Exclusive Interview: Tracey Birdsall Discusses New Films Dawn of the Crescent Moon, Do You Like Your Balls? and More
BGG After Dark: Your bio is extensive. Is there anything you don’t do, Tracey? And what do you consider yourself first and foremost… actress?
BGG After Dark: Was acting always the goal, or did you just fall into it because of modeling or some other connected arena?
Tracey Birdsall: Life is what happens when we are making plans... I always wanted to perform. Ever since I stood on a stage and sang and tap danced for the first time as a solo (I was five and singing “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love... Baby”) I felt that rush. It was overwhelmingly powerful that I was entertaining hundreds of people and it just fuelled me. The applause and the standing ovation cinched it pretty much. Producers would say to my mom sometimes “she should be an actress...” I remember holding my mom’s hand and tugging on it at eye level. She would say, “yes but she doesn’t have to live that life... She can be so much more.” My mother meant well as it can be a tumultuous world in entertainment, and I was too young to get my way and make a point. I knew it was who I was, I just had to go about it the hard way when I got old enough!
BGG After Dark: What would you say was your big break?
Tracey Birdsall: In print work it was getting a job at Teeni Bikini in Malibu of all things! Gladys Jones was the owner and she really took me under her wing. I ended up doing all of her advertising, which eventually led to years of magazine and catalog swimsuit modeling, which in turn led to me working for other clients and designers.
As an actress, my first Union job was for Sunkist Soda which ran for many years and made me familiar to other clients... I love to tell that story as I didn’t audition for that commercial... I was literally “discovered” at the beach!
BGG After Dark: What did you learn from working on the soaps you did in the ‘80s?
Tracey Birdsall: Working on soaps is a lot of hard work. Scripts are long and come in with changes last minute and it’s really a lot of dialogue crunching. Coming up with amorous feelings for an actor you met 5 minutes ago is also quite challenging at best. You don’t have the multiple “takes” on soap either, so you most times have to make it real the very first time. Soaps drive you to want to work in Feature Film where you can develop rich characters and live other lives in depth.
BGG After Dark: You’ve now got two independent films premiering at a Los Angeles festival. Can you tell us about the films?
Do You Like Your Balls? is a complete cluster fuck of hilarity! I know that’s an interesting way to put it, but all of the main characters (except for my character, Francesca) are stand up comedians and their comedy and timing is incredible. After watching this film for over 300 times while fine-tuning it in post-production, it still makes me laugh... although I don’t really see the point of it! It is fantastic comedy at it’s best!
BGG After Dark: Do they have distribution or is showing them at festivals the first step?
Tracey Birdsall: Dawn of the Crescent Moon has a lot of interest in it, but yet again, I was only an actor in it so I’m not privy to all the details! I do know that a particular distribution company is coming to the festival to screen it for possible production of the feature, and that there are press coming to cover it... so fingers crossed!
Do You Like Your Balls? is a longer short that was originally intended for investors for the full length film Going Very Badly. It’s actually one of my favorite feature comedy scripts I’ve ever read, so I’m hoping that as a feature it can be made with backing. Although I was originally hired on as “just an actress”, the material is so funny that I’ve tried to help run the screenplay and the short through various avenues to get it made. I do believe I’m the only actor that had to audition for this film, as the cast is made up of a group of friends that are all comedians and have worked together before. Once I saw the feature script, I knew I had to own this part. I believe I was 2/3 of the way through the audition when I realized Laura Reynolds (producer) and Michael Consiglio (actor) were cracking up whilst I was mauling the chair in an attempt to personify Francesca. I pretty much knew I owned the part at that point!
BGG After Dark: I hear that when you’re working on indie films that generally you have to wear more hats than you were initially hired to wear. Were you strictly an actor on these projects or did you end up fulfilling other jobs too?
Tracey Birdsall: Originally I was hired on as “just an actress” however, I’ve been in this business way too long to not pull in some favors when it comes to getting a project the most exposure that it can. In Dawn of the Crescent Moon, I had a part in hiring Mark Sikes as the Los Angeles casting director (he’s a great friend and a very connected man), and also in getting it into this festival for a Los Angeles showing. My publicist has also been working on getting the word out there about the film, so my “actress” role has morphed into a “team member” role in post production.
In Do You Like Your Balls? I really kind of encouraged Reza Riazi (the Director and Writer) to let me take the hard drive and finish it up so that it could be shown to Distributors, Potential Investors, and this particular festival (because Del Weston, Festival Director of Action on Film Festival, is a true networker and film supporter of the utmost level.) I felt that if I could get it to this point, the feature project might find “it’s legs.”
BGG After Dark: Do you believe the indie film industry is in a healthy state at the moment?
Tracey Birdsall: I believe that in order to do indie film at this point, you have to have a saleable product. It used to be that you could put indie films out there and there was an automatic market because there were “indie film lovers.” In this day in age, people expect quality in addition to story and character. They expect fantastic direction, vision, fully-developed characters, interesting stories, engaged actors... just like the blockbusters. The caveat is that indie’s have to do it on lesser, often self-funded, budgets. It’s a healthy market for the brilliant, and it can be disconcerting to the dreamer.
To learn more about Tracey and her upcoming projects, visit the official Tracey Birdsall website.