Shoreham grad living a dream on the silver screen By Rebecca Packard Shoreham-born D.B. Sweeney stars in "Entry Level," a comedy about a chef's job crisis, showing tomorrow night at the Stony Brook Film Festival. National audiences recognize Mr. Sweeney from a 20-plus-year acting career that includes prominent roles in the films "Eight Men Out" and "Cutting Edge" and appearances in the TV shows "NYPD Blues" and "CSI: Miami." In "Entry Level," Mr. Sweeney plays Clay, a 38-year-old chef who decides he wants to quit the restaurant business after two failed restaurants. He thinks he can get a schleppy job in corporate America despite his lack of computer skills and office experience, and finds himself in a colorful clan of perpetual job-hunters who show how to fail in business despite really trying. What makes the film more than a clich & eacute;d story about a mid-life crisis is its position against another cultural clich & eacute;: the instability of an artistic career. When Clay gets a mail room job in exchange for pastries and then gets laid off in a week, it starts to sink in that no field is a really stable one. Bob, one of his unemployed friends, brings the point home, saying Clay was born about 40 years too late for a safe corporate America. "You think there's some grand plan you have to live up to?" asks Bob. "Just do what makes you happy." In an e-mail, Mr. Sweeney stated he could relate to his role in "Entry Level," having cooked in more than 20 restaurants before getting work as an actor. Two of the restaurants, Big Barry's and Cutty Sark, were in Rocky Point but they're no longer around. He also said he could relate to the artistic crisis. "Actors tend to have a mini-crisis every time the play or movie they're on ends," he wrote. "So I guess there's no time for a big 'mid-life' drama ... we have plenty of little ones!" In a phone interview, Mr. Sweeney complimented the director, Douglas Horn, on putting the whole movie together on a tight budget. Mr. Horn said he wrote the story based on his own experience. "I know people who have chased their dreams, and I'm one of those people, and I know people who have given up on their dreams for this illusion of stability and ended up with less stability than the people who did something crazy," said Mr. Horn. Although the film has some explicit message moments, he says that the project was really about the storytelling and finding truth along the way. And he said Mr. Sweeney was a great asset in helping the film tell the story well despite its low budget. "He was the first actor who signed on," he said. "Once D.B. signed, I think everyone else became a little more interested, considered this project a little more realistic." Mr. Sweeney said he got his first taste of acting in a few plays, including a one-act-play contest at Stony Brook, during his high school years at Shoreham-Wading River High. He also played baseball, basketball and soccer then, and he hoped to have a professional baseball career. But an injury forced him to consider other options, and he decided to pursue acting. "If you grow up in L.A. you have a lot more connections than I had. If you grow up in a normal place like Long Island, you have life experience -- you're a more fully rounded person and can draw on aspects of yourself for characters," he said. Mr. Sweeney lives in California now, and that's where the film was shot, but he said it isn't an L.A. story: "It could really be any town." A glance at his r & eacute;sum & eacute; on the international movie database shows he's obviously managed to find steady work in his artistic career of choice. The secret of his success? "I work hard and people hire me, thank goodness." "Gotta do what you love," Mr. Sweeney wrote in his e-mail. "Life is funny though ... ya have to eat ... reconciling the daily needs of existence with one's dreams is one of the great human dilemmas."
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