Well, it’s been about two weeks since my last blog entry. That seems about right since it’s been about two weeks since I’ve had a chance to breathe!

For some reason, I am famous for leading a life of leisure. I don’t know anyone who works as much as I do and then, when it’s all done, still has so much free time. After all my dubbing studios, children’s theatre, web design, acting, and directing, I still have time for volleyball, computer games, maintaining a massive music and film library, impregnating my wife, traveling the world, and finding a cure for the common cold (soon to be published). I must be good at automatically defragmenting my day planner (mad props if that analogy makes sense to you). Anyway, this has all changed now that this new job is kicking my ass.

Dialogue Coach: A person who helps train an actor in diction and/or the use of inflections, so that his or her speech fits the character and situation.

And that’s basically what I’ve been doing for the past two weeks on Clean Break. Roughly half the cast is Spanish. I go through their lines with them while costume, makeup, cameras, lights, and sound are setting up and then I have to be there to listen to the performances while we shoot. If I catch anything that I think can be improved upon, I speak with the actor between takes. Plus, since the director found out that I am also an actor, there’s my newfound responsibility of reading any off-camera lines for the on-camera actor to respond to. I like this job because I get to engage my brain and do a little acting. Here’s hoping they keep me in mind when they cast their next film!

But then there are the times when I’m not needed on set – and there are plenty of these times. This is when I either investigate the catering station, chat with the makeup girls, play Monopoly on my Palm Pilot with the on-set nurse, watch the current scene being filmed, or wander around aimlessly. And this is a long day we’re talking about. They told me it’d be 12 hour days for the entire shooting schedule, but we aren’t always that lucky. The first week was mostly 7am to 7pm (with the occasional overtime), but this past week has seen us shoot from 3pm to 3am and then 6pm to 6am. We’re supposed to always get at least 12 hours off between shoots, but when you add travel time and shooting delays to the equation, that rarely happens.

Overall, it’s been a very good experience for me so far. I’ve met some great people, learned a lot about the industry, and have learned to go to bed before midnight (when necessary). Besides the entire technical crew who are all wonderful to work with, I really enjoy spending time with some of the actors. I spent a couple days with the wonderfully kind George Wendt talking about falling down at Oktoberfest, the rocky beaches of Portugal, the current state of cinema, and hidden Moroccan waterfalls. Colm Meaney is always fun to chat with. He’s constantly joking around – even with the hair and makeup girls who rarely understand what he’s saying. Colm just bought a house in Mallorca and has a new 15 month old daughter named Adelaide (or Ada for short – which I explained means “fairy” in Spanish. Very pretty). I don’t have very much in common with Tara Reid who spends most of her time partying or flying off to Valencia to party with the Valencian football team or showing up on set after having partied a bit too much. When she’s not throwing one of her patented temper tantrums about her hair or boots she’s usually well natured and mostly harmless. I haven’t gotten to know Angus Macfayden very well. Either he’s always in character or the guy’s actually a moody diva – I make no judgment. What I do know is that his distrust/disrespect for the script has him rewriting all of his scenes and this apparently excludes him from having to memorize his lines as given to him. This has not made anyone’s job easier. And finally there’s my group of Spanish actors: Lorena Bernal, Francesc Garrido, Marta Bayarri, and Mingo Ràfols. They’re all absolutely wonderful. Very sweet, down-to-Earth people and good actors, to boot.

OK, enough mindless gossip (for now). I’d best get to sleep or I’ll never survive till the end of this film. Two weeks down and two weeks to go!

We’re back from Lisbon. Well, I should say that I am back. Jan is currently in England and I am hopelessly lost without her. I just don’t know what to do with myself. I spent all day yesterday on the computer. No joke. All day. I’m finishing up a couple web projects I’ve been working on before I start my job with Clean Break next week.

Derek and I have been working on a redesign for Revista Toldo for the past year (as you’ll see, they desperately need it). No joke. A year. It should have been a two month project but the client is absolutely hopeless at getting us the necessary content and doesn’t seem to be in much of a rush, either. We sometimes waited over two months to get a response from an email. I’ll let you know when we make the new site public. This is the same guy for whom we redesigned Ibertoldo.com last year.

Apart from this, I just finished programming a web site for a friend of mine who is the lead singer for an amazing klezmer band here in Barcelona. The group is called Mashalá! (which means Congratulations! in Ladino, Turkish, and Arabic). I’m happy with the programming end of things – but it was a bitch to complete! Since there are four languages here, the site is made up of over 50 pages! Plus the designer (not Derek) was an absolute nightmare to work with. The site is entirely too reliant on graphics to load quickly (and search engines will never find it), I think it’s too small to read properly, the design elements were delivered to me in very web-unfriendly formats, and she didn’t even want to do her job half the time. But I made it work.

