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Posted on September 29, 2007
Filed Under The Stories |

The hum that reverberated around the room sounded like high school kids doing a last minute revision before exam time. Except that this felt more like life or death. He looked around at the other guys and cursed to himself. His agent had told him about three auditions so he knew there had to be like thirty others she didn’t know about. If he could get representation with one of the big guys he would drop her so fast she wouldn’t have time to grab her ass from hitting the ground because she’d be too busy shielding her face from when she bounced up and hit the ceiling.

(Why the fuck does everybody else want this part? It’s not fair, I’m sure there are awesome parts at all those other auditions I don’t know about. Go there you fuckers, let me have this one. I know I could be so good as the wayward son of a rich man…)

They had all sized the room up the moment they walked in. They had varying levels of confidence about their chances of getting the part but nobody considered leaving. Traffic was hell and there was no way they’d make it to any of the other auditions they had given up to be at this one. They would sit it out and sweat it out and go into the room filled with bored executives and self-important casting agents and they’d act the shit out of the part. One of them was already thinking of playing it gay, like James Dean if anyone had allowed him to express his love for Marlon Brando. Another one had decided that he was going to pretend to be a girl, not because he was gay or anything but because he was so secure in his masculinity that he would channel all the bitches he had fucked and all the cunts who had fucked him over and he’d tap into that to get at where he wanted to go with this character.

Ninety-three of the one hundred and four men in the room had stuffed something down the front of his underwear to make his ‘package’ look appealing. Sixty nine of them waxed their backs. One hundred and one had had their teeth fixed and seventy four had visited a rhinoplast.

He shook his head mentally and wondered what chance he had (Stop it! You’re not going to go there. This part could be yours; you just have to want it bad enough.)

The door opened and an assistant walked out. She scanned the room and chewed her gum, twice. (Ah fuck, we’re going to be here all day. We should totally schedule these auditions on a rotation basis so that we don’t get all the retards while the good guys are auditioning for the new Scorsese in Van Nuys. Fuck! I so desperately need to get laid!)

Ninety-six guys, including eleven gay and eight bi-curious thought at the same time, (I’d fuck her…). The rest of them were already planning their strategy for doing exactly that. She was hot enough in that ‘could be an assistant or secretary, definitely not a star’ way.

The hum died down and she cleared her throat, “Hi guys, thank you all for coming. I’m Becky Noonan and as you all know, you will be reading for the role of Seth, Mr. Caufley’s spoilt older son. A little background – Seth’s mom died when he was thirteen, so right around puberty, and he’s twenty-one now. If anyone thinks he’s too old to play twenty-one, we have coffee and donuts and…thank you for coming. A casting call for Mr. Caufley’s best friend will be going out next week. We will start with Sean Hastings…”

Sean Hastings, a dude with way too much facial hair to be a human, much less a twenty-one-year-old fuck up, got to his feet and followed Becky into the other room. She managed to turn completely away from him before she rolled her eyes and thought (As if!).

He sat there with the rest of the expectant ones and hoped they wouldn’t somehow feel like they had found ‘the one’ with their very first reading. Six minutes later, Sean Hastings was out, he shook hands with a couple of mates, did a soul shake with a couple of others and then sauntered out the room like he had already got the part.

If he hadn’t already been to a million auditions he would have assumed that guy got the part and left so that he didn’t waste all day waiting to try out for a part the first guy had already nailed. He knew better now but he noticed that, like him, a few others were scanning the room to see if there was a newbie among them who had that exact same thought and left. Everybody stayed put. No newbies in this group. (Shit!)

As time passed the tests got shorter so he made a mental note of the guys who took more than the six minutes that was the benchmark set by one Sean Hastings who was sad enough to be the first guy to turn up. By the time it was his turn, he was more confused about what he should do with the role than he had been in the morning when he walked into the room.

He couldn’t be entirely sure but he thought he stayed in the room for about seven minutes. Though he was like the fortieth one in, Becky still managed a smile for him. He wondered if that was a sign. (Maybe I should get her number. Take her to dinner…maybe a show and then I can call her in a couple of days and ask if she has any inside scoop on who got call backs…Stop it! That’s the kind of thought that leads you to believe that you’re not going to get a call back. Wear the attitude of a winner man! Wear it to share it.)

He was in his car going in the wrong direction when Sarah, his agent, called, “Bryan, are you done with the wayward son thing?”

“Yes, only just. I think it went well.”

“How soon can you get to Van Nuys?”

“What’s in Van Nuys?”

“Apparently Scorsese’s people are auditioning for a couple of small parts and no one came.”

He nearly stepped on the brakes and drove himself through the windshield, “What like Martin Scorsese?”

“You know another one.”

“Is it a speaking part?”

“Of course!”

He whipped the car around and waited for his head to catch up to the rest of his body. “Okay, tell them I’m coming.”

(Imagine that! I wonder if Leo DiCaprio will be there…)

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