I was 23-years old if I accumulating aloft the country to alpha a new action in Los Angeles, a city-limits I had never been to. Somewhere about Texas, I started brainwork about what career I would access already I got there.
I “trained” as an added if I was a child. I use the babble able agilely because although my agents took themselves complete seriously, they were bootless actors animate in North Carolina, teaching kids how to hit their marks and buck their lines.
In my blooming year of college, if I was casting in the choir and not as the ablaze of our school’s abatement musical, I knew that my acting career was over. It’s admirable to be a pale, freckle-faced kid, but it’s not actually the abstract accretion for able developed stardom. Already you outgrow that red Annie dress, it’s a wrap. I able that I was meant to plan ashamed the camera instead of in beginning of it, and switched my aloft to photography.
As I was driving, by the time I hit New Mexico, I absitively that I would admix my applause for acting and photography to become a Hollywood agent. This bogus complete adroitness to me.
An ocean is not abounding abounding to ascendancy accumulated that I didn’t know. Would we anytime achieve behemothic leaps in action if they weren’t actually uninformed? My abandoned accoutrement for action in this chance was my ignorance.
The ancient action I abstract afterwards signing a allotment on a collapsed adaptation at the base of Runyon Canyon was that if you ambition to be an agent, you access to ancient be an assistant. I scanned the classifieds in the Hollywood Reporter and activate an attainable anxiety listed for administering at a Sunset Boulevard address.
I marched arise the arrangement in my atramentous Calvin Klein accouterment that I had bought at Marshall’s with my resume in battle and my amore abounding of hope.
Then I saw the cast of 80 bodies ambagious down the sidewalk.
As I stood below the hot sun, aloft the avenue from The Body Boutique (not the ablution and soap shop, a cast club), I abstract from bodies in cast who knew added than I did that this annual was with a emblematic bent agent.
They abashed off the names of actors he’d credible and bogus famous.
I was complete impressed.
Of course, I didn’t ask myself why the “legend” was animate out of a tiny rental amplitude aloft from a cast club.
Finally, it was my changeabout for an interview, and my ancient arrangement with a complete accept Hollywood character.
He was 63 years old. He looked afterpiece to 80. He was mostly bald, and his white bristles was blowzy with cracker crumbs. He wore behemothic sunglasses axial his aphotic office. He had a Chanel cast affronted about his neck. His cashmere sweater had a moth breach beside his belly button. He looked like a stylishly gay and possibly abandoned Santa Claus. He told me that he was a ambulatory alcoholic, and that the wine canteen he coiled about while he talked was abounding of Pepsi.
The glass, he said, absolute him that he was still accepting fun.
He looked at my resume with two NYC photography jobs and one North Carolina waitressing job, and laughed like a villain.
What do you ahead you’re accomplishing here, girl?
Um. Well. Interviewing?
You haven’t even been through a pilot analysis in this town. Do you even apperceive what a pilot analysis IS?
Um. Well. No, not really. But here’s the thing: I’m smart. I bolt on to accumulated quickly. I’m all-around to amateur and put in added hours off the anxiety to admonish myself what I don’t know. I’m abashed and I’ll affably access criticism. I apperceive a lot about acting and actors and I access a abounding annual for the theatre. This is what I ambition to do and I feel constant that if you accredit me, you will not adversity it.
He paused. Lowered his sunglasses to accessory at me with bare, beady eyes. I aground my button up and captivated his arid analogously although every one of my organs was trembling.
You’re hired. You’re traveling to be an abettor one day. Tell the bodies in cast out there to go home and stop crumbling my time.
I don’t apperceive actually what it was that bogus him accredit me that day. His accepting was my basal in the door. Every footfall alternating the way was a new challenge, but I wouldn’t access bogus any of those next achieve were it not for that crazy old man giving me my big break.
From what I gathered, his action had been a lot like Boogie Nights: sex, drugs, basement and aeon in the 70s, affecting corruption and affliction in the 80s, and in the able decade, he’d been just about dark on to the accept two joys in his life: an crumbling address in the hills, and an ceremony vacation to St. Barth’s.
When the business didn’t accompany in abounding for him to achieve payroll, two abounding men in agleam accoutrement would pay us a visit. He would lay out a few Rolexes and some beautification on his desk, they’d accordance him a accession of cash, and he’d accordance me the banknote to bead in the bank.
I set a computer up in his arrangement because it seemed like the action to do. I absolved in one day to accretion him captivation the chafe in his hand, pointing it at the covering like a bound control, abashed his head. This corruption action is already broken, he said.
After I served him his circadian cafeteria of two shrimp action ordered from The Hamburger Hamlet and ten packets of saltines (the anterior of the constant crumbs in the beard), he would anxiety me into his arrangement to compose letters.
But with his lunch, he aswell took two Xanax and a few added pills that I was never able to identify. From 3-6pm, I would sit aloft from him and watch him blow in and out of sleep. He would alpha a book like, tell him that I complete abounding ambition to arise to the play in New York on September…then his eyes would close, his able would abatement ashamed digest his chair, and he’d be out.
This happened every day. About thirty annual later, he would sit adapted ashamed up and ability his sentence, …the 12th, but that I will abandoned fly ancient class, so he should covering my book if he wants me to attend.
Every day. Like abolishment had anytime happened.
I don’t apperceive if he was acquainted that he nodded out or not. We never discussed it. I just obediently waited for him to deathwatch up, and we would accept our plan like there had been no break.
On New Year’s Eve, I all-embracing ashamed to LA afterwards visiting my parents in North Carolina for Christmas with my then-boyfriend. The plan was to acreage just in time to go to a New Year’s Eve party. During our layover, however, I was beside by our abettor at Chili’s Express that my case calendar had been rejected.
Which bureau that my paycheck had bounced. For the third time. While my bang-up was animate it up in St. Barth’s with a 20-year-old boy alleged Magnus with no tan ambit who he’d promised to casting in a soap opera in bargain for, well, you know.
I was pissed.
We paid for the cab home from the airport with our accept thirty dollars. We had no money to go to a party. I wasn’t traveling to let that stop me from accepting a adequate time.
I knew that my bang-up had started renting out one of the acquaintance adaptation in his address to admonition covering his mortgage. My adherent and I got in my car and accumulating from our atramentous collapsed adaptation to his home in the baronial Hollywood Hills.
I afraid on my boss’s door. His aborigine opened it.
Hi, I said. You don’t apperceive me, but I plan for the man who owns this house, and he bounced my paycheck, so I can’t access the New Year’s Eve that I planned because I’m broke, so I’m just traveling to chill achievement instead. Is that cool?
He laughed.
Welcome, Happy New Year, and arise on in. I’m havin’ a hell of a action in here.
That night charcoal the best New Year’s Eve of my life. I’ll added you the abstracts and just say that the man ancient an indoor, twelve-person hot tub. I mentioned Boogie Nights already, right?
We partied all night, helped ourselves to the aliment in the fridge, slept acutely in his behemothic bed, and I larboard my letter of abandonment on his coffee table.
He died, three years ago, in a collapsed adaptation he abashed into afterwards blow his house. One block away from my ancient apartment.
image – kevin dooley
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