Odd Jobs & Nutjobs: How To Get An Agent, Part II

I’d been hustling in my pursuit of an acting career for four years and two months. I had rice and raisins for breakfast six days a week, weighed 142 pounds and asked friends if I could devour their leftover french fries.

I’d had a bit of success, having been cast as a youth chained to the hood of a car in Strange Doings at the Patroon Garage by (name drop alert!) Caleb Carr, author of the best-selling The Alienist. It was an original play about a ghost who haunts a garage in upstate New York… the actor who portrayed the ghoul could have been cast as a zombie in Night of the Living Dead. When he jumped onstage and pointed his finger in my face, I didn’t have to draw on my childhood memory of being bullied by Robert Collello.

The ghoul was petrifying.

This was Off-Broadway! West 45th Street!

Walking away from the theater on closing night, after hugging the cast (even the ghoul), the director and Caleb, I strutted down the street.

You are ready to work with an agent.

The next morning, I scraped together a bunch of nickels and pennies for subway fare, devoured a hearty breakfast of Cheerios and my one remaining sausage. And out the door I went.

SOME agent has to like what I have to bring to the table…

I got off the grubby, graffiti-ridden train at West 50th Street and headed over to a building that had a few lesser-known, smaller talent agent offices.

There on the three foot by two foot glass directory:

Actors and Artists Agency/5th floor

I tucked my worn t-shirt into my three-year-old jeans. I entered the elevator, which had a cracked mirror. I looked okay, outside of a few random pieces of hair scurrying about in sixteen different directions. I knocked on the door. My throat tightened, like a serial killer was strangling me.

A guy five foot two with wire-rimmed silver glasses answered. He wore a white shirt with no tie and had a relaxed, kind vibe about him.

“I’m Jack,” he said as he shook my hand. A real man grip. “Nice to meet you.”

I gave him my picture and resume. The 8 x 10 had a macho, night sky black background and I was wearing my black leather jacket, staring intensely into the camera. When the photographer took my photos, I imagined Demi Moore inside the lens, which gave me the intensity of a guy who’d just met a smokin’ hot woman. She was my Hollywood crush.

He checked out the picture as I hid my hide my fear and desperation. He turned into his office, said goodbye and shut the door.

He didn’t slam it in my face! PROGRESS!

At 10 am two mornings later, I fiddled with the phone cord — this was before Steve Jobs had put microscopic brainiacs inside two by four pieces of metal and called them phones. I glanced at the black and white pigeon resting on my windowsill to ease my mind.

It pooped.

“Actors and Artists Agency, Jack speaking.”

I couldn’t form two words. The Saraha Desert had crept into my throat.

“Hello?”

A burst of energy found its way out of my mouth.

“Hi, Jack! We met a couple of days ago. I dropped my picture by your office. Can I…”

“Oh sure! I remember you! Come on in! How’s tomorrow at 4:00?”

“Perfect! See you then!”

I hung up and bounced around my 12 by 15 foot studio.

An agent wants to meet with me! WA-HOOO! Visions of being in the next Neil Simon play on Broadway and taking a bow to a standing ovation… my name in the closing credits of All My Children or One Life to Live…

I’m gonna be on tv! No more cater waitering! No more being down to my last quarter! Yeahhhh, baby!

The next day, at 3:50 pm….

How am I gonna make it through this?

I knocked a knock so quiet I could barely hear it. He must have, because he opened the door and his face lit up. He gave me a real manshake again.

“Sit down! I’ll just be a few minutes.”

I sat in a black, metal chair with a cold, uncomfortable back. I fidgeted, straightened my spine and waited.

And waited. And waited.

His phone didn’t ring once. Every few minutes the sound of a pen scratching on a pad of paper emanated from his office.

What’s he doing in there, scratching his nutsack?

Finally, after 45 minutes of excruciating silence, he called me in.

“Grab a piece of commercial copy.”

He handed me a notebook from the time of Methuselah with about 47 pieces of coffee-stained pages. Copy for Listerine, M&Ms and some insurance company which had been shut down because their CEO had embezzled forty-six million dollars were stuck together.

“Read one.”

Head & Shoulders jumped out at me. I hadn’t taken any commercial classes, so said with a big, fake over-the-top smile.

“Head & Shoulders keeps you up to 100 percent flake free! It prevents dryness and you can whatever whatever whatever…”

His fake smile put mine to shame. I couldn’t tell whether I’d passed, failed or gotten an incomplete.

“Good! So, tell me about yourself.”

