Lights! Camera! Dissatisfaction...

by Kim Cayer

  “Have you read the script yet?”

  We laughed and felt like old friends already. In no time we were gossiping about the shoot. I was right; novice actor. Turned out he was an attendant at a carwash and was vacuuming out a pick-up truck once when he stumbled upon the same magazine my agent had found. He felt like fate was speaking out to him, telling him it was time to change his life around and reach for one of his dreams. Ever since he’d sat engrossed by Zak Efron in High School Musical, Jug wanted to be in pictures. And just the fact that he’d opened up such a filthy magazine (my stomach ulcer twitched at his description) was proof enough that he was getting a message from someone up above. He was pleased as punch to have gotten the very first job he tried out for. Personally, I don’t think I would have cast him. He was very personable but his look didn’t match the one I had in mind for a caveman. For one thing, those thick glasses he wore and his red-haired brushcut reminded me more of a character from Revenge of the Nerds.

  Shortly after, Sergio came running to the van. “Everyone! Get into costume! We shoot in fifteen minutes!”

  Sure enough, the sun was rising. I could see we were parked by a lake. The sunrise wasn’t very glorious as it was obscured by the black, threatening clouds. The lake was in constant turmoil, huge waves crashing onto the shore. Ocean spray filled the air.

  The only sight in sight were huge bluffs rising hundreds of feet into the air. They were majestic until the very top, where they were eroding and falling back to the earth beneath them. I looked for any other type of attraction and saw nothing but the sand and stone bluffs. I guessed, since we were dressed like cavepeople, and the bluffs could look like 10,000,000 B.C., that we were shooting here today. I wished I’d read a script.

  “Hey, Serge!” I yelled out the window, since I saw him retreating back to the set. “Where do we change?”

  “In the van!” he yelled.

  I’m an actor, I figured. I’m supposed to be immodest about such things as nudity and ugly panties and menstruation. Just as I was rolling the window back up, I thought it funny that the ocean spray reached all the way to the parking lot. And was it ever cold! I looked at Sergio’s back and saw him stick his hands into his pockets all the way up to his elbows, and hunch his head almost completely into his jacket. I figured out the clouds weren’t threatening anymore; they’d gone ahead and done their dirty deed.

  After making everyone cross their hearts and hope to die that they wouldn’t peek, I stooped my way into the back of the van. The cavemother came with me. She was a petite old thing, maybe 4’11” and with grey hair. She was fortunate enough to be able to stand erect in the van. “I guess we girls have to stick together,” she said sweetly. I wondered what the hell she could have been doing with a ‘Savage Lovers’ magazine.

  We searched for our costumes. Eva finally found hers in a green garbage bag amid other garbage bags. Fur-covered item after fur-covered item was pulled out. “My goodness,” Eva whined. “It’ll take me longer than 15 minutes to get dressed.”

  I found my wardrobe in a baggie under Eva’s purse. It was sealed with florescent tape so I assumed they especially wanted to make sure I’d find mine. I dressed in a matter of seconds and waited until Granny was finished. She was beginning to look like a human buffalo. She was ensconced in fur apparel from the hood completely covering her head to the mucklucks they provided for her feet.

  Taking a break from all the velcro-ing she was doing, she glanced up at me. “My gosh, dearie, shouldn’t you be getting dressed? Don’t worry about me,” she kindly suggested.

  How I hated to tell her I was already dressed. I didn’t want this saintly lady to think badly of me, and I couldn’t very well say, “This is all I’m wearing as I’m the sex object in this flick,” could I? So I told a fib. “Oh, I guess I’m still half asleep. Yes, I should finish dressing.”

  She resumed hers and I wondered what else I could wear, if only to gain a few minutes more grace with her. I spotted the seat-cover on the driver’s seat. It was a ragged, oil-stained, blue fake-fur cover. While Granny’s back was turned, I whispered to Jug, “Jug, get up, you’re sitting on my costume!”

  He rose and I pulled the cover off the seat. I had a moment’s sanity when I realized I was sure to be caught; what animal could I have killed to wear its blue fur? But then I figured there were already a few discernible peculiarities happening, so there was a chance I’d get away with it.

