Tres Cool

As much as I gripe about all the dingy joints we visit for these auditions, there are some really great spaces we’ve come across as well.  Take Emma’s second audition this past weekend at Strauss Studio for the French sporting goods catalogue, DECATHLON.

Emma auditioning for Decathlon in Hollywood at Strauss Studio.

When we arrived at the address on Santa Monica Blvd., we thought, “Merde.”  A narrow entry led us up a dark flight of carpeted stairs.   I turned to my friend Sue who was visiting from Virginia  and rolled my eyes. This place was a pit. But as soon as we turned the corner at the top of the stairwell, the entire space opened up into this light-filled ultra hip photography studio with beautiful hardwood floors.

Stunning photographs lined the walls; there were a few of Kevin Spacey and Denzel Washington in some of the more interesting portraits I had ever seen of them. I’m always kind of reluctant to whip out my iPhone and start shooting because Emma gets embarrassed, but I quickly took a couple of pictures (below) to share.

So while this sojourn has brought us to the most UNglamorous places imaginable, we on occasion stumble upon groovy spots like this tucked amid the squalor. That’s when I think, “Yeah, this is freakin’ awesome!”

This week, Emma’s audition schedule includes Electronic Arts at a place in Sherman Oaks. Like, Oh my gawd: the Valley! Not really anticipating all too much in terms of visual stimulation except perhaps a few neon-lit liquor stores, coffee shops and car washes.

Photos at Strauss Studio in Hollywood.

One of the more unique portraits on the walls at Strauss Studio.

On Avail to No Avail…

Well, the on avail came to no avail. Encouraging news though. The casting directors for Hasbro really like her so she goes back next week for a callback on another one of their product lines.

Emma vying for a spot in a Pillsbury spec commercial.

This weekend we found ourselves back on Santa Monica Boulevard for two more auditions. Thankfully they were very close to one another and two hours apart. Many of Emma’s auditions are taking place in the same gritty area of Hollywood sandwiched between strip malls and taco stands.  So there we were at 11 a.m., the smell of carnitas wafting through the air, walking to our first stop of the morning for a Pillsbury spec commercial.

The director was wonderful with Emma. He asked her to give him an “infectious” laugh and talk about things she thought were fun. He also asked her why she wanted to act (“‘Cause my mom asked if I wanted to and I said, ‘yes.’”) Afterward he told us that this was for a contest of sorts put on by Pillsbury; a new trend in the business. Companies send out a wide net to directors asking for submissions.  Pillsbury will review submissions and  the winning spot will be the basis of their new commercial. Or something.

The spot would be Emma watching grandma bake. Can’t count how many times that happens daily in her life, so wouldn’t be too much of a stretch. As long as she doesn’t have to play the dough boy.

Are You Avail for On Avail?

We had just returned from the “wall hooks” audition for the company 3M. Emma tried out for a role for the company’s Halloween spot.  It was teeming with little pretties, so who knows. As soon as we rolled back into town, we received an email with exciting news: Emma is “on avail.”

What the hell does that mean?

The message said:  ”Emma is on avail for Hasbro.  Is she avail for those dates?”  More crazy industry lingo.  Might as well have been written in Na’vi.

Upon Googling it, found out that essentially this means it’s between her and another girl for the part. This is the next step after the “callback” if you aced the audition and grabbed them by the shorthairs. And sometimes it’s when the client and the agency have a difference of opinion and they take a closer look at the two candidates and duke it out. OR:  yourockedthecallbackbutwe’renotsureyetbecauseofabunchofshallowvariablessoput-yourlifeonholdforafewdaysK?

So essentially she’s in limbo until Friday on whether they choose her. And so we wait. iPhones beaming to the ether.

Meanwhile, my husband and I have been tag teaming the auditions.  They’re coming at a furious pace. The agency says they’re pleased. Earlier today she was at one for Playstation. She met a new friend there named Lucy who has a direct line to Target.  They now bypass her agency and simply call her and say, You’re on kid. And off she goes.

Not sure how long Lucy’s been at it, but man, wouldn’t that be nice? Rumbling through LA traffic listening to Radio Disney is frankly getting old. And I’m not getting any younger.

Paging Child Services…

We were driving down Santa Monica Blvd. headed toward Hollywood and I was listening to Emma say “molestation” over and over and over again. Yeah, I know. Refer to title of this post.

