Even actors who have moved from Portland to LA to break into the film industry know Portland is a great city for movie making.

Wil Olandria is driving from LA to Portland next week to begin six days’ work on a new Diane Lane movie, Untraceable, starring Colin Hanks, Billy Burke, and Joseph Cross.

The actor is happy to be headed to his home town for a few days, especially since his brother, Warren Olandria, a resident of the Washington DC area, will be in Portland. It will be the first time Wil, Warren, and their parents have been together since they attended a family gathering in Las Vegas almost a year ago.

Some measure of Wil’s enthusiasm is directed at the Gypsy, which some call a frat boy dive and others a hip Karaoke bar. Wil quips, “Look out Gypsy! I’m coming home!” A big fan of Karaoke, he used to work at the 9 Ball as a Karaoke DJ.

What do student film Amazoboy, CBS’ emmy-winning Ghost Whisperer, and Twentieth Century Fox film Starship Dave have in common? Wil Olandria, that’s what. In the last week, Wil has been on the set of all three productions.

Amazoboy, a Los Angeles Film Studies Center (LAFSC) student film written and directed by Ryan Burcham, is about a young boy who dreams of being a superhero. Wil tells us with a grin that he got to play a store owner who helps foil a stick up.

While he’s never watched Ghost Whisperer, Wil was glad he got the call to work the show’s finale, especially after working five hours, but getting a paycheck for eight. He was also glad he wasn’t brought in to work the late call at 7pm, which was for 300 people; it’s hard to get noticed in a crowd of that size, and, Wil says from experience, “The bigger the extra call, the worse the working conditions and treatment of the extras.”

Ghost Whisperer stars Jennifer Love Hewitt as Melinda Gordon, a woman who uses her ability to see and talk with the spirits of the dead to help them resolve the issues of their former lives so they can move on to the next world. Hewitt is well known for her role as Sarah on Party of Five and its spin-off, Time of Your Life. Wil did see her on the set, but was more surprised to see Jay Mohr, who did a 39 episode stint on Saturday Night Live in the mid-90s.

Unfortunately, Wil’s call to do background on what he calls “a weird movie”, Starship Dave, didn’t turn into any actual screen time. According to Wil, the call was “for pedestrian work, but they ended up using only one lady.” The other twenty or so extras, Wil included, stood around and watched.

Standing around watching garnered Wil his biggest star sighting to date: Eddie Murphy. Murphy, a versatile and prolific actor, is currently best known for his voice work as Donkey in the Shrek movies, video games, and TV shows. Donkey fans will be glad to know Shrek Goes Fourth is in pre-production.

Deciding if and when to join the Screen Actors Guild is an important step in an actor’s career.

SAG, a union with over 118,000 members, has been protecting industry workers from potential abuses in the workplace for seventy years. SAG actors make more than double the wage of non-SAG actors, and are guaranteed the right to breaks, meals, and reasonable work hours and conditions. Membership also conveys to potential employers that an actor is serious about their work. The current initiation fee is $2,277, and annual fees are $116 plus a percentage of an actor’s total SAG earnings. If that doesn’t say “serious about my work”, nothing does, especially given that over 70% of SAG actors make less than $8000 a year.

It’s no surprise, then, that Wil Olandria has been struggling to decide whether or not he’ll join SAG. He was shocked when he heard the initiation fee had jumped $700, calling it “a surprising kick to the groin.” He was eligible when the fee was lower, having worked on an industrial piece for Hewlett Packard produced under a SAG contract, but had decided to wait.

Several so-you-want-to-be-an-actor books encourage aspiring professionals to wait to join until they must join, because once an actor signs up with SAG, they miss a lot of non-union work. “The key is to join when you feel you have built up enough of a body of work that you can show an agent,” Wil says, noting that agents “won’t even look at you if you aren’t part of SAG.” Finding an agent is one of Wil’s goals this year.

In the final analysis, Wil is glad he didn’t join SAG when he originally could have done so. “If I had, I wouldn’t have been able to be part of Brown Soup Thing.” His plan now is to do as much non-union work as he can and join SAG mid-summer.

Wil Olandria reports that he just finished background work on the pilot for a new NBC series, Journeyman, starring Kevin McKidd as “a newspaper reporter and family man who inexplicably begins to travel through time and change people’s lives.” McKidd is best known in the US as Lucius Vorenus in HBO’s Rome.

In the Journeyman pilot, Wil plays a clerk in a hardware store. He was originally supposed to play a bus passenger as well, but was asked to sit out the bus scene. A bit disappointed, Wil reports that he “…sat in the holding area by myself, listening to my iPod, not knowing what kind of production this was or who was attached.” Having recently watched season one of Rome, though, he recognized McKidd when he saw him.

In their scene, McKidd’s character, Dan Vassar, hands Wil a twenty dollar bill for a tool box and says, “Keep the change.” After a few run throughs, McKidd “made a joke about all the training he did, and here he is putting a toolbox on the counter and handing me money.”