  Granny turned to look as I was trying to find a way to drape the cover around my body in a becoming manner. I ended up stepping into the elastic fasteners at each end and wore it like a potato-sack stole.

  Granny tsk-tsked. “You’ll freeze your fanny, dearie.” I could only shrug helplessly as the whole lot of us exchanged seats. The ladies sat up front while the cavemen grunted into their wardrobe. It turned out that there was a garbage bag awaiting each of them, filled with fur apparel. If you ever saw the film, you probably thought you were seeing a water buffalo, three grizzly bears, and a quivering, defenseless shaved gazelle.

  Sergio came running back into the van. We were already behind schedule as we were given 20 minutes instead of 15 to dress. He didn’t bother to shout at us through the window this time; he just opened the van door on the run and leapt into the driver’s seat next to me, causing me to knock into Granny, causing her to miss a purl in her knitting. Sergio sat there for about 30 seconds, his face and hands pushed right up into the heaters on the dash. He gave us a sidelong glance. “Get onto set and put that seat-cover back where you found it.”

  We were indeed a motley crew as we filed from the van. Sergio was cracking open a bottle of Scotch but hey…it was 7:30 a.m. already. Since we had no idea where we were to go amid the sand piles, we just followed the sound of voices. I disobeyed Sergio and kept the seat-cover on. For some reason, we’d be walking towards the voices when suddenly it seemed like the voices would be coming from behind us instead. Eventually we realized that the sand cliffs were distorting the sounds and we’d managed to get lost.

  We were undecided as to what to do. One of the cavemen, Skum (his character name), thought we should spark up a joint and let them find us by the smell. I guess he thought it a fine idea as he went immediately into action with Plan A.

  Jug took Skum’s suggestion seriously but offered an alternative plan. He thought we should collect firewood and build a fire; maybe someone would spot the smoke or we could even send smoke signals. Seeing as how I seemed to be the only one approaching the frostbite stage, I suggested we all combine our voices and hope they would locate us.

  “Help! We’re lost! Help!” the five of us started screaming. After a couple minutes, I made another suggestion. “Everyone! Try to project your voices!”

  Skum scoffed. “Yeah, right, Miss Joker. How can we project if there’s no camera?”

  Amateurs, I thought. Rank amateurs. I never knew exactly what that term meant but in Skum’s case, rank certainly seemed to fit.

  Sergio suddenly came running over a sandpile. “What’s goin’ on? Get on set!” He took off and we all went running after him en herd to make sure we kept him in sight.

  The rest of the day simply went from bad to worse. None of us got to look at a script. I think I figured out the plotline though. It went something like this: All the cavemen are vying for my attention but my mother wants me to become a cavenun. Hero appears, I fall for him, so does my mother, and she eventually allows him to drag me off by the hair into the sunset. You may find it to be a rather violent film as Hero does away with my other caveadmirers one by one by bludgeoning them all with Styrofoam rocks.

  I froze my butt off all day and every one of the film crew offered to wrap his arms around me to keep me warm. I thought I’d give Jug the honors. He was the only one who didn’t throw a lewd remark in with the offer, so I knew Jug was either shy or gay (or just a nice guy?) and I’d settle for him. I told him how real his acting was. He was the first to die and he actually looked in severe pain when he was bludgeoned.
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br />   “I wasn’t acting,” Jug denied. “That Hero guy hit me so hard, his fist went through the Styrofoam. I took a good punch to the nose.” Every actor after that had the same look as Jug. I guess our Hero was a method actor.

  The rain eventually tapered off to a mist and it warmed up to five degrees above zero. The frozen sandpiles thawed out a bit and we ended up slip-sliding in mud for most of the day. I secretly appreciated the mud. Once it dried on you, it made for some sort of protection against the cold.

  We were slightly behind schedule when we completed our last shot – the Hero dragging me off into the revised moonset to make me his wife. It was once again -12 below and the ground was frozen. Hero played method actor with me too. I was yanked by my hair over the mud and rocks and got scraped from top to bottom. Embarrassingly, my bikini top became snagged on a root and the clasp that held it together was torn away. At that point though, I was covered with so much mud that nobody noticed.

