ntertainment
Making your screen debut:
The pros offer tips on acting
for movies, TV and commercials.
REED JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
y
TH E D E T RO I T J E W IS H N E WS
ou could say
that Lynn Isenberg
is bi-coastal, though
not in the term's tra-
ditional sense. Bloom-
field Hills was her
childhood abode, and it
still remains "my
home, my good
earth," she says — with a wink
to Pearl S. Buck.
But today, Isenberg, who
graduated from Andover High
School and the University of
Michigan, where she decided to
make writing her career, makes
her living amid the neon
canyons of Hollywood, and she
sees a lot more of the Pacific
shoreline than the Great Lakes.
Home, increasingly, is wherev-
12
ILLUSTRATION BY SANDY NICHOLS
er she happens to lay her lap- wisdom and insider anecdotes
on how to plug into the volatile
top computer.
With those kinds of migrato- world of CD-ROMs, home-com-
ry habits, it's not surprising puter entertainment and sto-
that Isenberg — whose friends rytelling softwarel
"Acting for Movies, TV and
call her "Zoom," for easily ap-
parent reasons — is enjoying Commercials" proinises to be a
the chance to rest her wings, al- demanding crash-course on
beit briefly. This month and how to land an audition, a call-
through early March, she's in back and, hopefully, an actual
Detroit gearing up to produce job. On hand for the March 23-
a pair - of intensive two-day 24 affair at Mark Ridley's Com-
edy Castle will be several of
workshop/seminars.
The March 16-17 workshop Isenberg's Hollywood churns:
at the Kingsley Inn, sponsored actress Cynthia Gibb, who re-
by Microsoft, focuses on writ- cently starred opposite Bette
ing for interactive media. Var- Midler in the remake of Gypsy;
ious experts from the fields of Valerie Landsburg, a screen-
motion-picture production, writer, director and acting in-
screenwriting and computer structor; and casting director
technology will be dispensing Ronnie Yeskel, whose credits
include Pulp Fiction, Reservoir
Dogs and NBC's "L.A. Law."
The pairing of the two work-
shops reflects the growing in-
terdependency of the creative
and technological sides of the
entertainment business. For
snowbound Detroiters, the sem-
inars offer a seductively balmy
Whiff of cutting-edge, Califor-
nia know-how. For Isenberg,
they provide a way to merge
two competing currents of her
life.
"I still have ties that mean a
lot to me and an industry that
means a lot to me," she says of
her Left Coast existence. "But
I can still bring Hollywood to
Detroit in bits and pieces."
Generally speaking, Holly-
wood doesn't know Detroit from
Des Moines. While other parts
of North America have wooed
big-name talent and multimil-
lion-dollar production budgets,
Detroit usually makes do with
commercial shoots for automo-
biles.
Consequently, homegrown
talent has been fleeing Detroit
en masse. The list of actors,
writers, directors and design-
ers who've fled to New York
City, L.A. and Chicago in recent
years would fill a small phone
directory.
Ex-patriate Isenberg hopes
that — with a little help from
her friends — she can stem the
exodus. The upcoming work-
shops, she says, could lead to
regular showcases for the local
talent pool, attended by lead-
ing talent scouts, modeling
agency reps and other facto-
tums of the star-maker ma-
chinery.
Reed Johnson just switched
coasts and is freelance-writing
from Seal Beach, Calif