Dirty Old Men [And Other Stories] (Zane Presents) (50 page)

Mannn, I hate these early-morning auditions. They always start off so crowded.

Usually, the all-day auditions were less crowded during the late-morning and late-afternoon hours. Many aspiring actors were anxious to be seen early, or had to work later on in the day. Melanie was there early because of her work schedule as well. She was due to check in for work at West Coast Video at one o’clock that afternoon. She had no choice but to crash the audition’s long, early line with the rest of the anxious crowd.

The audition was for a pilot television show, ironically called,
New Generations.
It was based on a futuristic and multicultural high school setting, and the casting line represented as much. Aspiring actors and actresses of every nationality stood in line, from Hawaiian to Native American, Italian, Irish,
Mexican, African, Jamaican, Australian, French Canadian, Korean, Japanese and every mixture.

Nevertheless, Melanie’s body continued to stand out, even in her normal clothes. She wore beige slacks and a simple baby-blue tennis shirt in an attempt to tone herself down, but it didn’t work. Her dark skin, round ass, pert breasts and sexy stance compelled a production assistant to immediately notice her in the line.

“Are you here for the Annika role?” He was a blonde-haired college student. Most of the people in the line were young. And at twenty-three, Melanie considered herself one of the oldest. But she could pass for sixteen.

She looked at him and nodded. “Ahh, yeah, I guess so.” He made it sound as if everyone knew their roles already. So he gave her the script for the African character.

I wonder if he asked me that because I’m the darkest girl in line,
Melanie imagined. She read the one-page script and saw that they wanted “Annika” to speak about her African background.

Okay, do they want me to do an accent,
she pondered. But she thought against it. All Africans didn’t speak with accents. She decided to read it straight.

As the line moved rapidly forward, the show’s director stepped out the door to take a look. He was a slim and balding, older white man. He noticed Melanie, too.

“Wow. Annika,” he called her.

“If that’s who you want me to be?” Melanie responded and smiled.

The director was actually calling her out in the character’s name. She had
never
been
that
close to a role before.

“Can you
act
?” he asked her.

“I guess we’re about to find out.”

The director stared at her. “
No
, we will
not
find out. You must say, ‘
Yes
, I can act.’ Because if
you
don’t know, then
none
of us knows.”

He seemed to be speaking with enthusiasm to the entire line when he addressed her. “The answer,
yes
, is the key to all progress.
Yes
is what we’re all here for. ‘
Yes
, I want the role.
Yes
, I can play the part.
Yes
, I can make it to my rehearsals on time.’ And ‘
Yes
, I want to be the
next
big television
star
and an American
icon.
”

Melanie was a little startled by the man.

Okay, we have another one of those types,
she noted. She had been around a few other high-octane directors on some of her previous casting calls. She couldn’t imagine herself having to deal with one on a daily basis. The high-strung type made her nervous.

The director looked back into her eyes. “So, you think about that confidence the next time someone asks you if you can play a role.
Any
role. Otherwise, you’ll drown before you even dive into the water.”

Then he stopped and smiled. “Not that you won’t drown
anyway,
but… at least you can start
off
with some confidence. You know what I mean?”

All Melanie thought to do was nod. But before the director left her, he asked her more questions. “How old are you? Have you had any acting lessons?”

Melanie paused to decide which rapid-fire question to answer first.

“I’m twenty-three. And
yes,
I have had acting classes.”

“And you still don’t know if you’re any
good
yet, at
twenty-three
?”

He made it sound as if she was already over the hill and wasting her time.

Okay, now what do I do?
He had her speechless.

“Well, I guess we
will
see,” he commented. “We’ll see about
all
of you. Who in this line has the chops to create what we need?”

Then he walked back inside so Melanie could exhale. But then she could no longer concentrate on the script. She continued to think about how much pressure the director had put on her now to perform.

Darn it! This is all I needed to throw me off!

Before she knew it, she was inside the studio building and at the front of the line, where she watched a final actress in front of her perform a heck of a job.

Wow! That was pretty good,
she thought. The girl didn’t make things any easier for her, that was for sure. Melanie felt like five thousand people were watching.

“Number sixty-seven. Melanie Morgan, reading for Annika,” the casting director called out as Melanie walked into the center of the room. They had two cameras in the room, with one angled from the left and another angled from the right. A production panel sat at a long white table in between them, including the casting director, the show director, several producers, and several production assistants.

Melanie took a breath and thought,
Okay, here goes everything.

She stepped into the hot spot to perform and cleared her throat.

“Quiet on the set!” the high-wired director yelled. He waited a few seconds more for Melanie to prepare herself with the script before he called out, “
Action!
”

Melanie began to read her script with full animation. “Oh, let me tell you, that’s
nothing
from where I come from. In
my
country in
Nigeria,
it’s, it’s hotter than, than hot. I mean, a hundred and…
ten
degrees is normal… temperature there,” she stated. After a relatively good start, she began to stutter and pause to read instead of memorizing the lines. And the nervousness of the pressure began to get to her.

