I left the policemen and my anger and apparently my brain at the Simpsonwood Conference Center that day and drove to a house in buckhead for a film audition.
"It's a
full-budget SAG feature, honey. You'll be playing Linda Lee. Lemme know ASAP, sweetie."
I show up, it's about a hundred f-ing degrees, and nobody's answering the door and i'm being eaten by mosquitos. Finally they let me in, and a very, let's say quirky, lady directs me to the dining room and
into an antique white chair. This is a full 4 hours before
matt and dan got there and dropped their bombs.
She asks if i have any questions, and dear jeezoos, why did i ask a question. I got this long, drawn-out synopsis which i didn't listen to. All I heard, basically, was older sister, radio show,
abstinence. I had no focus, because I'm watching this older lady hobble around the room with a broken foot and listening to other actors trying to ring the same doorbell as I did that doesn't work but does make a weird sound, and furiously scratching about 6 mosquito bites.
We start the audition, no camera, just us talking, encouraged to improvise ("forget the script!") with the older lady writing stuff down--it didn't even occur to me until talking to
rp and matt later that they were writing down our improvised lines. Yes, they most definitely were. I do remember seeing the older lady only set off to scribbling action on the lines that I made up.
Afterwards, she asks about some of my favorite comedy characters I've played, and comPLETEly forgetting about the entire synopsis I was just told but didn't really listen to, I begin to reel off my despicable list of favorites:
Snatch - a nasty old drunk bartender who always wakes up with a different guy and can't even remember who he is or where he came from;
Dede Granger - a super-conservative, closed-minded church lady who does stupid puffy paint fashion shows;
Linda Skrunk - a butch lesbian who married a gay guy because she likes girls, but she just "got sick of 'em;" And
Krystal - an animated obese shut-in who lives on a used mattress at the dump and threw her baby out in a friend chicken bucket outside the father's house, saying "good luck with THAT crap." Here's another good and inappropriate-for-this-audition quote for Krystal:
Krystal: How is your daddy?
Rusty: Oh, he's good, he's good. Just got out of prison not too long ago.
Krystal: No I'm sorry, "Who". I mean who's your daddy?
In fact, if the town of Ringgold is mentioned in the finished version of this film, you know they heard it from me, because the lady commented, "Huh! Ringgold, GA? that's funny. That's a funny name." "Ahhh, yep. That's --why i picked it."
The list of weird happenings at this audition just seems to grow and grow. Please, for the love of god, follow the white antique chair link above.
I was talking a few nights later to rp about this audition, and he was really against the whole premise, like enough to not even want to do the movie if he got it. The
subject matter to me isn't that offensive -- or offensive enough to not want to get the experience acting in film. I'd do it. I
can't say I'm necessarily against people waiting to have sex until they're married,(please check that disturbing link) I just always hope they have a good reason.
...But I've never heard a good reason, so....
And i think it's a futile effort. People will always have sex. Young, old. Whenever, wherever. Always have.
Always will.
Always. Always. Always.
But if some weirdos wanna pay me to be in a fictional movie which thinks it can quell the hormones and instincts of the human race?
Ok.
I think that's funny.
