Wow. Tough one tonight. It's after an outing like this one, that I think... If there is a purgatory, the souls spend their time pursuing an acting career. God help the souls that spend hundreds of years there.
First of all, the script is terrible. It's a beach movie with lots of large breasts and drinking and partying and the big jokes are when the leads trick a woman into bending over so they can check her out. If movies were parts of the body, this one would be something floating in the large intestine.
Now, the last time I read for this movie, I was reading for a lead. That possibility made the low quality of the movie tolerable. Yes, it was schlock, but I would be the king of the schlock. There is some sort of balance there. This time, however, I was being summoned back for the role of the Officer, one of two Officers actually. They show up at a rowdy party to break it up and are convinced otherwise by the buxom women thrown their way. Very clever. About three lines apiece. This meant I would be schlock in schlock. Embarrassing, but maybe I could get by just not telling anyone I was doing it.
My audition was scheduled for 4:45pm. Unlike my usual tardy self, I arrived at 4:20pm. I was hoping to go to some tutoring afterwards if I got done in time. As I walked down the hallway approaching the casting office, I saw three or four people sitting outside the office, a practice they frown on there, so there had to be more to it. There was. Another six people were sitting in the waiting area. This would not be a short night. I stood and sat and stood some more, and walked around, and left and bought some cards at a little store downstairs and walked to my car, and stood and sat. And the clock ticked away and I just started feeling more and more unhappy that I was even there in the first place. Waiting. Sitting. Wasting my evening in a lobby reading a two-month old Hollywood Reporter so that I could have a shot to be in a straight-to-tape tit movie! Ah, the life of a Hollywood actor.
Right about the peak of my bitterness and anger, they called me in. Wonderful. I did my six lines (both Officers) and tried to generate some levity, some comedy. About half way through, the director and writer both stopped watching me and looked down at their respective clipboards, or whatever the hell they had on their laps that was so important. I plodded on, finished up prostituting myself for the untalented of Hollywood and picked up what was left of my pride and left.
6:15pm. I returned home. Two and a half hours to say six lines and feel like an idiot in the process. There's a bargain for you. There has to be a time in the future and God I hope it's in the near future, when I can say that I just don't want to play the Officer in the Beach Movie. But when the only auditions I get are generated by me, and no one out there seems to care if you've played Foghorn Leghorn on the set in a green suit, there are very few options but to tough it out and hope that somehow I'll stumble across the trigger to shoot off a higher quality career. And the problem is that it might just be a beach movie that does it. You just never know. So for now, for today, as awful as I felt walking out of that casting office, dreading the long journey back to Studio City on the 405, as well as the long journey that is my fledgling career, I need to focus on the accomplishments and look forward to a brighter future.