The only other web project I have on the horizon is my aunt Amy’s real estate website which I’m working on with my mate Bob (he’s the programming geek on this one). Amy has someone in LA to do the design and the initial mockups look promising. Once we sort out the technical challenges of integrating a comprehensive search engine from another real estate website we’ll be on our way. I have to send her an estimate today of how much it’ll cost her. That’s always a sensitive matter: mixing family/friends with business.

I’m a boy.

No, I’m the boy.

You see, my mom’s side of the family is vast. One could even say it was vahst. Of my many relatives on the aforementioned side of my family, I am the only boy to have been born in over 60 years! If we had only sat down for a moment and pondered this obscure genealogical fact, we wouldn’t have needed the gynecologist to tell us yesterday that, come autumn, the name Murray won’t be doing us any good. That’s right, sometime around September 1 Jan and I are scheduled to have a little baby girl!!!

How could we have missed this:

Click on the picture to get the full-screen effect of all that estrogen.

Plus there’s the fact that Jan is one of three sisters! What the heck were we thinking?

Everyone who has heard the news is saying that they can totally imagine me with a little girl. Daddy’s little girl… I think I can imagine it too 🙂

So send us your suggestions for names. It should be easily pronouncable in both English and Spanish, and any Jewish connection is always a plus. Jan’s first idea was “Amelia” (Amy for short), but apparently that sounds just like Emilia, which is the Spanish equivalent of Murray. I thought Zooey would be nice, but that might just be to force the uber-cool initials Z.Z.

Before you know it we’re gonna have one of these:

My wife in a tub, circa 1971.
Before they invented color.

Goodbye incessant brushing. Goodbye costly shampoo and conditioner. Goodbye sticky hair gel. Goodbye four week hair dye cycle. Goodbye expensive trips to the hair salon. Hello summer!

It is highly discouraged for a pregnant woman to fly during her third trimester of pregnancy – so we’re getting it all in now! Tomorrow Jan and I are off to mystical Lisbon, Portugal for five days. When we return on the 12th (mental note: talk about this in the next paragraph), Jan flies off to deepest, darkest England for five days. Then, on May 16th, Jan and I once again climb aboard for a journey to ancient New York – again, for five days.

Why only five days in Lisbon?
We wanted to stay for a week, but we need to be back in Barcelona next Thursday morning for our next Baby Scan! This inconveniently falls right in the middle of Semana Santa (Easter Week) – Jan’s only week off of work before school lets out for summer. We were told by the medical gods that this date could not be changed. This should be the big day when we find out if we’re to spend the next 20 years raising Josh Jr. or Jan Jr.

Why is Jan going to England without you?
I need to be here in Barcelona to start my month long English Correctionfest with Clean Break, the film on which I’ll be working as Voice Coach.

Why are you going to New York?
We were cordially invited to attend my cousin Robert’s wedding on the 19th of May! And we have accepted. The Big Apple will have us as guests from the 16th-22nd. We’ll be staying with my friend Steve in Brooklyn and hope to make the most of the five days we’ll be there (Jan couldn’t get any more time off of work).

Why all these five days?
It’s a nice round number.

And to wrap things up, as a favor to Mr. Ed, here’s a picture from Tony’s dad’s bar where we spent the evening eating tapas today thanks to Lucy’s forward thinking and Jenny’s backward traveling.

Arnau, Ewan, Jenny, Jan, me, Jan, and Lucy

So, Disney called me a few weeks ago and asked if I’d be interested in working on a new projects of theirs. Apparently, they made this film called The Cheetah Girls a few years ago and it went over pretty well with the kiddies. The soundtrack even went Double Platinum (Allmusic‘s review called the album “likeable” but also “devoid of any originality”). Anyway, they’re currently filming a sequel here in Barcelona and, since most of the actors are non-native English speakers, they were looking for a voice coach. It was a six week gig and they were offering a hefty salary. After meeting with the production team, I felt like I wanted to accept the job and they were very keen to work with me. Unfortunately… I was already booked to do a few children’s theatre gigs during the shooting of the film. I asked if I could get someone to cover for me for the few days that I would have to miss and they balked. They wanted complete exclusivity. I went home and made a few phone calls to see if I could get a last minute replacement to learn my part, but no one was available. I took it as a sign and respectfully declined the Disney job.

