Screen Tests and Spectaculars

NOTE: This blog was written over a week ago. I'm lazy. The actor discussed in it is Jason Jones, from The Daily Show. He's the lead of one of our pilots now and we're stoked!

As always... typos... grammar.... terrible writing.

Enjoy!

b

February 22, 2010

Sitting here in a hotel room in New York City, looking out my window and across the street where a woman sits working at her desk and trying not to look out the window back at me. I’ll do her the courtesy of pretending she doesn’t exist, so I can write this little note. I tried writing this on the flight here, but then I found out there was wi-fi available. And, of course, that meant all my normal distractions (RE: Facebook) could once again keep me from doing anything useful. Though, I’m not sure if this blog qualifies as useful (Microsoft Word has just underlined the word “blog” in an angry shade of red, so I don’t think it’s a fan). Anyway, useful or not, I’m doing it now.

I’m in New York City to meet an actor we like for HOW TO BE A BETTER AMERICAN and to film his audition. The studios have quaintly been calling this, a “screen test”. A screen test? Really? I don’t know why that term bothers me so much. Maybe it’s because it conjures up images of a young starlet being ushered on to a sound stage in 1952 by a 58 year old studio executive who wants to test her for his next big “picture”. Yep, he wants to screen test the shit out of her. Twice. And hard. And then (and I think you can see where this is going) when the “test” is over he drops her off in front of her hotel on Hollywood Blvd and hands her a twenty saying, “Sorry sweetheart, I just didn’t see it.” Then that woman becomes sad, marries too young, has a child, gets divorced and becomes a drunk, bitter hag who fights with her teenaged daughter. They stop talking. At 17 the daughter runs away, joins a lesbian punk band and never speaks to her mother again. And the sad lady spends the rest of her life working at a Norm’s in the valley until she dies in her apartment in 1989 of an undiagnosed heart condition. And that’s that.

Yikes, that was dark! Not sure where that came from. But perhaps it’s indicative of how I feel about the business of show right now. Of course I don’t mind coming to New York City. It’s an amazing place where the food is great, everyone looks great in black coats and scarves and even the rude people seem charming to me. But in the middle of this whole crazy double pilot experience, a trip to New York consists of flying there, eating dinner, going to bed, getting up to do my thing with the screen test and then getting back on a plane home so I can land at midnight, sleep a little and be down at the studio the next morning at 7am to cut the screen test together for an 11am studio test. But that’s what I signed up for and I’m blessed and it’s good to be working and this is what I’ve worked for and one shouldn’t complain because these are “high class problems” and there are free drinks in business class and blah, blah, blah. I know all the things I’m supposed to say. But to be honest gang, I’m sort of tired and at this moment the last place I want to be is sleeping in a strange bed in the noisiest city in America.

Now before you start judging me for being spoiled or, if you’re a member of the ABC or NBC comedy development teams, start doubting that I can handle the responsibility of it all… let me explain. I’m good to go. I come from hard working people. Judging from my build and genetics, I think it’s fair to say that my Scots-Irish ancestors were manual laborers from way back. No kings or chieftains in the Bradley clan. I’m willing to bet my people were peat digging, bog striders with lots of hair on their backs who died with shovels in their hands. My point is I will work until I fall over. But Steven and I have been going non-stop since November of 2008. We re-wrote the first PIGGY script, did the pilot, went on the SCRUBS staff, wrote two eps of a show for IFC, re-wrote PIGGY for ABC and then NBC and then wrote and re-wrote BETTER AMERICAN. It truly has been an amazing run. But don’t kid yourself my friends, getting to do the thing you’ve always wanted is hard mother fucking work. And, to be honest, some days you feel it more than others.

And that’s kind of how I was feeling when the plane touched down at JFK. That long plane ride, and a lot of free wine, makes a man think. At 38 I’m not exactly an over night success. Audrey and I have worked so hard, and have gone through so much drama to get to this place. We spent a lot of years working crazy jobs, shitty jobs and sometimes, no jobs at all. We just kept plugging away. We kept our minds and hearts bent toward our goals. And it wasn’t really until 2005, and MADtv, that things started to ease up at all. Of course, it hasn’t been all gloom and doom. I mean we were doing it together. We had the pleasure of each others company and if you know Audrey Kearns, you know that’s some pretty great company. We’ve been involved in one single, hilarious, sad, wonderful, fucked up and perfect conversation for sixteen years. And that truly has sustained us.

