answer B!tch.

Read part 1 of the interview series here.

When did your interest in building online communities begin?  For actors that are overwhelmed by social media, do you have any advice on how to navigate it?

Eesh, this answer could be a separate article all its own. Ha! I’ve probably always been a community builder. The Internet just came along as a great place to help that along at the right time. Back Stage launched their message boards while I was a columnist there and I was the geek leader, for sure, so they gave me a “Casting Qs” forum and I moderated it, for anyone with follow-up questions about my weekly articles. I had already been a regular poster at Wolfesden (R.I.P. 2004) since 1999, and a member of e-Groups (which later became Yahoo Groups) since moving back to Los Angeles in 1998. I brought together a group of fellow actors who wanted to rehearse or run lines or work out with one another pretty much right after moving here. I had just come out of grad school, where using online forums to connect between in-person meetings was just part of the deal. It was a natural progression, really. Creating the Yahoo Group for Hollywood Happy Hour was a bigger deal than I ever thought it would be, at the time. Every week, I’m amazed at the support, encouragement, and information that flows through that mailing list.

I know that social networking in its current form can be overwhelming. As much of an “early adopter” as I am, for technology, I’m also very much a “lurk then lead” type too. I’ll wait, watch, observe the culture, eventually join, and then BAM! I’ll be running the place. But I think I see too many eager (and well-meaning) actors jump in and start flailing—and publicly—without realizing the damage they may be doing to their industry relationships. There’s this one poor dude who has tweeted at me no fewer than 37 times (I blocked him once he got up there, in frequency) to spam out the link to his demo reel. Once I blocked him, he contacted me through LinkedIn. He posted to my Facebook fan page. He sent email to all of the email addresses he could find on me (and I have a lot). Do I now know his name? You betcha. And I will never be an inroad for him to get access to a producer or director whose contact information he could also abuse. All he has taught me is that he is not to be trusted behind a keyboard. And if you can’t be trusted with a computer, I sure as shit can’t trust you in a role opposite an Oscar, Emmy, or Tony winner who has agreed to do a gritty indie I’m casting.

No, I have never watched his reel. His talent is irrelevant, because his professionalism is non-existent. Too risky.

Why and how are things like twitter and facebook useful for actors?  Do you have any examples of actors who you think use those tools exceptionally well?

I’ve been saying for about a year now that I think Facebook will be done by 2012. It’s going the way of MySpace (and I’m not looking for debate on this). While some have said Tumblr would be its replacement, I’m not seeing that yet. I think Twitter will have a greater lifespan because of its non-forced-reciprocity. Because people can just be on-brand and share quick blasts from their various devices without having to endure the blather of folks who may find them fascinating, but not so much vice-versa, the Twitter micro-blogging format has staying power. Add “likes” (not just “favorites”) to the options, and we’re golden. Facebook—while amazing and certainly life-changing for many of its users—has led to social networking fatigue among many folks (including me) and as I see ridiculous “like” campaigns springing up, I know we’ve jumped the shark on its usefulness. At this point, we are all Zuckerberg’s data (not his customers).

Using the existing tools well means being on-brand with every status update, with every tweet: Coming up with a balance of actor news and real-life shares that help us truly “get” you and feel more connected to one another, even before we’ve met (or remind us of the existing connectedness, should we already know one another). Being responsive to a fanbase is essential, of course. But berating people into being your fanbase isn’t very cool. I’m not a huge fan of being overly promotional. I am, however, a fan of living authentically and thanking people who respond to that. Being engaged is great. And that takes time.

Actors need to be Googleable. They need to have their demo reel, headshots, resumé, and contact information totally out there, so we can bump into them when we need to find them, without having to click through pages of crap to get to them. We also shouldn’t have to—daily—unsubscribe from actor email blasts. It’s gross how many actors just sign us right on up, without asking, before sending out these “here’s what’s new in my career” e-blasts. They may have decided it’s harmless, because if we don’t want the emails, we just delete or hit unsubscribe. But what they’re not thinking through is the residual effect that has on our impression of them. If—when I see your headshot in an Actors Access submission—my reaction is, “Ooh! Spammer!” that’s not going to help you get called in. As for folks who are doing it right? The ones who email once and say, “Hey, Bon. I read for you on that industrial last month. I have a quarterly e-blast. May I add your email address to my list?” I’m actually more likely to opt in for that one, because of how outlandish the courtesy is. (And isn’t that a shame? Courtesy shouldn’t be outlandish.)

I sometimes worry that the group coming up behind me seems so much more focused on building an audience than they are on being great actors.  Sometimes Claire and I want to bang our heads on the wall and yell, “Get off twitter and go back to acting class!  Go rehearse a play!”  Do you worry about that or are we just being out of touch?

Ooh, girl! You’ve so hit a hot-button issue, here. Again, this one could be another article on its own. Ha! This goes back to the “like” campaigns. I received an email for Your Turn in my column a bit ago about someone who actually suggested that actors list their social networking stats (number of followers, fans, etc.) on their resumés. My exact response? “That right there is some BULLSHIT.” It’s gross. I can’t even begin to explain how gross I think it is. Let’s just leave it at that.

