"FW" Magazine

My TV Has a Personality:
Eric Szmanda

By: Jason M Burns

ES: How you doing?

JB: Pretty good and yourself?

ES: Umm¡Kgood.

JB: A little busy?

ES: No, just a day of ego indulgence doing interviews. I'm looking forward to externalizing a little.

JB: So is the interview thing part of your daily life now?

ES: No, this is very new to me. Things are finally starting to pick up a bit, but I'm not sure if I liked it better the other way because I had a lot more free time. The average day for me is trying to find friends that don't have to work so that I can go hang out with because they only schedule me one day a week here. But, like I said, it's getting a lot busier so I don't have as much free time. If I'm not here at CSI, I'm usually wheeling and dealing in some other crazy business. I still work with music and it's kind of become my hobby.

JB: Are you working with specific bands and doing the managing thing?

ES: It's kind of weird. I definitely have bands that I'm aligned with because I like them, so I try to get them some exposure here and there. I spent five years working for BMG Music, so through that I was working with artists on Arista, RCA, Jive and all of these labels within the BMG family. I did a lot of marketing and promotional stuff. I even did some A&R stuff and produced about five albums in my years there. It's hard to let go. I worked so hard to build up my profile in the music industry that I'm not going to let it go just in case I blow my face off by accident. (Laughter)

JB: Which artists did you produce?

ES: I worked with two British labels called Mitsuri and Flying Rhino. Flying Rhino owes me money! But, that's mostly electronic music¡Ktechno and trance, which I'm not as much into as I was before. But now, if I'm not working on CSI or doing small parts in movies I've kind of gotten into music supervising. So, I help put soundtracks together for movies and so far I've worked on a couple of projects. I worked on the movie Life as a House and another one coming up called Rules of Attraction by Roger Avery who wrote Killing Zoe, Less Than Zero and Reservoir Dogs.

(The CD player in my head begins to play "Little Green Bag" by The George Baker Selection.)

JB: A lot of artists these days seem concerned with "selling out" and don't look to have their music appear in films and commercial spots. Have any artists turned you down?

ES: Tool is really difficult when it comes to that and I don't blame them. Their music is far superior to most movies that are made, but I think if it was the right project they'd be into it. Right now I don't think there is such a thing as "sell out." I was just reading an article in a magazine the other day about how youth culture has kind of just blended into mainstream culture so much that there are no boundaries anymore. I mean¡KDaft Punk is doing Gap commercials. Here in America we haven't figured it our yet, but if you go to Europe, you see that all of the time.

For the record¡Kwe here at the Green Room are totally open to selling out should the right party come along and want to work with us. When we started out we assured ourselves that the word integrity would never come into play. So far so good!

JB: Are you a musician yourself?

ES: No. I played the drums up until about freshman year in high school. I played the drums in a cover of "We are the World" in the talent show. We lost!

JB: Did you have to start out with that little drum pad? Some stupid piece of rubber glued to a piece of wood?

ES: (Laughter) Yeah!

JB: Would you say you are more passionate about the music than you are the acting?

ES: No, not at all. I just think a lot of actors go crazy because they spend too much time thinking about their acting career and they don't have anything else to do. Some guys paint. Some guys sculpt. Some guys cross country run. I prefer to bring good music to the ears of the people. I enjoy putting concerts and events together and what not.

JB: Do you think that the event- planning side of your life has helped you out in Hollywood?

ES: I think in terms of knowing what it is that we're actually doing and knowing that although we do have our own individual personalities¡Kto a lot of people we are commodities and you have to be aware of that when you're doing business. When I was a kid I used to do theater¡Kfor free. Business never came into that. It was never even on my mind, like promotion, strategy, marketing and that kind of stuff. But, now that I'm doing this it's something that I've become more aware of just because there are so many people out there that are trying to dig into your pockets. You just got to know where people are coming from and what they want.

JB: So did you get excited when you landed CSI or did you have reservations?

ES: I know that my career is hopefully not going to end with CSI. It's only going to be the beginning. I couldn't ask for a better springboard and it's also a great learning environment. I was excited to be working with William Petersen and Marg Helgenberger and a lot of these producers that I had known of just from auditioning. I knew I was in really good company. I knew there was something special about it, but I didn't think it was ever going to amount to this. If I had to do it over again of course I would. (Laughter) I'm finally making a living doing what I love and CSI will provide me with that living for a very long time.

JB: You mentioned how actors can be commodities, but do you think that television actors are product more so than film and theater?

ES: In a lot of ways, yeah. You're definitely forced into a lot more conservative thinking and advertising. From what they tell me and from what I've observed, there's a lot more crossover potential for television actors these days. It's not like you're pigeonholed as a sitcom actor. I don't think I'll ever do a sitcom again, but I think on CSI because the caliber of the show is so high that it's almost like watching a movie. I feel like I'm doing a movie a lot of the time that I'm working.

JB: As far as it being a springboard to future career opportunities¡Khave you started to reap the benefits as of yet?

ES: Not really. (Laughter) I'm really focused on the show right now and focused on getting my production company put together. I really don't have a lot of time to work on anything else until a hiatus. I'm looking forward to having a few months off to try and get into something cool, but I can afford to be a little bit more selective. Thank God I didn't get some of the movies I auditioned for over the past couple of years because my career could have gone in a totally different direction.

JB: Is it a comfortable feeling knowing that you'll be going to work every week?

ES: I thought it would as I was trying to get to this place, but I never like to be content so it actually gets to be kind of scary. I've never had a job for more than a year at a time without moving around or changing positions. I'm trying to get used to it. I think sometimes the struggle is a lot more fun than the actual achievement and looking back on the adventures I had to get where I am now¡KI wouldn't trade it for the world.

JB: I was reading your bio and I saw that you took some legal action over a T-shirt when in school. I actually had some problems with a shirt too. Mine was a Guns N Roses T-shirt that said "Guns' N' F'n Roses." They made me put electrical tape over the "f'n" part. What was your situation?

ES: (Laughter) Well, it wasn't nearly as cool and rock n' roll as that. It was kind of a ridiculous situation and I couldn't have cared less about the subject matter. It was more of the principal and the fact that Pump Up the Volume had come out recently and I was just looking for them to screw up. (Laughter) Some kids in school had made a shirt that mocked the basketball team and the year before the team was undefeated and the school had made these intimidating T- shirts as a way for students to support their sports team. So the following year some kids had made these shirts that brought attention to their new losing record. They were 1-14 as versus 14-1 the year before. The basketball team was kind of sensitive about it. So they were selling these shirts for 10 bucks around school and the coach asked the principal to ban the shirts and I intentionally wore the shirt to school to get suspended. About seven other students did the same thing and we staged a big walk out. A bunch of news reporters came out and covered it. We had a lawyer and had an assembly where all students who were interested in discussing civil rights infringements to come by and get legal council. We then decided to file a lawsuit against the school. (Laughter) It went all the way to Phil Donahue and Jerry Springer, who at the time was doing a little more credible work and they had asked us to come on the show to talk. The school ended up settling out of court. We didn't get any money out of it, but the school just ended up sitting down and drafted a very specific dress code, which actually restricted the freedom a lot more than it was before. We kind of shot ourselves in the foot, but by the time everything was done I was already a senior and didn't care any more. (Laughter)

JB: So did you ever actually go on Springer?

ES: No, we never did any of that. We were not nearly as articulate at the time to hold our own under the gunfire of the conservative audiences. So, our lawyers advised us to lay low.

JB: I don't think they were throwing punches on the show at that time, so it wouldn't have been as fun anyway.

ES: (Laughter) No!