I wanted to say, “Well, you’ve wasted an hour of my life now…” (I glanced at his pad of paper) “…while you’ve been doodling pictures of flying saucers and donuts,” but I figured that wouldn’t be a great career move.

“I just closed Strange Doings at the Patroon Garage Off-Broadway! It’s a new and exciting play by a brilliant writer…”

Jack’s face brightened. He smiled. His teeth were yellow with subtle shades of grey. His scalp had a few strands of grey straw covering a shiny pate.

“Nice! So, what are your career goals?”

I almost blurted out, “I have NO freakin’ idea.”

Instead, I mumbled, “mmmphhhh uh… Broadway, ummglumph tv maybe. Burmph. Boog.”

He tried to translate the hideous word salad I’d just spewed forth. He scratched his head. A few flakes of dandruff fell onto the desk. I wanted to tell him to buy some Head & Shoulders, but that wouldn’t have been a good move either.

“I dunno what I can do with you, man. You gotta couple of halfway decent credits. Bad guy? Uhm… I don’t friggin’ know. Stupid business.”

I was having a crumble. I stared at my fingernails and picked my cuticles so hard they began to bleed.

Jack glanced at my headshot, where I was still staring lustfully at Demi Moore.

He put the headshot down.

His eyes locked on mine. Intensely.

He picked the picture up and caressed it with one of his stubby fingers.

He was ruminating.

What’s he doing, calculating pi to the sixteenth digit?

“You’ve got sex appeal.”

“Thank you! Where do you see me? Soaps? Films? Broadway? Do we start freelancing?”

“I’m… not… sure. You… might need… a little more seasoning.”

“What do you mean?”

He thinks I need a little more training. And then I’m taking Hollywood by the cojones!

“You ever been to an orgy?”

“Uhm… uh… what?!”

“You ever been to… an orgy?”

I hocked a loogie, but stifled it so phlegm wouldn’t wind up on his desk. My spirits sank so low they plummeted through the Earth’s core, deep into the Milky Way, beyond the constellation Orion.

Cough. Gag. Choke. “No. Uhh.. no.”

He looked deep into my eyes. He face said, “I wanna become one with you.” I looked away. Was there a fire escape around here? A trap door?

“‘’Bout once a month, a group of me and twelve friends get together and have… you know… an orgy.”

“Can I read another piece of commercial copy?”

“And we’ve got a guardian angel. His name is Gabriel. He’s there to protect us. If Gabriel sees you doing something that’s dangerous, like, you know, doing something without, you know… unsafe… he’ll go, ‘unh unh unuhh! Don’t do that!’ To warn you. You’re going into treacherous territory.”

I didn’t want to know what “that” was. My stomach twisted into a twelve car pile up.

Please don’t let me blow my cookies all over his flying saucers and donuts. His doodles suck anyway.

“And you can explore… with men and women!”

“Uhm… I don’t think I’d feel comfortable. Whatever makes a person happy is fine. But I’m only attracted to women.”

He rolled his chair back about an inch. He pouted.

“Would you be willing to delve into something… different?”

His eyes peered deeply into mine, searching for an answer I was not going to give.

“No. Sorry.”

“How come?”

“My girlfriend wouldn’t approve.”

We broke up two months ago.

“Hmm. I guess I’ll have to accept that.”

My shoulders dropped down from near the top of my ears as I sighed in relief.

“I guess you can go now.”

“You mean we’re not going to work together?”

“When I said you needed more seasoning, I meant it.”

Oh, Jeez. Don’t pee on my back and tell me it’s raining, man.

“But if you want to go out for a drink sometime, give a call!”

He said this with an eager, hopeful smile. I slid the chair back, got up, and with the miniscule amount of self-respect I had left, said, “Thanks for meeting with me. I don’t think a drink’s a good idea.”

I’d have sooner injected heroin into my eyeballs than sacrificed my nether regions and integrity to this guy.

I got into the elevator, checked myself out in the cracked, opaque mirror.

The phone didn’t ring once while I was in there.

I kicked the elevator door and bruised my toe.

I exited and sat down on a white concrete bench in front of the glass doors. Leaves of newspaper rustled around and flew up into the air, then back down onto the ground with a swoosh.

I treated myself to two slices of pizza, one with extra cheese and one with mushrooms. And a Dr. Pepper. Total cost: $4.00.

Six months later, Actors and Agents for the Arts folded.

Jack moved into a new career. As a casting director, where he could audition hundreds, if not thousands of actors.

Which gave him a plethora of opportunities to peer profoundly into actors’ eyes and say, “have you ever been to an orgy?”

I hope no one said “yes.”