This has been a pretty busy week.
I suppose I'll start after the beginning. Tuesday, I took a bus the two miles up to Hollywood so I could go to an audition for work as an extra. I'd found the casting call on Craigslist, so I didn't really know what to expect, except that it would probably be a bottom-of-the-barrel kind of a thing. Anyway, when I got there, I knew I was in the right place, 'cause I saw a crowd of people loitering around outside the room, staring at sheets of paper and mumbling to themselves. It's always easy to pick out a crowd of actors outside an audition, since they typically disperse widely enough to make conversation between them unlikely, so they can focus on memorizing lines. I walked in the room and signed in with the receptionist, who was slightly less orange than a carrot. I think she actually compared herself to Snooki at some point while I was there. The conversation went something like this:
"Hi, I'm here for the Craigslist posting...?"
"Oh, yeah, okay, just sign in here and take this sheet of lines, I'll call you when it's your turn."
"Okay, thanks."
It was totally humorless. I was a little disappointed in myself, frankly.
I stepped out into the hallway and joined the other actors memorizing lines, as much as one can join a loose smattering of people, all of whom are keeping to themselves. I like to pace when I memorize, but I didn't have much room to do that without invading another person's space, so I settled for rocking from one foot to the other.
It didn't take me long to realize that all of these lines were completely boring. They were so boring, I couldn't even come up with a particularly interesting way of reinterpreting them. Really, they were kind of a masterpiece of dullness. I decided my character was a completely uninteresting man in his early 30s who liked only the most inane of activities.
"Last Sunday, we had a barbecue," I mumbled. "It was great. Kids playing frisbee, dogs barking, franks on the fire..." Well, I guess that's not so bad, I thought. I mean, a little cliche, but we don't have to assume this was the typical, white picket fence cook out. "A couple Sundays back, I had some pals over, we had a couple beers." Why Sunday? What's so special about Sunday? And why's your life so boring that you have to talk about the time you invited your friends over for drinks three weeks ago? "The wife wants me home by ten, since I got back so late last Sunday." The wife. Sunday.
This was when I realized that my character was a terrible person.
After two hours of being a diligent actor and reading my lines over and over, the receptionist called my name. I met with a very sweet lady who looked at my resume and, thank God, understood that I was interested in building a career, rather than just dicking around, wanting to be on TV. We spoke a little bit, I read my lines to her, and she told me to come back another day and drop off my headshot, so she could start referring me to casting directors. That idea was actually pretty exciting to me. Then, it was over, and I left. Just in time for band practice!
hilarious!
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