3
The casting place that’s holding the session for Niagara dishwashing detergent has one of those bathroom-stall-sized ancient New York elevators that move so slowly you think it might be stuck, and I’m crammed in with what appear to be two child actors and their mom. They’re twins, I think, a boy and a girl, with reddish hair and freckles. The little girl flashes me a big smile that looks like it’s been perfected by hours of practice in the mirror. She twirls a fat, shiny curl around and around her finger.
“Pretty hair,” I tell her.
“I sleep on a special silk pillow so the curls don’t smoosh,” she replies, beaming.
“Fancy,” I say, smiling back at her but achieving nowhere near her wattage. “You guys want to push the button for me? I’m going to four.”
“I’ll push it!” the little boy offers.
“No! I’ll push it,” his sister says, giving him a little shove. “It’s my callback.”
The little boy shrinks back from the elevator buttons and I smile sympathetically at their mom, but she seems mesmerized by a spot somewhere north of the top of my head, so I decide to take a sudden interest in the laces of my shoes and endure the rest of the long, creaky ride in silence. Even in the best of elevators, I think, there’s no place where time passes so slowly.
Upstairs, the waiting room is crowded, which means there must be a few different casting calls. There are boys and girls near the age of the elevator twins; a couple of men in their fifties, both in suit and tie; and several girls who remind me of me, but a better, more put-together me. The me who would play me in the TV movie of the fictional life of the real me.
I sign in.
Name
Time arrived
Time scheduled
Agency
Soc Sec #
While writing my information in the tiny spaces allotted by the sign-in sheet, I try to subtly scan and analyze the list of those who’ve auditioned before me. I’m a sign-in sheet sleuth looking for clues. I’m trying to figure out how many people they’ve seen already today, and if I know any of them, and if they’re from my agency, and if they were on time, and if they have neater handwriting than mine. Anything at all to indicate what a person who books a job does differently from what I do. If my appointment were five minutes earlier, would I book the job? If I made a smiley face out of the “o” in Penelope, like the person who signed in a few people in front of me did, would I work more? If I were the first person they saw today instead of the tenth, would I—
“Franny? Is that you? It’s Franny, right?”
My cheeks go hot. I’ve been caught. I drop the pen more quickly than a truly innocent person would, and look up.
“Franny Banks, right? From Stavros’s class? Or have I gone totally koo-koo bananas?” The girl standing before me laughs, doubles over with laughter in fact, like someone who might truly be koo-koo bananas, and continues laughing at a volume that says she doesn’t care that the other twenty or so people in the waiting room are all staring at her.
I’ve never seen this person before, and I don’t know how she knows me or my acting teacher, John Stavros, but the first thing I’m struck by is her incredibly long, shiny blond hair. Also, she’s tiny, like a doll who became a person, or a person pretending to be a doll, with her hands elegantly angled, fingers outstretched and ready to hold a variety of objects, and her toes forever slightly pointed, waiting for their interchangeable plastic high-heeled shoes. She’s wearing a thick stack of jangly gold bracelets, and her tiny wrist looks like it could snap under their weight. Even though it’s a bleak day in January, she’s wearing white jeans, perfectly fitted and to the ankle, as if she’s Mary Tyler Moore on a special Hawaiian-vacation episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show.
“Um, yeah, that’s me. I’m Franny.” I feel like I’m towering over her. I suddenly feel awkward, like they gave me an extra arm by accident and I can’t figure out how to use it.
“I knew it! Oh, God, you must think I’m so rude. Hello! I’m Penelope Schlotzsky. I know, terrible name, right? They’re probably going to make me change it.” She laughs again and swings her blanket of hair so that it all cascades over one shoulder. You can almost feel a breeze, it’s so thick.
I’m sort of at a loss for what to say, which rarely happens. All I want to know is who “they” are and if they have any advice for things I should change about myself.
“I’m new in class with you!” she squeals, before I can pull myself together. “I had my first class last week but I was sitting way in the back, like, petrified, so that’s why I wasn’t sure if you were you, or just someone who looks like you, but I just had to risk it and say hello because I swear to God, you were, like, the best actress. So funny. You like, really go for it. You’re going to do great in the Showcase.”