Wil found McKidd personable and said, “Since the scene was very simple and he was in a jokey mood I commented how I really enjoyed his performance in Rome. He was really appreciative and thanked me.” Later, when McKidd and the pilot’s director were discussing Kingdom of Heaven, McKidd said the film didn’t match the script he’d read, but he’d heard a director’s cut was going to be released. Wil, never the wall flower, “chimed in that the directors’ cut was out on DVD, and that it was a much better film.” When their scene was done filming, McKidd thanked Wil and shook his hand.

Even though “many people on the set had no idea who Kevin McKidd was,” Wil admits he was “a bit star struck”.

Today, Wil is on the set of another pilot, Women’s Murder Club, starring Angie Harmon, Paula Newsome, Laura Harris, and Aubrey Dollar.

Yesterday’s call from Central Casting led Wil Olandria to the set of Bones today, where he sat in on a scene with David Boreanaz who, along with Emily Deschanel, stars in the show.

Wil was lucky enough to see Deschanel, too. “Emily Deschanel is just stunning. I didn’t realize she is the sister of Zooey Deschanel, but it makes sense because they both have very penetrating eyes.” Zooey Deschanel co-stars in this year’s Bridge to Terabithia.

The Bones set felt like other productions Wil’s done, only bigger, with a capital B. “Part of me couldn’t believe that all the trailers and people outside of the restaurant were part of our production,” Wil said.

Wil enjoyed watching the pros “do their thing”, and was comforted by the fact that “professionals have just as much trouble with their lines” as he does. They were filming “just one short 2 minute scene, but we shot it from different angles with multiple takes. It took more than 6 hours for that one scene.”

Background work isn’t for the faint of heart. It may lead to long hours standing or sitting, unsatisfactory weather, and low pay. It may also lead to a principle role, which is why so many actors, Wil Olandria included, start their Hollywood careers in the background.

Wil tells it straight when he says, “Background work sucks.” That doesn’t mean he thinks it’s beneath him as an actor, or that he’s a background slacker. Quite the contrary, which is most likely why he’s so excited by his latest call from Central Casting.

Wil has just been hired to work background for Bones, starring David Boreanaz. Boreanaz is best known for his depiction of the vampire, Angel, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

While Wil has worked in student and independent films, this will be his first time on what he calls “a real, honest-to-goodness Hollywood set.” Wil’s thrilled by the possibility of meeting, or just seeing, Boreanaz, stating, “Yes, I’m a geek, but I’m stoked!”

Today marks Wil Olandria’s one-year anniversary as a Los Angelino.

Wil found it hard to believe a whole year had passed since he moved to LA to follow his dream of making a living as an actor. In a contemplative mood, he noted, “I’m not as busy as I’d like, but I can’t ignore the fact that I am more fortunate than others.”

How busy has Wil been in the last year?
Misc: Groundlings improv workshop; participated in three student film projects
TV: LA Forensics, Battlezone, VH1’s Word Series of Pop Culture
Stage: Ahnie in America
Movies: Brown Soup Thing

Wil Olandria, as we at Wil Fan already know, is a huge movie buff. Sometimes he lets his fans know what he’s watching; today it’s The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.

Knowing that Wil hadn’t seen the movie, Big Paul (Paul Panganiban) gave it to Wil, urging him to buff up on his Peter Sellers trivia, since Wil hadn’t seen much of his work. “I saw some of the Pink Panther Series as a kid,” Wil noted, “but that was so long ago. I do remember watching Being There…” He showed that movie to his United Methodist Youth group sometime in the mid-90s, when he was a youth pastor at Montavilla United Methodist in Portland, Oregon.

His opinion on The Life and Death of Peter Sellers? “Geoffrey Rush is Amazing.”

Wil Olandria was recently seen lurking on the lot of Sony Picture Studios after a special screening of Casino Royal. He and his Japanese roommate, known only as Ryu, got lost returning to their car.

Wil realized he was walking through what used to be the MGM lot. “I couldn’t believe that I was in the studio lot that once filmed all the studio greats of the 40’s and 50’s. This was old Hollywood.” He came across the sound stage for Close to Home, a CBS legal drama exposing the dark criminal secrets of suburbia, and sneaked inside to see if the sets looked familiar. He said Ryu was “sure someone would pop out to throw us out.” No one did.

While still living in Portland, Oregon, Wil frequently attended screenings with longtime friend, Paul Panganiban. Paul’s brother, Brian Panganiban, furnished free passes courtesy of the paper he works for, the Willamette Week. You may recognize the names of the Panganiban brothers as two-thirds of PDX 503, the VH1 World Series of Pop Culture team rounded out by Wil.

Wil Olandria has made friends with the Craps table, where he reportedly won enough money this weekend to treat his entourage to New York, New York’s most expensive steak and buy himself a new iPod. In all, Wil is said to have won over a thousand dollars.

After a whirlwind of gaming at New York, New York, Harrah’s Rio Casino, and the Stardust, as well as revelry at Tommy Rocker’s, the Excalibur, Coyote Ugly, and an Irish Pub, Wil headed toward the Grand Canyon with his friend and roommate, David Carstons, a cinematographer. They apparently misjudged the distance, the weather, and the availability of accommodations, and were forced to turn around and drive all night, returning to Los Angeles in the early morning.