The Commercial Audition

Adventures in Soul Killing

The Earth spins at 1,000 miles per hour. Except when you’re rearing young children. There are times in their early life when you wonder if the Earth is spinning at all. You look up at the sun, and it’s just sitting there. On its ass. Legs crossed. Smoking a cigar… Taunting you.

That was the state of the Earth’s rotation when our second child, Julia, was about a year old.

I came down the stairs of our rental house in Glendale one morning to find Shelley holding Julia on her lap in the TV room. Every parent knows how exhausting it can be to keep these blobs of protoplasm alive. And Shelley certainly looked weary. But mostly she was bored.[1] Make no mistake, Julia was cute, objectively so, with big brown eyes, a full head of wavy brown hair, and plump, rosy cheeks, but at that age, she was not much of a conversationalist. And her taste in television– Wee Sing in Silllyville - was not the most sophisticated.

One of the joys of raising children is watching them discover the world for the first time, but even that can get old. Yes, grass is soft. No, don’t put it in your mouth.

Another joy is watching them develop language. At this stage, Julia had not yet mastered the word, “thirsty,” so when she wanted something to drink, she’d say, “I’m drinky.” Again, cute. But… come on, we get it.

This particular morning, Shelley said, “I’ve been thinking.” Which was not all that surprising. I have often accused Shelley of thinking. She will cop to it herself, “Skro. You know I’m very thinky.”

Thinky Shelley’s thought: “What if I took Julia on commercial auditions? It would be a reason to get us out of the house. Go on an adventure. Everybody tells us how cute she is. For her, it’ll just seem like a play date. And it will give me an excuse to get out of my sweatpants. What do you think? Can you call your agent?”

By that time in my career, I had done plenty of commercial auditions in both New York and then after we moved to Los Angeles. So, I stepped into the next room and dialed the phone.

My agent said, “We don’t do kids, but there’s an audition this afternoon for young parents with kids. How old are you?”

“Thirty-six.”

“Can you look twenty-eight?”

“Twenty-eight? Sure.”

Thirty-six was only… two, three, four, five… eight years from twenty-eight. That wasn’t that long ago.

I stuck my head back into the TV room.

“Let’s go.”

“What? Already?”

“Yep. You too. We just have to look twenty-eight.”

Bang. The Earth kicked into a higher gear and the sun got up off its ass.

In 1980s New York City, I did stand-up in the evenings, which gave me time during the day to hustle up, down, and around every boulevard and back alley on Manhattan Island doing commercial auditions. At my peak, I sometimes did three or four in a day. These turned out to be mostly soul-killing exercises but a good way to develop the proper professional attitude toward auditioning. Go in. Read the copy. Then forget about it as soon as you walk out of the room. If you get a callback, it’s a pleasant surprise. If you book it, that’s like finding a wad of cash in an old jacket.

It took me an entire year of auditioning before I got my first callback and about another year before I booked anything. In baseball terms, my batting average hovered around .047. Soon, my goal wasn’t so much booking the commercial as it was leaving the audition with at least a thin shred of dignity.

That’s because so many of these auditions were profoundly ludicrous. Like the fast-food commercial where I had to mime eating a hamburger. I sat in a chair in a small dimly lit room with a camera pointed at me while the casting assistant talked me through the bit like it was a porn shoot.

“Okay, take a big bite. Yeah, that’s it. Yes… Show me how good it tastes… You’re loving it… Yes, you are… Now, the juice is dripping… That’s right… … Use your tongue, use your tongue to catch it. Yes… Now lick it… lick it off your chin… Hmmm…”

Or the one for Kentucky Fried Chicken that didn’t have a script. I signed in and joined my fellow auditioners in the waiting room, who told me that the casting people had just come back from lunch. They had taken the next guy in, but no one knew what they wanted us to do. Right on cue, we heard that poor bastard in the other room screeching, “Bock! Bock! Bock-bock-bock! Bock-bock-bock-bock!” We looked at each other, all with the same thought. “Jesus Christ. I’m going to have to stick my fists in my armpits and cluck like a fucking chicken.”

