I went to the Laguna Hills John Robert Powers about a year ago, and brought them my 3 year old son. The owner did a seminar, his name is Michael Joston, I did not think too much of that, but my wife wanted to get our son into modeling and acting. So when she met with Dan Josten, I went along with giving them all that money.indeed, they charge $10,000 for their life time classes, the only thing is that there was only one class available for my son's age, and I would have to wait for him to be a teen ager to be able to bring him to more classes!
In addition, the class was about teaching the kids how to do a peanut butter commercial over and over for ten weeks, my son was doing this mechanical robotic account of peanut butter, and would be unable to audition in front of anybody for any real job!
I asked one of the teachers there whose resume said he worked on a John Malkovich movie what part he did on the movie, and he said: "Oh, I was just a stand-in on the movie". He then explained to me that the "stand in" job, pertains to standing where an actor stands and take his marks while they fix the lights! So their teachers are extras, that pose as actors. Then came the meetings with "agents", after the ten weeks, and this young girl was there from some small agency, and said that she needed to take my son's headshot to her boss, because he makes the decisions. So why wasn't her boss, the "actual agent" there?
When I got upset with them and asked for my money back, I left various messages, and a woman named Natalie, who was probably another one of their receptionsts finally took one of my calls, and told me that there was no money back. When I said I was going to write letters to their main location in Beverly Hills, she said: "Be my guest, they are like a different company, because we are a franchise, and under a different ownership. They will not give you any money back either. If you wanted to cancel you had to do it within seventy two hours".
How did I know then how much of a scam they are. I have the feeling that those "agents" are actual employees of that place, that are just there to make them look good, and never call anybody. I even called SAG, the actors union, and asked them what I could do about this, and their response was that they are aware of this school, but cannot help my son, because he does not belong to their union. How can he ever belong to that union if he does not do work as a model and actor?
I strongly recommand for people to think twice before they go to ant of the John Robert Powers schools, espcially the Laguna Hills one. The one in Brea also must belong to them because when they call you, they offer you either locations.
Pascal
Laguna Niguel, California
U.S.A.
0 comments