There have been a lot of amazing celebrity guests on Fake Doctors, Real Friends, and often, they’ll chat with Zach Braff and Donald Faison not only about their time on Scrubs, but also about the business of making movies and television. So for this episode, producer Joelle Monique collected a bunch of amazing career advice from guests like Richard Kind, John C. McGinley, Sarah Chalke, Heather Graham, and of course Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence about everything from dealing with network censors to the terror (and opportunity) of the audition room to how not to get cut from an Oliver Stone movie. Incredible stories are shared about improvising with Michael J. Fox, disappointing Henry Winkler, learning from Forest Whitaker, and so much more.
Zach, Donald, and Heather Graham bemoan the audition room, talking about how terrifying it is to have only one shot to get a part and how deflating it is to hear a different actor crushing it in the room right before you. But Richard Kind sees it differently: He actually likes auditioning. “As an actor, I like to play all different kinds of roles. I may not be hired, but for ten minutes I got to play that role,” he points out. He also gives advice about the right kind of mindset for an audition, saying that everyone in the room “just wants to make money….They don’t care whether I get the role,” so he goes in “with the mindset of, ‘Guys, I’m going to help you make a lot of money….I’ve got your back,” he laughs. Zach has been on the other side of casting as a director, and he loves this mindset, adding, “They’re rooting for you! They’re dying for you to be good! Because if you’re good, they’re done!”
Speaking of directing, Zach asks John C. McGinley if he’s ever gotten a piece of direction that really helped him. During Platoon, he says Oliver Stone would say things like, “You’re subverting my vision, and you’re f**king me;” not quite what Zach had in mind. But he did get a great piece of advice from Forest Whittaker. There was no shot list for Platoon, because Oliver Stone was basically making it up on the fly, so oftentimes, the actors would take a two-hour bus ride to the location only to sit around for hours without being in any scenes. Finally, John, Johnny Depp, and Forrest asked if they could stay at the hotel if they weren’t going to be in any scenes. Oliver Stone agreed, and while they were sitting by the pool, Forrest walked up to John and said, “You ever get the feeling that while we’re here, we’re not in the movie?” They went to set every single day after that! Hear all these great Tinseltown stories and many more, including Sarah Chalke’s $7,000 dog and how Bill Lawrence fixed a medical marijuana storyline for the censors, on this episode of Fake Doctors, Real Friends.
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