Is all of this busy work happening at the sacrifice of acting technique? Craft classes? Actual work on the work? Wow, I hope not! Let’s hope it’s happening at the sacrifice of chronic drug-taking or some other really bad habit.

All kidding aside, I don’t know that I’ve seen any sort of decline in acting class attendance lately. In fact, I’m seeing more acting coaches branch off from their “parent” studios to create their own schools these days. So, let’s hope that classes are full, the craft is still alive and well, and all this social networking is just obsessive busy work that some folks have taken to extremes. There’s always some silly Actor Mind Taffy-like activity taking actors’ attention; it’s just not usually stuff that other actors get to witness. Let’s say this falls in the category of the mass mailings to everyone in every guidebook sold at Samuel French. So, somewhere, someone has always been doing needless spaghetti slinging to try and get noticed, but observers wouldn’t see it. Now that it’s a social networking thing, y’all see it. You keep going on with your craft, ladies. The rest is just noise. A different bad, not-quite-tuned-in radio station, but the same noise.

Self Management for Actors is such an important idea – how did that book come about?  Can you share one idea from it with our readers?

I so love that li’l book. I really do. Basically, Self-Management for Actors started out as a collection of all the emails I had answered, in my first years of writing “Casting Qs” for Back Stage. Because I had interviewed hundreds of casting directors, it’s like I became the ad-hoc expert on trends in casting (because, back in those days, very few casting directors were actually going to speaking engagements, blogging, posting on message boards, or revealing anything about what their world was like, outside of interviews like the ones I was doing).

I was bombarded with emails from actors about everything. And I would always do my best to help. If I didn’t know the answer, I would research and find an answer. I’d connect with anyone who would talk with me—from SAG reps to TMA board members to city attorneys to child actor activist reps to members of the ATA to working actors to studio execs to top casting directors to trade publication journalists—and get answers. And then the book was born. It was the road map I would have wanted, back when I was an actor. It was all the stuff I sucked at, as an actor. And it’s what—for many talented actors—makes the difference between being “just talented” and being “castable.”

I’m thrilled that I was smart enough (or enough of a packrat, or both) to bring all of that great information together. I also never lose a contact. So, anyone who ever said something better—at a talk at SAG, during a panel discussion for which I was moderating, on a message board—I contacted and asked to contribute an essay to the book. I knew I didn’t want mine to be the book’s only voice. I’m very grateful for the contributions from so many people in this wonderful industry, filling that book. I’m very lucky that so many wonderful friends and colleagues have found the book worth contributing to, recommending, even buying in bulk and then donating to current students at their alma maters.

The overarching premise is that actors have far more control over their careers than they think they do. This town is designed to keep actors feeling powerless and small. My book is an attempt to say, “Hell no. That’s not true. Stop buying it just because that’s what they’re selling. THEY need you to feel small because if you realized how big you really are, THEY wouldn’t be in control.” And frankly, they’re not. We’re watching a revolution of self-producing happen. We’re in the midst of a major shift in the way people behave in this industry. Casting directors, agents, managers, producers, directors, publicists, showrunners, writers, development execs… they’re all sharing behind-the-scenes peeks into their worlds, when ten years ago, almost no one was (and those of us who did were ridiculed for doing so). And now, actors are putting together their own resource maps and sharing them with one another. When I got started, actors were rarely sharing tips with one another. If you could find one actor to mentor you, you were lucky. Twenty years ago, The Actors’ Network began building upon that model. Today, thousands of actors are creating resources for one another, sharing their journeys with one another, supporting and encouraging one another—and gleefully so. There’s very little of the old, “I had to work hard for it, so you have to figure it out like I did,” attitude in this generation.

Outstanding. That Self-Management for Actors has added to that generational evolution? Awesome. Lucky me.

I have this column of yours bookmarked because of all the fantastic practical advice it contains.  Which columns of yours do you consider ‘must reads’?

Ah, yes. The intro to the “Get Critiqued!” series. Lots of good links in that one. Thanks. I think one of the most valuable parts of “The Actors Voice” is that Showfax keeps everything free and searchable, so I can do those links back to previous columns, which means you can dig as deep as you’d like on any particular subject.

For me, the “must reads” are the ones I email out the most (and yes, I do answer my email, though it is getting harder to do so in a timely fashion, due to high volume). Those would be: I Think I Want To Be an Actor (for the just-starting-out type), Just Get Better (for the filled-with-excuses type), Help Us Help You (for the about-to-reach-out-to-anyone-for-help type), How To Network Badly (for the networking-phobic type), The CD Workshop Issue (for anyone wondering what actually changed when AB 1319 went into law, January 2010), Conspiracy of Yes (for anyone who wants to enjoy how far you’ve come every time you get anywhere close to a booking), and Get Ready for LA (for the moving-to-LA-soon type).  Also Agent-Free Auditioning. I get a lot of email about that one, from actors trying to go it on their own before they’re repped (and sometimes after).

I have personal favorites too, but those are probably the ones I hear the most about. I think I write about the same themes many times over (of course) and just come at the information from different directions, which helps folks who may not have “heard it” the first or second time. So, while the resource and tools columns are very popular, the ones on mindset and getting out of your own way are my faves.

Keep creating!