Not two weeks later, I get a call from a production company here in Barcelona called DrimTim (pronounced Dream Team). They’re getting ready to start production of their next film and are also looking for a voice coach! I met with the Line Producer, Albert, in their swanky office on the 18th floor of the Torre Mapfre and he explained how he had heard of me (thanks, Molly!).

He proceeded to show me the trailers of the recent films they had made in Barcelona: Face of Terror starring Rick Schroder; Crusader starring Andrew McCarthy, Michael York, and Bo Derek; Art Heist starring Ellen Pompeo and William Baldwin; and The Deal starring Penelope Ann Miller, Henry Thomas, and Dean Stockwell. They were all fast paced, mind numbing action flicks. They were also a veritable Who’s Who of “Where are they now”s. So Albert explained their next project to me: it’s called Clean Break and will be starring Tara Reid. They plan to shoot for four weeks (starting April 12) and are offering less pay than the Disney job was offering. I told them that there would be a few days that I couldn’t be there and they were very understanding and flexible. I got a very good feeling from them and, without any other major plans for the next month, I accepted the job.

If the reviews I have read on IMDB of the other four films they have produced are any indication, this should be a big pile of donkey dust. The one saving grace is that they have a different director than the same guy that did the first four films. His name is Rob. I met him today for lunch and he seems like a really good guy. A down to Earth, level headed guy with a good head on his shoulders. I like what he had to say about giving the actors freedom to interpret the part as they see fit. I try to do the same when I direct in the theatre. I find the actors who I think will bring something interesting to a part – not just be able to reproduce the preconceived notion that I’ve had in my head for the past few months. I’m looking forward to learning a lot on this job and hopefully making some good connections for the future. Who knows, maybe I’ll be fresh in their minds when they cast their next summer blockbuster!

Oh my goodness, has it been a week since I last told you what I’ve been up to? Well let me catch you up…

You see, last week was another crazy one – in a very good way! After doing five performances with the children’s theatre company in only two days (!) I was called in to do voice work in five different recording studios!! This is what my voice was doing last week:

1) Have you heard of Gran Hermano (Big Brother)? Or Operación Triunfo? Well, the production company that handles these shows here in Spain is called Gestmusic. They were preparing for a conference with Endemol, had thrown together a nifty industrial video, were looking for an American actor to narrate the video, and stumbled across me (don’t ask me how). They called me out of the blue and asked me to stop by the studio to record some narration. It was mostly “amusing” video clips of their shows mixed with statistical audience data. Three hours later and my voice was ready to woo and entertain an international audience composed of high profile television executives.

2) I would love to tell you about the two “romantic” films I dubbed Wednesday morning, but I honestly can’t remember a single thing about them. My ADMB (automatic disturbing memory blocker) is doing its job nicely.

3) I was called in to narrate an AMAZINGLY boring four minute industrial video about some Basque software developer. I was all like, “In certain situations, a usable 80% solution can be produced in 20% of the time that would have been required to produce a total solution. Our new platform for analysis of large-scale unstructured data sources is bomb-diggity whack, yo!” Well, maybe not that last part.

4) With Big Brother under my belt, I decided to step things up a notch. I got a call to record the narration for episodes 3, 4, 5, and 6 of Private Stars, a television show for which I serve as the off camera announcer, whose job it is to tell the viewing audience all sorts of blatantly obvious things that they would have to be blind to not already know. And if they are blind, I don’t know why they would be watching this type of TV program in the first place.

5) To ensure that no one could accuse me of being “predictable”, I finished off the week by providing my voice to a friendly little pigeon in an animated film depicting the life and times of Pope John Paul II. Again I played the part of the narrator (I see a pattern evolving) and I told all the God-fearing children at home about young Karol Józef Wojtyła’s zany childhood adventures. Did you know that little Karol liked to play goalie when his friends played soccer (it didn’t say if he was any good, though) and that he was part of an amateur dramatics group at college and wanted to be an actor before he decided to become a priest? This pigeon seemed to know.

And then on Friday I rested. A long wine-filled lunch out on a sunny terrace in Plaza Rius i Taulet with AmJan was just what the doctor ordered.

A few of my friends are contemplating leaving Barcelona for greener pastures and I’d be lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind as well. But then a week like last week happens and I realize how much of a niche I’ve carved out for myself here and how good I’ve really got it. Upon careful inspection, I’d say that there’s an 88% chance that we won’t be leaving sunny, beautiful Barcelona anytime soon. Maybe even 89%.