  We packed up all our stuff. I was tired of looking at these people. My body ached and I just wanted to go home. We had all been promised a ride right to our front doors and Mr. Virgo, aka Hero, approached me.

  “Alice, fine work today. Especially that last scene,” he smiled. “I’ll give you a lift home.”

  I was happy to ride in a Toyota Corolla instead of the van, with everyone cold and muddy and smelly. We left immediately. I tried not to fall asleep as soon as the car warmed up.

  “So,” Mr. Virgo opened the conversation, “have you ever considered doing nude photography?”

  “No.”

  “You SHOULD consider it. You have just the body for one of our magazines.”

  “Which one?”

  “There’s many! ‘Breasts’, ‘Huge Breasts’, ‘Big Breasts’, ‘Boobs’, ‘Huge Boobs’, ‘Big…’”

  “I get the point,” I interrupted. “But I don’t think I’m interested.”

  During the hour-long drive to my place, Mr. Virgo didn’t let up. “We could start easy. Simple camera, simple lighting. I have a digital camera at home and all you would need is an ordinary light, like a lamp you would find in a bedroom.”

  I humored him a bit. “And who’d be the photographer? Sergio?”

  “Oh, no,” he seriously replied. “I’m also a photographer.”

  I bet, I thought. I wasn’t too impressed with his directing or acting. But when we got to my place, I gave it the ol’ college try at being a professional actress. “Well, thank you very much, Mr. Virgo, for giving me this wonderful acting role.”

  “No problem,” he replied. “Shall we say next Saturday, 11 p.m.?”

  I wearily shook my head no and went inside to kick my cat.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Paul was perturbed. He didn’t like the idea of my taking work for no pay. “Are you SURE you didn’t get ANY money for that video?”

  “Paul, all I can give you is 20 per cent of my cold,” I nasally shot back. I was in a vile mood. I woke up in one, stayed in one all day and decided to pay Paul a visit in one. It helped what I was determined to tell him. If he couldn’t get me one decent speaking part, I was going to get out. Not only out of his agency but out of the business.

  Paul took a long look at me. I seethed back at him. “Alice, don’t tell me you’ve come here to give me one of your speeches,” he whined.

  “What if?” I snarled. “I’ll make it short and sweet. If I don’t get a good, PG-rated line soon, I’m quitting. Thank you for your time.” I got up to leave. Had to blow my nose anyways.

  “Alice, Alice,” Paul said consolingly. “Look, I’ve been thinking. Maybe you do have some talent. I’m going to make a long-distance call on your behalf.” He nodded his head, already acknowledging the heartfelt thanks he thought I should give him.

  “To who?” I sneered.

  “I have a contact in New York. I think it’s time to ask him for a favor.”

  Yeah, right, Paul. New York. He should have said, “I might be able to land you a local CBC one-liner” and I would have bought it. But even I couldn’t buy Alice Kumplunkem in New York. Yeah, I’d be hot competition for those Actor’s Studio graduates.

  Still, I needled Paul. “And when will I know?”

  “Give me a week. Until then, can I book you for extra work?”

  Gee, did he actually end that sentence with a question mark? And a week wasn’t all that long. “I suppose,” I reluctantly agreed, a mucous bubble expanding at the end of my sentence. My vile mood returned, as I remembered why I’d gotten a cold in the first place. “But one week ONLY, and that’s FINAL.”

  * * *

  I gave Paul three weeks. The biz was pretty slow and I’d only gotten two extra jobs. There is absolutely nothing to say about them; they were so mundane. Get on set, wait four hours, do a five-minute bit where you just cross the room, have lunch, go back to set, wait four more hours, do another five-minute bit where you do another cross, then wrap for the day. Both jobs were for $12 an hour, opposed to the union extras who raked in $33 an hour plus overtime plus meal penalties plus whatever else that union entitled them to. Bigshot extras. God, I wanted to be like them. On the positive side though, I became a pretty good euchre player.

  After nursing my cold for a few days, I decided to check out the employment possibilities in the ‘real’ world. (The question most asked of an actor by their family: “When are you going to get a real job?”) Well, hot damn if I wasn’t qualified to be much more than a welfare recipient. I couldn’t deliver pizza as I didn’t have a car. I couldn’t be a courier because I didn’t have a bike, computers were beyond my understanding and phone sex was out of the question.