Stavros doesn’t encourage this kind of talk among his students. “Who’s better, Pacino or DeNiro?” he’ll say to us. “Don’t waste time comparing. Keep your eyes on your own paper.” And while I’m secretly thrilled by her compliments, I’m shaken by her (very loud) mention of the Showcase: the Showcase that’s looming in exactly two weeks, the Showcase we’ve been working toward for months, the Showcase that is the one opportunity we get all year to be seen by agents and directors and casting people, who come because they respect Stavros and his taste in actors. It’s a night where anything—or at least something—could happen. Last year, Mary Grace got cast in the chorus of a Broadway musical from the Showcase, and two other people got agents, and that’s how James Franklin got the screen test that eventually led to that Arturo DeNucci movie. He’s the best example of what could happen. But he’s an amazing actor—I could never hope for something that big. All I want is to get an agent, or even a meeting with an agent. That’s all I’ll let myself hope for.
“Wow, thanks!” I say. “And welcome to class. You’re going to love Stavros.”
I mean what I’m saying, but something in my voice sounds strangely insincere. I’m trying to match her enthusiasm, but with less volume, and the combination makes me sound fake, like one of those ladies who sell stretchy flowered pants on that new home shopping channel. The elastic waistband is so comfortable. You’ll live in them.
“Oh, Stavros is the best!” Penelope gushes. “So sexy, right?”
The truth is that our acting teacher is very attractive, but it embarrasses me to hear her talk about him like he’s one of us. It doesn’t seem respectful. “Well, he certainly does talk very fast,” is as close as I can come to agreeing with her.
“Right? So passionate! I’m still totally shocked I got in, especially since he doesn’t usually take people right before the Showcase. But I guess he was like, she already has an agent at Absolute, and she’s got two movies in the can, so like, you know, fine—just one more beanpole to deal with!”
This is the kind of confidence you’re supposed to have as an actress, I think. I mean, I would personally never announce that I had an agent at Absolute Artists, the best agency in town, or talk about movies I’d done, or refer to myself as a “beanpole,” especially loudly and in a room full of people. But then again, in my case, none of those things are true.
“So are you going to class from this torture session?” she says, flicking an incredibly shiny strand of blond hair back from her face. “Want to go with me to that diner on Eighth and get a salad in between?”
Salad. Oh yeah. I’m supposed to eat more salad. It just never seems appealing. In fact, I was already planning to go to “that diner” on Eighth for my usual pre-class dinner: grilled cheese, french fries, and the New York Times crossword puzzle. But for some reason I find myself making an excuse.
“I, ah, can’t. I have another, you know, torture session after this one.”
The lie comes out before I can even consider stopping it. I’m totally unprepared if she asks what my other audition is for, or where it is. Maybe I can recycle one from a few weeks ago, but what if it’s one she had, too?
Luckily, she doesn’t seem to care. “Good for you,” she says, punching me lightly on the shoulder. “You’re PERFECT for commercials. I suck at them. I totally TANKED in there.”
Somehow I doubt that Penelope “tanked” in there. I bet she seldom “tanks” anywhere. And something about the way she said I’m “perfect for commercials” makes me bristle. That’s the only explanation for what comes out of my mouth next.
“Yeah, and actually, after that, I have, um, a rehearsal, too.” I roll my eyes like, Rehearsals, pah, I have them every day.
One summer at camp, they tried to teach us to water-ski. I stood up for approximately two seconds before I fell. Forgetting everything I’d been told, I held onto the rope and was dragged, bumping across the lake, until the driver finally noticed and brought the boat to a stop. That’s the feeling I have right now, telling lie after lie to Penelope—I’m powerless to stop myself.
“Auditions and rehearsals!” Penelope exclaims, as though she’s just seen her two best friends in the whole world. “Isn’t it all so mad?”
“It is mad,” I tell her. “Mad.”
“Well, next time then. Nice to meet you, officially,” she says and shakes my hand, gold bracelets clattering and clinking. “See you on the boards!” She giggles and waves over her shoulder, a general wave that is for me, but also seems to generously include the entire room. Charisma, I think to myself. That’s what someone with charisma does to a room full of strangers. Together we watch as Penelope and her tiny white pants disappear down the hall.
I feel sort of depressed after she leaves, but I don’t know why. The spectators in the room seem similarly unsettled. They stare after her longingly, like they miss her already and wish she would come back. Gradually, they seem to realize their entertainment won’t be returning, and one by one they go back to reading, looking at their newspapers or their commercial copy—something I should have been doing this whole time.