Emma had an audition for an independent short film by a production company called Hairy Mary in which she manipulates a band of drug-induced teens to play princess tea party with her. The word “molestation,” as well as a few other choice phrases, were in her character’s dialogue. We told Emma that the word itself wasn’t bad, but it described something that was. We didn’t explain anything beyond that. She nodded and said, “OK with me.”

Actually, when I first read the script, I was a bit suspect. Should Emma really be doing this kind of role? But I checked out their YouTube channel. I liked their work. Their shorts were edgy and really well produced. And they had shown at Sundance. It would look good on her reel.

I’ve already been hearing some faint rumblings of condemnation from the family for our letting her say “S E X” in the Apatow audition. Trust me. I get it. Not every kid is capable of mastering taboo content and walking away unscathed. Thing of it is, I know Emma. The child is perfectly capable of processing this stuff without compromising her innocence. No doubt she’ll giggle to her friends at school about these forbidden words that her parents allow her say on auditions. The point is though, last I heard, this was called acting.

Today we head out to a commercial audition for wall hooks. For this part, she is required to look “cute, warm, likable, energetic and engaging.”  Seems it’ll be a nice respite from the provocative roles of late.  And then maybe on her next audition she can watch paint dry. Now that would be real quirky.

The Episode Where Emma Gets A Callback

I was sitting in a Burbank conference room watching Emma on a giant plush chair play with stuffed animals.  We were at an audition for a national “software commercial.” They showed me the storyboard and somehow had decided that a little princess named “Queen,” would be an effective way to sell their product.  The camera was rolling and the director asked her  to wave her magic wand and then slowly fall asleep.  Emma complied and he yelled “Cut!”

Every other girl there looked like 5-year-old Jon Benet Ramseys donning princess gowns, while Emma showed up looking like a cross between Stevie Nicks and Annabella Lwin. Black boots. Flowing chiffon skirt. Tank top. A faded tattoo on her hand we couldn’t scrub off in time. I thought, ain’t no way this is going anywhere.

I was wrong.

We got a call from Emma’s agency a couple days later saying they wanted to see Emma again. We were both flabbergasted. And excited.  This was her first official call back. And it paid!  Hooray!

The next morning we headed back.  Emma wanted to wear a batik dress. Well, why not?  She seemed to get this far without dolling up for them.  When we arrived, we sat in the lobby next to Emma’s nemesis: An adorable child with long blond ringlets wearing a poofy pink dress. This was a strange business indeed.

The director arrived and called Emma in.  I came along and sat in the back of the room to observe. He was really great with her and essentially asked her to repeat her performance from her first audition. After the take, he turned to me and said, “You have a very talented little girl here.” He asked if we could camp out and wait for the client because he wanted them to meet her.

Emma repeated her performance for the client (two scruffy hipster types in black Ts and jeans) and the director asked if we would be available for a shoot on Thursday.  I sputtered something about another audition she had then, but said we’d work it out. No problemo.

We never heard from them again.

Talk about a bizarre experience.  Best I can fathom is that the client wanted “cute” versus “whimsical” and that was that.  Grrrr. We didn’t have time to dwell, however, because the next day she was called in for Hasbro and GAP, as well as the lead for a very cool little indie short. One of Emma’s acting coaches advised, “You have to go in there, do your job and simply move on.”  So we keep rollin, rollin, rollin.  My hide is getting raw, while I think Emma’s might be made of teflon.

Mooo

Cramming

If last week’s Judd Apatow audition was the highlight of Emma’s experience thus far, this week we found ourselves wading through dung at the dreaded cattle call.

We received a notice inviting Emma to attend an open audition for a non-paying role that promised “high-level exposure.” The notice came from something called, “Voices of Our Youth,” and auditions were being held at the famed Millennium Dance Complex in NoHo (North Hollywood). As a dancer, I was psyched to check out the place where  some of the grooviest acts in Hollywood rehearse their moves. Think Usher, Prince, Michael and Janet Jackson, err Britney Spears…

Reception directed us to the back parking lot where they had a card table set up for check-in and a few flimsy tents sprawled across the asphalt.  When I say there were kids there from every walk of life, I mean that if you slid your index finger around a spinning globe you might account for a third of the nationalities represented there.

I signed Emma in and they handed us her lines. Still, NO CLUE what this was for. We couldn’t really tell much from the dialogue which consisted of four lines of kid-speak about going on an audition.