  I got hired at a supermarket. Stock person. I spent all day ripping crates open and putting huge cans of juice on the shelves. I thought I finished quite quickly until I was reminded that I had to have all labels facing forward. Back down they came, where they stayed, littering the aisle. I quit. They didn’t even pay me.

  I was sitting at home with the newspaper’s classifieds in front of me. That section was the only portion of the paper I used. I was circling things everywhere – cheaper places for me and Lunchpail to live, jobs to check out, seeing who wanted to buy what furniture I had left. I was poor now. Lunchpail had been ignoring me for days. I had jestingly said to him, “Sheesh, Pail, the cheapest place for you to live right now might be the Humane Society.” He took it to heart.

  The phone rang. For some reason, I sensed it was Paul and I steeled myself, knowing I had to be strong.

  “Alice, sweetheart! Fun job! Only 20 extras required and you get your own Winnebago.”

  “Each?”

  “Of course not. But there’s only 20 extras. Get there early and you’ll get a chair.”

  He almost hooked me. A winny compared to a roomful of stacking chairs…I had to sell my CDs to make this month’s rent…two weeks to go on the pawn ticket to get my bedroom suite out of hock…Mom wants me to pay for that appendix operation I had when I was six…

  NO!!!

  “Sorry, Paul. No more. If you can’t come up with a decent audition for a speaking part, then please don’t bother to call me anymore.” I hung up on him. I couldn’t believe I stood strong! I felt elated.

  A week later I felt deflated. Every carton of milk I bought expired the day it was supposed to, the couch I’d been sleeping on sprung a spring at both ends and the worst, the very worst, was that I got a ‘Dear Alice’ letter from Joe the schmo.

  Dear Alice, it basically said, I will be coming back to Toronto very soon but please don’t call me. I’m returning with Beulah who is now my fiancée. Good luck in your career. Joe. He didn’t even bother writing ‘Love Joe’, if only for old time’s sake. I can’t say the news surprised me because I had been feeling niggling doubts for some time, but it did irk me something fierce. I’d been moping around the apartment ever since, feeling very sorry for myself and eating nothing but junk food.

  With an energy one only sees in emancipated people, I answered my ringing phone. />
  “Alice! It’s Paul the Persistent! New York came through. Next Monday, 3 p.m. New soap called Monday to Sunday.” He went on with the details. It was to be a Big Chill meets Modern Family kind of show and my look fit one of the characters they hadn’t been able to cast yet.

  I slowly felt hope seep back into my life. I even felt chivalrous enough to ask Paul if he needed me for any extra work in the meanwhile.

  “Sorry, hon. Got nothing to offer you right now.”

  I wished I hadn’t asked.

  * * *

  I spent that phone call until Monday afternoon dieting. I took the Greyhound Bus into New York and didn’t talk to a single stranger or pimp all the way. I kept my return ticket (hoping I wouldn’t need it) and my meagre spending money close to my breast. I arrived with two hours to spare before my audition and with a bad case of nerves, decided to while the time away at a restaurant in the vicinity. I gorged on fried chicken with an extra helping of fries and gravy. It didn’t seem to help my frayed nerves but it sure gave me a good case of gas.

  At a quarter to three, I stood before the imposing structure that was Largemar Productions. With a deep breath and a final fart, I walked through the portals. You would have thought I was entering the White House, for Pete’s sake. A uniformed doorman opened the door for me then immediately directed me to a reception desk. A veritable Loni Anderson receptionist enquired as to my business with Largemar.

  “I’m here to audition for your soap opera,” I answered smugly.

  “Which one?” Loni glitteringly asked. “We do five.”

  “Uh…Monday to Sunday.”

  “Our new one! Sure to be a smash hit! Watch for it!” Loni trilled by rote.

  “Well, I hope to be in it,” I quipped.

  “The auditions are on the fortieth floor. The receptionist there will direct you to the proper area.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I stood a moment longer, hoping she’d tell me to break my leg or something. Not a word. Ah, she was probably up for the same role. I headed for the express elevator.