I must never lie again, I think. Why did I say no to Penelope and her offer of salad, besides my ambivalence regarding salad? Because she’s the type of person who uses the word “mad,” as if she thinks she’s British? Now I’ll have to go to the worse diner on Sixth Avenue, two long blocks farther away from class and much more expensive.
Keep your eyes on your own paper, I hear Stavros say, and right then, I resolve to become friends with Penelope. I imagine how wonderfully supportive I’ll be from now on, clapping loudly after every scene she does in class. I’ll be gracious, I’ll be kind, I’ll eat more salad.
“Frances Banks, you’re next,” a monotone voice says. A bored-looking girl in vintage ’50s glasses, a baby-doll dress with a suspender clip in the back, and a pair of lace-up combat boots reads my name from the sign-in sheet.
Crap. I thought I had more time. I haven’t even looked at what I’m supposed to say, not one word of it. I should have gotten here earlier, shouldn’t have spent time chatting. I was basking in the glow of compliments and having envious thoughts about hair when I should have been preparing. I can’t afford to mess up an opportunity. My heart is pounding hard and fast now.
“Ready?” she asks, with a listless half-sneer that she might intend to be a smile.
“Um, yes. Totally. Totally ready.”
I would be great in a car crash, or at giving CPR. I’d be the one you’d ask to perform the Heimlich maneuver if someone started choking in a restaurant. Because in a crisis, I get very, very calm. I’m calmer in a crisis than I am in actually calm situations. So while she puts film in the Polaroid camera, I quickly scan the copy, remaining calm, focusing on my lines, ignoring the stage directions. They won’t be helpful for this kind of commercial anyway. They’re usually descriptions like “she inhales the intoxicating scent of the fluffy towel.” There’s never anything real: “She sits at laundromat breathing through her mouth due to sweaty guy hogging dryer nearby.”
The lines, learn the lines: “… smelling like a fresh spring day … waterfall take me away … Niagara—honeymoon in a bottle.” I don’t quite have them down, but I’ll be fine. The material doesn’t seem particularly original, thank God. For once, I’m relieved to have just the same generic mom commercial I’ve had a dozen times before.
I take a deep breath as Vintage Glasses snaps a Polaroid of me against the stark white wall, stapling it to my eight-by-ten head shot and résumé so the casting people can see what I actually look like today, in contrast to how my face looks when I’ve had a chance to have it enhanced and retouched.
I follow her into the audition room, which is carpeted and windowless and bare, except for two chairs where the casting people are sitting, and a rolling cart with a TV and VCR on it. A video camera is set up on a tripod, which is pointed at a T-shaped mark made of masking tape on the floor where I’m supposed to stand. Facing me from about fifteen feet away are two women, both in their thirties, with matching parted-down-the-middle stick-straight hair. Vintage Glasses pops a tape in the camera and a red light near the giant black lens comes to life. The lens feels like another person in the room, a person who never speaks or smiles, who only stares without blinking, never looking away.
“Hi, Franny, how are you, great? Great. Really great to see you,” one of the stick-straights singsongs without looking up from her clipboard. “If you don’t have any questions about the material, then state your name and agency and go ahead whenever you’re ready thankssomuch.”
I try to swallow, but my throat is too dry. This is the kind of room that’s hard to do well in. If they’re in the mood to talk, I can crack a few jokes, make a small connection, and give myself a moment to settle down. But these girls are all business.
I look down at the paper. I’m not going to panic or ask for more time or tell them I didn’t really have a chance to go over it yet. I’m going to remain calm, as if I’m a professional. What does your character want more than anything? Stavros always asks us. Clean laundry, I say to myself. More than anything, I wish I could get my laundry cleaner. I try to breathe, I can only manage to suck in a tiny bit of air. It will have to do.
“You know what’s hard about being a mom? Nothing.” Clean laundry. I smile, as if I’m sure I’ve got this whole mom/laundry thing under control. There’s nothing I want more than whiter whites.
“I always have time for my kids. They’re my number-one priority.” I relax a little, picturing a kid named George I used to babysit in high school. He liked to be tickled, and he couldn’t say his “F”s, so he called me “Whanny.”
“I always have time for my friends. It’s all about balance, ya know?”
The stick-straights are giggling, I think, or is that my imagination? I can’t hear that well due to the volume of blood pounding in my ears. I resolve to speak the lines even more emphatically so they know I’m taking laundry more seriously than anyone ever has.