As Emma went over her lines, we sat next to one mother-daughter pair and their conversation went something like this:

Mom:  ”You have some time let’s practice your lines.”

Kid starts to read. Mom interrupts: “Do you see yourself in mommy’s glasses?” Kid: “No.”  Mom: “Do it again and make eye contact.”

Kid starts to read.

Mom interrupts. “Brush your hair.”

Kid tries to read again.  Mom: “Not good enough. Do it again. You’re not looking at me!!! Do you want this or not?”

It kind of made me want to grab the child and throw Napalm at the mother. Just to clear the air.

Instead I grabbed Emma and we moved toward another mom and her two kids both of whom were auditioning for a spot in whatever this was.They lived in Orange County, a good hour’s drive. I overheard the boy speaking to his agent on his cell phone (he couldn’t have been more than 11 years old) about how he fit this one into his busy schedule because he heard it might be a Disney Public Service Announcement.

Burning with curiosity, I finally walked over to the check-in table and said: “I know this might be a dumb question, but what is this for exactly?” She laughed and confessed that all she knew was that it was a kids reality show. I was starting to get a little pissed that this would be 2 1/2 hours we’d never get back. Emma, meanwhile, seemed just fine playing games on my iPhone and eating Girl Scout cookies.

At long last, they called Emma’s name and she joined a single-file line disappearing down the long corridor to her audition. And 10 minutes later, out she came.

“C’mon mom.  Let’s go,” she said, handing me a slip of paper.

Mystery solved. Mouse ears were nowhere near this project. Turned out, this was for a webisode shoot produced by a company I couldn’t even find on the Internet that would be used to pitch a reality show to a cable channel. What a colossal waste of time. We headed home and I got the silent treatment from Emma.

I’m such a neophyte at all this. I guess I need to figure out still how to read between the lines and identify that which is bogus. I should have checked with Emma’s agency Buchwald but I didn’t. Lesson learned. Though, I am going to try a dance class Saturday mornings at Millennium if anyone would like to join me.

Wiigging Out

For those of you who read my last post, you’ll know what I mean when I say:  The spade has landed. However not in front of Spielberg, in front of Judd Apatow.  We got a notice from Emma’s agency saying that she had an audition for a new movie that Apatow was producing that stars Kristen Wiig. And let me tell you, this stagemomma wiigged out.

My father who was visiting said he’s fairly certain he saw stars in my eyes.

The prospect of Emma having a part in Apatow’s next movie was more than I could handle. I heard him speak a year or so back, and he was smart, gracious and just flat-out funny.  I was already a fan of his work such as, “Superbad” and “Knocked Up,” and to get insight into the brains behind those amazing projects was, well, Supercool.

The role is of Wiig’s character as a young girl.  They sent the “sides,” which, by the way is a new term for me, even though I spent 10 years in entertainment PR. Sides apparently are pages taken out of the script to help the actor prepare for the audition. They were stamped “Confidential.” The scene was racy to the point that Emma approached us and said, “Isn’t this a little inappropriate for me?”  Hell, we didn’t much care.  So we told her essentially it was just pretend, and saying the word “sex” wasn’t really all that big a deal. So sue me.

I should pause to say that I might have gotten a little too carried away.  Here’s why.

We arrived at the audition on time.  It was at Gower Studios in Hollywood. A rather dicey area where I felt a wee bit uncomfortable parking my car on the designated side street. We walked into the lobby and there were about five gorgeous African-American children waiting to be called up for their audition. Hmmm. That was strange for, umm, obvious reasons.

I confidently announced to the guard we had arrived for the audition. And he couldn’t find her name in the computer. Also strange. And it caused me to glance down at the audition information sheet only to notice that we were a day early. UGH!!! Silly momma. Frazzled momma.

I refrained from yelling an expletive.

The guard was nice enough to call the casting folks and ask if they had time to see us anyway. I said: “Won’t they be pissed?” He said, “Oh no.  They’re nice people.”  And they were REALLY SUPER cool. They told us to come up.

After I apologized profusely, Emma went in and read while I waited outside the room. When she emerged, the casting director sent her off with a “Great job!” and we were on our way.  Emma said she flubbed her lines “a tiny bit.”  Frankly, I think it may come down to how she looks at this point and not if she read her lines well. I assured her everything was OK and we headed off  to a nearby Denny’s to decompress.

A couple of days have gone by and we haven’t heard anything. Crickets. Sagebrush.

Oh Judd. Please send some McLovin our way.