Renting Cars, Remembering Manson, and Knowing Your Worth
Nappoholics Anonymous is a weekly column featuring twelve random thoughts by actor Tony Nappo. Some are funny, some are poignant, some bother him, and some make him weep from sadness while others make him weep for joy. Here are his thoughts: unfiltered, uncensored, and only occasionally unsafe for work.
1. Celebrating Canada Day this year felt about as appropriate as celebrating Charles Manson Day. And, yes, you can go ahead and debate me, and point out all of this country’s many positive attributes that you want, and I’m sure that most, if not all, of your points would very likely be good ones.
BUT… AT THIS VERY MOMENT IN TIME… you really would sound like that asshole at a dinner party in 1969 saying, “sure, Chuck’s made some bad choices along the way, but he really isn’t ALL bad.”
2. Quote of the Week: (Thanks Callum KR)
3. I rented a car to visit a friend’s cottage recently. This conversation took place at the rental car desk.
Budget Guy: Are you sure you don’t want an SUV? I’ve got a few available.
Me: That’s gonna to cost me more money, though, isn’t it?
Budget Guy: Yes, but you’ll get to have a much bigger vehicle.
Me: We’ll, I’d like to have a much bigger penis, too, but I’m not willing to pay extra for one of those either!
4. Memorial of the Week:
5. Lately, I’ve been wondering whether people ever feared denouncing Nazis because they were afraid of being labelled anti-German. Because I’m pretty sure that if one HAD ever spoken out against them, it would have been the actions of a specific group of people they would have been criticizing. Not an entire culture or people.
6. Poem of the Week:
7. To me, a Leaf Fan cheering for the Habs is like someone cheating on a spouse or partner with their spouse or partner’s least favourite sibling.
8. Book of the week:
Put together by the wonderful actor and scholar, Martin Julien. I’m looking very forward to reading this one. Just wanted to put it on our community’s radar if it already isn’t.
9. Instagram Page of the Week: (Seriously check it out- fucking hilariously stupid.)
This is the equivalent of watching other people eat and wondering why you’re still hungry.
10. I met my daughter’s new boyfriend recently, who I really like, a lot. His name is Nick. I’ve decided to nickname him Nick Cage to remind myself not to like him TOO much.
11. I LOVE this post by my good friend, Raoul Bhaneja. A lot of debate sparked recently about diversity in the industry surrounding the cancellation of Kim’s Convenience– a show that made stars of 5 Korean actors and whose fifth season features roughly 5 BIPOC actors to every one white one, I noted , after watching the entire final season. Change is happening. I see it on every set I work on in terms of diverse actors, directors and crew. And I’ve shot 19 episodes on five different tv shows and two movies since the pandemic began. So I get around.
We aren’t there yet but we are well on the way, presently. And that is something I celebrate.
12. I recently had an audition for a fairly significant role on a film starring two Oscar winners—two of the best living actors on the planet, in my opinion. A role which I knew they could easily get some level of a much higher-profile name to play. Especially in a film with those two names attached. But I thought, I’ll go in and give them everything I have and make them think about it, at least.
And, as I figured, I didn’t book it, but they did offer me a callback to read for a smaller role. A tiny, one-page role (which would have been a scene with one of the two leads, but I passed on it without even reading the scene in case it was good and I might be tempted to).
And here’s why.
Because I fucking worked my balls off preparing that audition. And it was fucking good. Eight or nine pages including pain, tears, suffering, and all the show-offy actor shit. Based on that audition, they could easily have offered me the small part without making me read for it. Honestly, a part like that is not the type of part I have read for (with very few exceptions) in about twenty years. If they had asked me to read for the tiny part in a scene with this actor, from the beginning, I am pretty sure I would have said yes. It would legitimately be a thrill to work with someone of that calibre and spend some time around him to watch how he works. I’d probably ask to pop off a selfie and go home.
But they didn’t ask me to read for the small part first.
Instead, they gave me a difficult audition to prepare, and I did a more than solid job. Sure, it’s always great to be given an opportunity to audition with better material and show folks what you can bring. But not if there’s no fucking point to it. Not if that work is dismissed as if it never happened, and you go back to zero and start over. As I have mentioned many times before, the only power an actor has is the power to say no. I always get the sense that actors are supposed to feel lucky to get any job anywhere at all, but after thirty fucking years of doing this shit, I honestly feel like any show that I work on is lucky to have me.
You can disagree if you want. It won’t affect me. At all.
The bottom line is–and I have made the opposite choice in the past–that if I had gone in to read for the second tiny role and not gotten it, I would have hated myself for compromising my values. I would have had to suck up the sense of insult to the work I had already done and risk feeling like a bag of shit to read for a tiny part that ANY competent actor could probably play.
I just feel like it’s important that I value my own self-worth above all else in this industry.
Because if I don’t, why should anyone else?
Tony Nappo
Tony is Italian, he’s from Scarborough, he’s an actor, he’s a father, he’s a really good house painter, and he doesn’t believe that most things matter, ultimately, at all.
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Paintings, Pornos, and Broken Countries
Every single fucking time there is a mass shooting, we all give the speeches, and we all share the memes (to each other, who are all mostly already in agreement), but nothing changes.
Gottfried, Strays, and Easter Eggs
Dogs rarely have a hidden agenda when they meet people or other dogs: they're either wagging that shit or they aren’t.
Slapping People, ACTRA Meetings, and Dog Shit
At one point, I was sleeping with so many actresses that they used to just hold ACTRA meetings in my bedroom.
Birthdays, Cranes, and Judd Apatow
If the Freedom Convoy has answered one question for every Canadian, I think it's this: whatever happened to that dumb kid in my class?
Scorsese, Dentists, and Dying Alone
If waving a Fuck Trudeau flag is a legit way to get a meeting with him, I’m gonna start waving my Fuck Scorsese flag wherever I go and keep my fingers crossed.
Truckers, Porndle, and Bad Boys
In these newly woke times in the entertainment industry, it’s slightly amazing to me that nobody has protested the fact that Denzel Washington isn’t actually Scottish yet.
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