The breakdown from the agent describing what the client wanted was always something of an insult, too. That’s because they were never looking for you. “They’re looking for a Bruce Willis… a Bill Murray… a Tom Hanks-type,” the agent would explain. Or whoever else was hot that week. Obviously, these companies couldn’t afford the actual stars. Your job was to present yourself as a cheap facsimile.

In those days, I’d get sent out for a lot of “young dad” auditions, none of which I ever booked. When I saw these commercials on TV, I noticed that the actors who got these gigs were the guys with receding hairlines. Like me, they were still in their twenties, but unlike me, they were losing their hair. In those moments, a perverse thought rattled in my brainpan, a flash of irrational envy no young man in the history of masculinity has ever indulged: “That lucky bastard. Why can’t I be going prematurely bald?”[2] Alas, that little protein sequence didn’t exist in my hearty Slovakian peasant genes.

One time, I sabotaged myself. I got a callback to be a spokesman for a nuclear power company. I wasn’t as hip to those issues as I am now, but we were still less than a decade removed from the meltdown at Three Mile Island and hard upon the disaster at Chernobyl. The copy consisted of a list of pros and cons for nuclear power. The client was in the room, and I did my best, most sincere performance laying out those pros and cons. They thanked me, but on my way out I couldn’t resist saying, “You’re welcome. Now which side is telling the truth?” I meant it as a joke, but deep down I knew that throwaway remark would most likely disqualify me from having to shill for a nuclear power company.

Probably the most disillusioning experience I had was for a commercial I actually booked. A director I had auditioned for before thought I was funny. He was particularly amused at the way I could arch one of my eyebrows. I even put it on my resume. At the bottom where actors list Special Skills like “horseback riding” or “juggling” or “jazz dance,” I put “Full range of movement in left eyebrow.” I could do both eyebrows at once like Groucho Marx –that’s a prerequisite to get into the comedian’s union – but not the right one by itself. Just the left. But oh, I could get that baby up there. I could get some verticality. Some people can roll their tongue; I can dunk with my left eyebrow.

This commercial was for a chocolate confection from Hostess, the same people who brought you Twinkies and Ho Hos, whose Wuhanesque gain-of-function labs had Oppenheimered yet another variation of a chemically concocted, shrink-wrapped, sugar saturated, not-really-food bomb.

It was a simple shoot. Just me in a director’s chair in an above-the-neck close-up, flanked by white cardboard scrims slanted to bounce the light. I merely had to act like I was enjoying these “Ringaling-Ding-Dings” or whatever they were called. And as you know by now, I was well practiced in the art of pretending to enjoy shitty food. Except these I didn’t have to mime. I’d be taking real bites.[3]

On set, I met a classically beautiful, blond model, who wouldn’t be interacting with me in the commercial but would take her own solo turn pretending to enjoy the “Badda-Bing-Bang-Bongs” while still maintaining her naturally sleek, runway figure.

The director called, “Action.” I bopped my head to snappy music from a boom box, working my eyebrow like a pogo stick while taking nibbles of the “Blamma-Lamma-Shit-Pops.” The director called, “Cut.” A hand appeared around the cardboard scrim holding a Styrofoam cup. I spit into the cup, then another hand wiped my mouth in preparation for the next call to action. That was the aural sequence: Music – “Cut!” – Silence – “Haughkspth!’

I did about a dozen “Haughkspth” before I was thanked and dismissed with the typical director send off, “Let’s have a nice hand for the talent.” This was always embarrassing when they made the crew, who had been working so much harder and longer, give a round of polite golf applause for the person whose “talent” was sitting in a chair for a half hour making stupid faces and spitting into a cup.[4]

A few weeks later, I called the producer to get a copy of the spot for my video reel. He hesitated a moment before double-clutching a “Yeah… yeah…sure.” The video never came, but I soon got a $300 check in the mail for the shoot and a notice releasing me from the commercial, which meant I was free to do other sugary snack spots if the opportunity arose. I told Shelley, “I guess they decided not to air the commercial.”

