November 2, 2001
Goodness. This was a train wreck.
You find out early on that WOODY has an accent, so as I was reading through the scene I started doing a little Southern thing in my head. Sure, I could pull that off.
As you keep reading, you find out that his accent is small-town, but not small-town Georgia, small-town Wisconsin. Now I have never done a Wisconsin accent in my life, not even sitting around the accent campfire with my friends. But as I read through the sides, I started to generate what I thought was a decent-sounding Fargo impression. The character was a good one for me and I started to convince myself that I was really going to pull this one off.
Then the audition. Part of the problem is that I only had a few hours last night and an hour this morning to put the audition together. Never again. Never again will I try to create a dramatic character with a crazy accent overnight. It was a minor disaster. Once I got underway, I could feel the accent slipping away. The more I tried to re-capture it, the more it turned into a combination of Southern and Bronx. I can't explain it, it just happened. Then with the panic setting in, each line left my mouth in about .04 seconds. If it's possible for words to break the sound barrier, I did it today.
After the first scene, they suggested I do a little less of the accent and make him more real. Yeah, no kidding. I was just trying to make myself seem real at that point. I did the last two scenes and they went better, but at that point I was just a dancing monkey, fun to look at but you would never want one of your own.
As I finished the last scene, I'm pretty sure my face contorted into
a look of pain and disappointment. Why should they be the only ones
hurt by my performance? I felt the agony, too. I'm gonna let it shine
on through. I think one of them chuckled a little at my facial
critique and then they mercifully let me go. I don't think Crossing
Jordan is going to be knocking down my door again any time soon.