“I remember a time when…it was, it was so
hot
that…the goats were, were fighting for the shade…beside the houses.”

She read from the script so badly that it broke her concentration. She then looked up to view the responses from the director and his staff. Once she noticed him shaking his head in disappointment, she couldn’t wait to finish her awful, cold read and high-tail-it out of there. She was
beyond
embarrassment.

What’s wrong with me? I can read much better than this!
she told herself.

“Next!” she heard the director shout when it was over.

Melanie handed her one-page script to the production assistant and mumbled, “I’m sorry,” before she walked out the exit.

“Darn it!” she snapped to herself out in the parking lot.
I screwed that up bad!

She drove back toward Interstate 405 for Inglewood, and stopped at a Starbucks coffee shop to buy a morning pastry and a bottle of orange juice.

“Hey, aren’t you Melanie Morgan?” someone asked her from behind.

While headed out the door, Melanie turned to face a curly-headed, white man. She nodded to him and confirmed who she was. “Yes, I’m Melanie.”

“Yeah, I saw you at the
Fireside
auditions in Burbank a few months ago.”

“And you still remember me from that?”

“Oh, yeah,” he answered strongly. “You did a really good read there. I felt you should have been chosen for
something.
I don’t know why they passed you over.”

She shrugged it off and held her thoughts to herself. “Well, you know, that’s the Hollywood game. You win some, you lose some.”

And I seem to lose them all,
she mused.

She walked out to return home to Inglewood to get ready for work, only for the man to follow her out of the coffee shop.

“Hey, Melanie, my name is Brian Belgium.” He extended his hand to her.

Melanie shifted her pastry bag and drink into her left hand to shake Brian’s hand with her right.

“Nice to meet you.” However, she was ready to head on her way. Her bad read at the audition that morning had made her more hasty than normal. Had she performed a good read, she may have felt comfortable enough to stick around and eat at the Starbucks location. But Brian wasn’t ready to let her slip away so easily.

“You know, we have a set party tonight over in Santa Monica. And I’d love to invite you and a friend over as my guests. There’s gonna be a lot of great film people there tonight, who, you know, you might be able to network with. I mean, I was really impressed with your work,” he told her.

Yeah, I’ve heard that line before,
she pondered. She nodded to him anyway.

“Well, you know, I work tonight until nine, so I have to see how I feel once I get off.”

He nodded back to her. “Well, you do that. And if you decide to show up tonight, just ask for Brian Belgium.”

He said it as if his name meant something. That made her stop and reconsider. She figured she had to refrain from turning everything down and learn to go with the flow. She could at least investigate how the network parties panned out in Hollywood.

That’s what I’m here to do, right?
she convinced herself.
So, why not?

“Well, where is this party?”

“So, how’d it go at the audition today?” Her talent agency assistant had called Melanie back to ask her.

Melanie had redressed in her West Coast Video uniform, and she was ready to head off for work at the store in nearby Culver City. She let out a deep sigh and answered the question honestly. “Terrible. I really could have
done a much better read this morning. But at least I got invited out to a Hollywood network party in Santa Monica tonight,” she added to cheer herself up.

“Oh, yeah? So they invited you back out? Well,
that
can be good thing. Who exactly invited you?”

“Well, it wasn’t from the
New Generations
set, actually. I stopped by a Starbucks on the way back, and some guy named Brian Belgium invited me out. He said he remembered me from the
Fireside
auditions in Burbank a few months ago. He remembered my full name and everything.”

The agency assistant repeated, “
Bri-an Bel-gium?
” in four clear syllables.

“Yeah, some curly-headed guy in his mid-thirties, I guess,” Melanie commented.

“Oh my
God!
” the assistant responded excitedly. “Do you know who he
is
? Brian Belgium is like, one of the
hottest
young film producers on the market right now. He does a lot of work in action comedies.”

Melanie had no idea who he was. The guy came off like an average, California hippie. “So, you’re saying that I should pretty much go then?”

“Oh, you
better.
Are you kidding me? I would
kill
to go there.”

“Well, he told me that I could bring a
friend.
”

“And you’re inviting
me
?” The assistant sounded surprised.

Melanie laughed it off. “Well, you know who the guy
is
. So, sure. Why not?”

“Okay, what time do you want me to meet you?”

When Melanie hung up the phone, she walked out of her apartment to head out for work, and she received another call on her cell phone. She read the number and didn’t recognize it. But it was an Oakland area code. So she answered the call, expecting a family member with a new number.

“Yeah, is this Melanie Morgan?” a male voice asked her.

She frowned and answered, “Yes. Who is this?”

“This is Vincent Washington from the
New Generations
auditions this morning. I was one of the cameramen on the left, and the only black guy,” he answered, then chuckled.

“Oh,” Melanie responded upbeat. “So, they’re calling me
back?
” she presumed. She couldn’t believe it. “I was
miserable
this morning. I think that was one of the
worst
auditions yet.”