“I always make time for myself. Smelling like a fresh spring day makes it all a breeze.”
The stick-straights are really laughing now; there’s no denying it. I must be doing a really bad job. I try to finish extra strong, so as not to let them see how disappointed I am. I have the cleanest laundry!
“When my husband asks me how I do it, I tell him, ‘It’s easy!’ Every day I think of our honeymoon in Niagara, and let the waterfall take me away. Niagara. It’s like a honeymoon in a bottle.”
I lower the paper and look up, defeated, only to see that the stick-straights are smiling, beaming, actually. They look at each other and share a nod.
I’m totally confused.
“Awesome!” one of them gushes. “SO funny.”
“Really cute.”
“Quirky!”
I have no idea why they liked what I did, but I know I should play along.
“Thanks!” I say, and then for no reason, “Any adjustments?” Stupid. Stupid. Don’t ask to do it again when you don’t know what you did in the first place.
“Ummmm …” They both cock their heads at the same angle, like two puppies in a pet store window. Then they nod to each other again.
“Sure, yeah, let’s do one more, just for kicks!”
“Yeah! I mean, that was great! But let’s, in this one, like, really have fun with it!”
“But also, take it seriously, like you did.”
“Yeah! Serious, but fun, like you’re talking to your best friend.”
“Yeah! Like you’re sharing a secret with your best friend.”
“Yeah! It’s a big secret, but also it’s really casual. Like, it’s a secret, but also it’s no big deal.”
“Yeah! Just throw it away.”
“Yeah! But it’s important, too.”
“Yeah! And could you, maybe, put your hair in a ponytail?”
“Yeah!”
I’m even less sure of what I did the second time, but the stick-straights laugh again anyway.
“I think her hair is funnier down, don’t you?” one of them says to the other, who nods vigorously back.
As I leave the room, I stuff the paper with the copy on it in my bag, even though you’re not supposed to take it with you, and bolt for the elevator.
I walk a few blocks in I’m not sure what direction. I’m so excited that they seemed to like me that I’m dizzy and disoriented. Finally, I slow down a bit and, finding myself near Union Square Park, decide I’ll stop and sit down and try to analyze what just happened. It’s important to figure out why they thought it went well. A cigarette. I really want a cigarette. I think there might be one left in a crumpled pack in the bottom of my bag. I know there is, in fact, because I pretended to myself that I forgot about it but secretly know it exists.
I retrieve the pack I fake-forgot about, but I can’t find a light. I keep digging in my bag, hoping something will appear. No matches, no lighter, nothing. I’m the worst smoker. I never have the two things you’re supposed to have at the same time. I hold the unlit cigarette in my hand anyway, for support, and uncrumple the paper from the audition. For the first time, I read the whole thing.
I had assumed from the dialogue what the action would be: generic shots of someone being a great mom, playing with generic perfect kids, drinking generic perfect tea with generic perfect girlfriends, and other predictably generic-perfect-mom activities.
That’s not at all what the description says.
My stomach lurches.
The action between each line is the exact opposite of what the line is. After “Kids are my number-one priority,” it says, “Rushing mom gets daughter to school just as the bell is ringing.” After the thing about always having time for friends, it’s “looks at answering machine guiltily and decides to screen the call.” At the end, the harried housewife stuffs an impossible amount of dirty clothes in the washer, which miraculously come out clean, and she gets a huge hug from her approving husband.
The commercial was supposed to be funny.
They thought I was taking myself seriously as a choice, when I was honestly trying to sell myself to them as a perfect person with a perfect life. If I’d understood it properly, I would have played it differently. I would have played it more obviously sarcastic or something. I would have tried to let them know that I realized it was comedic, to show them I understand funny. But I played it trying to be serious, and they laughed anyway. Which either means I don’t understand funny at all, or I understand it better than I think I do.
They thought I was funny; isn’t that all that matters? Does being accidentally funny count as being funny? I’m not sure what happened in there. Today was either a great success or a terrible failure. I wish there were someone I could call and ask, some sort of all-seeing audition judge in the sky, the omnipotent God of Funny, who could help me decipher this endless parade of baffling incidents. But all I have today is myself on a bench, with a crumpled piece of paper and an unlit cigarette, hoping for some clarity, or maybe just a light.