of being late or lost would totally defuse any preparation I had put into the audition. Many times I would drive to the casting office the night before as a rehearsal to assure myself I knew the correct path.
But often, getting to the actual studio wasn’t the end of the headache. I’d be on a big studio lot such as Paramount or Twentieth Century Fox and the parking structure seemed to be a mile away from where the audition was. The security guard would give me a map and use his yellow highlighter to outline the path to my destination. Except I’m map illiterate; they’re so complicated. And a studio lot has all sorts of little streets that aren’t really streets: “Make a left on Clark Gable Way and turn right by the monument to Mickey Rooney, and then you go through two double doors.” There’s always those double doors. And they all look alike. Inevitably, I’d get confused and find myself on actual sets only to have some assistant director wearing headphones curse me out. Once in a while, I’d get lucky and bump into another actor trying to find the same place and we would go on the maddening journey together. Once, another actor told me he was late and ran ahead when I asked him for directions. But he had that beady look in his eyes. I didn’t trust him. I don’t think he was late; he just didn’t want to help me. His odds of getting the job would improve if one less actor found the place.
Eventually, somehow I’d find the audition. It always turns out that whenever I kill myself to get to an audition, like I’m rushing to defuse a bomb, they’re a half an hour behind schedule anyway.
Afterwards I’d see other frantic actors walking around with their highlighted maps looking for their appointment. It looked like the lot was littered with actors using their little treasure maps to find their way to a pot of gold. Most of the gold on these treasure hunts didn’t come in a pot anyway. A week on a show after taxes and commission was about $3,600. When that happens a few times a year, if you’re lucky, it ends up amounting to about a thimble of gold. Not terrible, but not the biggest jackpot. A pilot, now that’s a big jackpot. That could be about twenty grand, even if it doesn’t go to series. Usually, they pay all that money to keep you off the market for other pilots.
I used to try to prepare not only my sides, but also my casual banter before and after my reading. This never worked. My acting teacher once told us when Danny DeVito auditioned for the show Taxi , he came in and threw down the script and said, “Who wrote this crap?” He was not just auditioning for the part of the crude Louie De Palma, he was him! So in ’88, when I auditioned for the part of a nervous office boy on Richard Lewis’ show Anything but Love , I thought I had something great to play with. The casting woman had a small dog right there in her office. I came in trembling like I was too afraid to enter with her pet there. “Is it okay, will he attack me? Will he lunge at me?” I asked as I carefully slunk into her office, walking as if I were on the ledge of a skyscraper. I could see the look on the casting woman’s face. She was perplexed, but I felt I had to stick with my failing gimmick. I was too embarrassed to bail out in the middle and say, “I’m not really scared of the dog. I thought this would show how in character I am. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe the character isn’t afraid of everything. Yup, I overdid it.” After that failure, I never again did anything before a reading that would make people wonder about my mental health.
It’s also easy to get thrown off because not only do you see all the competition in the waiting area, sometimes, if the walls are thin, you even have to hear them. This happened the time I was supposed to read for a little part where all I had to do was ask someone if I could get a ride with them. They tell me they aren’t going my way, and then I plead, “Come on. I love