Months went by. I was alone lying on the couch watching a Yankees game when I heard familiar music. I sat up. It was the spot! Same snappy music. Same blond model… different actor! Some guy with blue eyes bopping to the music, pretending to enjoy the Bad-Mamma-Jamma-Donkey-Dicks! The picture at the top of this page. That’s not me. That’s him! It explained the producer’s vacillation on the phone. He knew I was going to be replaced but didn’t have the balls to tell me. That’s why I got the release.

I felt terrible. Worse than I should have at this point as a professional. It wasn’t like I got cut from The Godfather, but for some reason this rejection hung with me for a while. I couldn’t help picturing the client after the initial screening saying, “We love the music. Love the girl… wait a minute… who the fuck is this guy? Get him outta there! I don’t care if it’s three seconds of screen time! Nobody’s gonna buy our Phi-Betta-Crappa-Choco-Butt-Chunks[5] with this ugly, brown-eyed eyebrow-pumping fuck in the commercial!”

This was the cold-blooded world into which I was about to introduce my sweet baby daughter.

But enough about her.

I had to look twenty-eight.

So I took a shower.

As the warm water soaked through my full head of thick, Slovakian peasant hair, I could feel the offending years wash off my body and swirl down the drain. I shaved and picked out a sweatshirt with the name of a college on the front. Subliminal messaging. Shelley’s not the only one who’s “thinky.” The loose-fitting garment also served to mask the baby anaconda of fatty tissue that had sneakily wound its way around my waist as a “Hello, middle-age.” I checked myself out in the mirror. The transformation was complete.

We loaded into the Camry wagon for what I considered a Take-Your-Family-To-Work-To-See-The-Kind-Of-Shit-Daddy-Has-Had-To-Put-Up-With-All-These-Years-To-Help-Keep-A-Roof-Over-Your-Head… Day.

The audition took place in a space above Jerry’s Deli on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. As soon as we stepped into that raucous romper room, teeming with parents and their impossibly cute toddlers, I knew I was not going to humiliate myself by auditioning. These actors did not look like young dads to me; they looked like fetuses, and I felt like the Crypt Keeper. Next to these veritable zygotes, my shower, shave, and sweatshirt were fooling no one. I’m sure their agents asked them the same question mine asked me: “Can you look 28?” Except, these turd-droppers were 24.

Eventually, Shelley and Julia were called into the casting room while I leaned against the wall in a crowded hallway looking like a creepy producer scoping out a boy band. One of the downy-faced fetuses standing across from me asked if I was auditioning. I scoffed, as if such a preposterous idea would never have entered my head.

“Oh, no. I’m just here with my wife and daughter.”

“Oh good. When I got here, you were the first one I saw, and I thought, ‘Shit, I’m too young.’”

Little brat wasn’t joking.

The upshot: Julia booked the commercial. That’s right. First time up. Knocked it out of the park. And so did Shelley! Although, she turned down the role.[6]

Throughout the next year, Shelley took Julia on a handful of other auditions. Julia booked about half of them, posting a crisp .500 batting average compared to her old man’s .047. We stopped once we sensed it might start to feel like a job to her.

All told, Julia made about six grand that went into her college fund, which contributed to an important yet tiny fraction of her geology degree from Oberlin College and her double Masters in Planetary Science and Environmental Policy from the University of Texas.

Julia just turned 32. She has a penetrating intellect, a bountiful vocabulary, and is a thought-provoking conversationalist.

These days, it seems the Earth spins faster and faster…

And that sun just sprints across the sky.

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[1] Shelley disputes this.

[2] My good friend, Dom Irrera, had a joke about his own receding hairline. He would say, “They call it male pattern baldness. They should call it what it is: gradual ugliness.”

[3] The art of the bite: When you have to eat something over and over through many takes, you are advised to take little bites into the front of your mouth, which you then will spit out when the director says, “Cut.”

[4] In a subsequent shoot in LA, I was even more embarrassed being clapped off by the crew when all I did was lie on a couch for an hour pretending to be asleep.

[5] A little research has led me to believe the product was actually the since discontinued Choco-Bliss snack cakes: https://www.thedailymeal.com/1242370/discontinued-hostess-snacks-we-desperately-want-back/

[6] What!??... Incomprehensible.