June 22, 1999
Let's see. What makes commercial auditions unpleasant?
1. For the last six months or so, it seemed that every audition I got would come in at the last minute the night before, or, worse yet, at some point during the day of the audition. The problem there is scheduling. If you are in the middle of something, you have to determine how important that something is. For this audition, I was in Vegas when I got the call. "They want to see you today at 3:15pm." A quick scan of my ticket showed me touching down in L.A. at 5pm. Joy. That was yesterday. I told my agent I didn't feel it was worth changing my ticket. She said that was the only time they could see me. I had to let it go. An hour later, it came back to me. 3pm today.
2. For nearly every theatrical audition, the casting office puts out 'sides' ahead of time, so that the actors have a chance to look over their lines and the concept of the scene and prepare a little something for the audition. Commercial people just don't seem to think it's worth the effort. And so someone like me, who thrives on prep time and idea time, is left feeling flustered. And so it went today as well. No material ahead of time. No chance to put anything together.
3. The location of many commercial casting offices happens to be on the Westside of L.A., most specifically a place aptly named Westside Casting, as if it were waving in my face how cool it is to be on the Westside. I don't find it so cool when I'm driving from Studio City. The traffic was its usual awful self this afternoon and the 15 mile trip took 50 minutes to accomplish. My love was growing.
4. Of course, I never allow for traffic, thinking that if traffic causes me to be late, then the hand of God was at work creating mayhem to interfere with the normal flow of events. That reasoning ignores the fact that traffic on the 405 IS the normal flow of events. Regardless of my level of blame, my level of tardiness was increasing as I sat going zero on the freeway still some 5 miles and 20 minutes away. Fighting traffic to end up late at a commercial audition. What could be worse?
5. It got worse. The Westside Studios are home to a number of casting offices. It seemed that nearly all of them were in full swing this afternoon. That meant a waiting room full to the brim of struggling actors carrying headshots and telling encouraging stories and trying to be upbeat and still giving off an aura of desperation and longing. And yes, I am still one of this breed, show or no show, but to have so many of us together in one place is always a bit discouraging and disheartening. When you want to think of yourself as special, it's hard to wait in a room full of 20 people just like you.
6. Some commercial casting directors are very good about scheduling a reasonable number of actors in a reasonable time period so that they don't get backed up during the course of the day and end up making people wait too long to audition. I have never met any of them, but I am sure they exist. Today I waited 55 minutes to go in to do a little two-minute scene. Is every one else stopping to have a little party in there? What am I missing? Well, at least I got to wait in a crowded waiting room.
7. This doesn't happen quite as often, but today it did. The copy that was sitting outside the audition room was different than what was inside the audition room. Because of the noise and crowd, I was never close enough to get the official explanation, so he gave it to me right on the spot right before I did the scene. So now, not only did I not get a day or a night or even a morning to prepare, but I couldn't even have the 55 minutes I was standing in the lobby staring at the advertisements for acting classes and headshot photographers. I would have a total of 18 seconds to hear the copy and come up with an interesting way to do it.
8. And that leads into the 8th awful thing about commercial auditions. I suck at them. And I wonder why? Look at how good my attitude is towards them!! Even so, I gave a very bland rendition of the scene. I almost never look back on a commercial audition and the choices I made and think, "Wow, that was really clever of me." In a way, I think I'm just going through the motions hoping for some magic, but I'm not inspired to create any of my own. I think somewhere inside me I feel like any creativity won't be appreciated and so there's no use cranking it up. That's just a guess, but it's as good as any.
9. Did I mention traffic? It's frustrating to be running late and stuck in awful traffic, but it really feels no better to be back on the same freeway going in the opposite direction and the same speed or less, and forced to reflect on the last two hours of your life that the commercial industry has stolen from you so you could turn in a performance that undermines your own creative instincts and faith in yourself as a performer. But yes, that's what the 405 had in store for me on the equally long ride back to the Valley to end this awful afternoon.
And isn't it a shame that there isn't one more item so that I could turn this into my own little Top 10 list of commercial atrocities? Well, well, well. Today is our lucky day. When I returned to my neck of the woods, I stopped at the grocery store and it was there that I noticed that someone had hit my car while I was in the commercial audition. The left rear fender was dented in and the tail lights were smashed. The icing on the proverbial cake.
And where's the silver lining in all of this? I am glad you asked. Given ten terrible tidbits of commercial audition woe, all I can say now is this: That's it. Done. I am going out on a high note. Or a low note, as it were. For the time being, it is simply not worth the agony nor the ecstasy. Some day down the road, I may choose to re-enter the slimy underworld that is commercial auditioning, but until Oh Grow Up goes away, it will be my shield against the darkness, my defender against the onslaught of the dark side, my fairy godmother, if you know what I mean.
So raise your glass and give a shout. I am free.