But the main thing on my mind as I floated down the escalator to baggage claim, was this screen test. In three short weeks of casting we’d already been through the ringer. Three separate dalliances with three separate “BIG NAME” celebrities had left us feeling like Lindsay Lohan after her tenth vodka and Red Bull: a little haggard and questioning our choices. On the up side we’d been able to re-visit the idea of an actor that we’d been excited about since the beginning. A little less known (at least on network TV) and a little less famous (because of not doing network TV) he was, none the less, hilarious and, to our minds anyway, perfect for the role. Anyway, after a whole bunch of maneuvering we’d finally gotten permission to head to New York for this screen test. Steven had volunteered to stay behind and keep the machine running and I’d agreed to travel with our director on a quick trip to get it done. So now all I had to do, and it was so simple really, was just fly across the country and come back with the lead of our show. No pressure.

I met the guy from the car service in baggage claim and we both stepped out into the chilly east coast night. I could see patches of filthy, filthy snow clinging stubbornly to the ground all around and I pulled my “New York” coat a little tighter. I’d only worn it one other time, for a separate (and quite abortive) show biz trip to this city last year. I was kind of hoping my luck would be better this time. As we crossed the street and into the near by parking structure the driver suddenly spoke. His accent matched his face, thick and Slavic. “Let me take your bag”. He opened the trunk and plunked my tiny suit case into a hold that looked big enough to swallow a body… or two. My little case looked kind of lonely there, sitting in the middle of all that space and I could sympathize.

As we started the drive in to Manhattan it was about 10pm, so of course traffic was horrible. I’ve never been to this city when it wasn’t. And this slow and go situation brought up an old dilemma: do I strike up a conversation with the driver or do I sit in silence pretending that I’m Lord Fancyington of Doucheville Manor and that he’s my man-servant, Rodgers? In a cab I never worry about this. Something about the vague smell of pee and sweat in those vehicles somehow puts this whole question to rest. But the town car situation, with its leather seats and complimentary magazines, seems more civil. Plus I’m from Iowa (and Florida) and I have never really been able to shake the notion that “folks is folks”. An idea, by the way, that has repeatedly proven incorrect. Folks are NOT folks. Some of them are crazy fucking foreigners who will yell at you for no reason and drive like they have nothing to live for. But before I could sort out my feelings on this subject, the driver spoke up again…and strangely. “I am not really this”. What the…?

I looked up from the cell phone I’d been pretending to check messages on and found his blue eyes centered perfectly in the rear view mirror. “Excuse me”, I said. “This. I am not this. I am not driver. This I do for money. But this is not who I am.” I’ve been an actor for a long time now and I knew my cue, so I said, “Oh. Well what is it that you do?” His eyes lit up and I could see that he was going to tell me all about it. He told me he was a theatre director and that back in Lithuania he’d been quite successful. “For twenty years I make spectaculars. I make over 200 spectaculars there and in Russia and Poland, all over the place.” Spectaculars? What the fuck? Was he talking about plays and calling them “spectaculars”? It sounded so weird and wonderful. What if I casually called my shitty episode of SCRUBS a spectacular? Nope. That doesn’t work at all. But coming out of his mouth, all wrapped up in this heavy, thick accent it sounded perfect. I was hooked.

For the next thirty minutes he told me how he’d come to New York four year earlier. How he’d been mislead about the ease of working in America. And about how, with no work visa, no green card or union card the stage doors of Broadway had not exactly been thrust open to welcome him. His shock that walking up to someone at the box office of a theatre and inquiring about a little directing work had not resulted in instant employment made me sad. Unfortunately I am cursed with a fairly vivid imagination, and that scenario, with all of its innate confusion, awkwardness, disappointment and shame, was playing like a spectacular in my head. Eventually he’d been reduced to applying for stage hand positions, and after being rejected for those, had finally taken a job driving fat assholes like me to and from the airport.

He was talking non-stop now. And even though the accent and the rapid subject changes (ranging from the greatness of the Lithuanian language to Eugene O’Neil to the crimes of Josef Stalin) made it difficult to follow, I was thoroughly enjoying the conversation. And he was positively beaming. I think that’s why I didn’t mind when he clearly drove past my hotel and around the block two more times before dropping me off. I didn’t mind because I’ve been there. I’ve had my hands in a sink full of dish water in the back of a café at 2am. And I know that chatting about what you’re gonna do “some day” makes that pile of dishes easier to get through. I know that sometimes you have to tell yourself, your friends and even perfect strangers, “I am not really this”. And that saying it out loud means that your dream is still alive a little. Saying it keeps that pile of dishes or that car ride in from Queens from becoming the entirety of what you are.

When we pulled up to the hotel I got out and awkwardly grabbed my own bag out of the trunk. Then I tipped the guy with a twenty, shook his hand and watched him drive off with all of my exhaustion, self-pity and fear trailing behind him. I was hoping for him to get everything he ever wanted. I didn't know him at all (he might have been a serial killer or a con man) but for some reason I had a feeling he deserved good things. Then I checked in to my classy hotel, ate a little dinner and walked up to Rockefeller center with some cash in my pocket, an appointment on the books to do what I was born to do and a fucking smile on my face.

Spectacular.