by Andy Zeffer
“Adam!” Candy sputtered, now beet red and gasping for air between convulsions of laughter. A model-type girl walked past us and laughed, getting a kick out of the fuss Candy made.
“You guys never noticed that?” she asked.
“Uh . . . no,” I answered, gazing at the figures in front of me in dismay.
Candy just shook her head, her hands over her mouth and tears coming out of her eyes. Was this Crunch’s way of trying to be titillating and promote a sexy image? No wonder those sides of the showers were always empty. I was actually a little pissed. I had used one of those stalls and could imagine how stupid I looked yanking away at my penis with soap and water, no idea that what I was doing was completely visible from the other side.
It was a good thing I didn’t have the nerve to invite someone else in my stall here. What a show that would be. I swear, if Candy hadn’t pointed out this discovery I’m sure I wouldn’t have noticed it for weeks.
After we got ourselves together and left for home, I sat in Candy’s car having rather paranoid thoughts. The shower stalls just defined LA—one big fucking tease for the eyes and senses. They probably designed the showers like that so they could catch people doing something dirty. I mean, this town went gaga for catching people with their pants down, just look at Heidi Fleiss or Hugh Grant.
Central Casting
My other big purchase that week besides my new gym membership was the Thomas Guide, a massive book of maps that illustrated the countless street grids of the Los Angeles Metropolitan area. Candy had kept pestering me to buy it, and so far I had gotten lost more than once.
“You’re going to need it if you want to find anyplace on your own,” she said in a scolding tone when I told her for the tenth time I still hadn’t grabbed a copy.
When I finally broke down and bought the Thomas Guide I was horrified. It looked like it weighed a ton and was hundreds of pages long.
Shit, I thought. I hadn’t even read the whole Bible from front to back, but I was sure it was less of a challenge than this monstrosity.
At the end of the week I decided to make the trip to Central Casting in Burbank. Central Casting was the largest service for extras in town and had been around forever. It was in the depths of the valley, and getting there would be a challenge for me. I was still terrified of freeways.
“Can’t I just take the boulevards?” I asked Candy meekly.
“No, you can’t just take the boulevards!” Candy responded in a baby voice clearly meant to mock my freeway phobia.
“It will take you way too long,” she continued in a no-nonsense tone. “I really want you to stop being such a pussy about this. You lived in the toughest city in the world and you’re scared to merge?”
I guess it was something I would have to learn to get over fast if I ever needed to be anywhere in Los Angeles other than Hollywood and Beverly Hills. As a New Yorker, my vision of LA freeways was miles of endless, crisscrossing vessels of aggression and road rage with shootings and televised car chases thrown in for good measure.
I would come to find that I wasn’t too far off. And, not being great at multitasking to begin with, having the Thomas Guide was of no use whatsoever. For starters you needed a magnifying glass to read the print. Then you had to keep glancing at it to keep up with where you were going while driving, not an easy thing in LA traffic. I could just picture myself veering off the road and colliding into a palm tree. I was a Thomas Guide disaster.
I found Central Casting in the core of Burbank, and it took forever to get there as I abandoned the freeways altogether and took the scenic route over Laurel Canyon to the boulevards that never seemed to end. The San Fernando Valley was miles of endless sprawl and the worst architecture I’d ever seen, a lot of stuff straight out of a Brady Bunch episode. Actually a lot of buildings looked as if Mike Brady had proudly designed them himself, complete with avocado exterior tile and faux Tudor stucco.
Central Casting was located in a nondescript two-story building. Parking was a bitch, and I left my car around the corner and a few blocks down.
There were already dozens of people when I arrived, and a form with a number waiting by the door. The form asked the usual crap, such as measurements, wardrobe, skills, and talents. After filling it out, I sat with the other hungry actors in a room with tables and mismatched furniture.
I hadn’t seen a sadder cast of idiots in some time, actually not since the filming of Sect of Lucifer. It was just plain depressing looking at the hopefuls who had obviously passed their prime in Hollywood and hadn’t much of a prayer of going further than having their back to a camera in some restaurant scene. One deluded girl with runs in her stockings was going on about how the people at Spelling Television always called for her, and kept throwing the term “Spelling” around as if she were a cast member of Beverly Hills, 90210.
“The people at Spelling told me I should keep my hair this length, even though I’m dying to cut it,” I overheard her telling someone across the foldout table.
At the same time a guy in his forties with glasses and bad skin loudly shelled out acting advice to his moronic cohorts sitting nearby.
“Make sure not to get too tan,” he ordered to a blank-looking beach dude. “The camera doesn’t like it.”
Many people were here to reregister and had probably been doing this for years. I had heard about people in LA who did this for a living. They were just professional extras living on union wages and driving around with twenty different changes of clothing in the trunk of their cars. After almost an hour of waiting, I had begun to really hate myself for failing to bring a good book. An older and somewhat haggard bleached-blonde woman with a helium voice came through with a basket of apples and cookies for the casting people upstairs, jarring me from my thoughts.
“I just had to give them something,” she gushed to someone nearby me. “They kept me working two months straight!”
Obviously, job security was not a priority with these people.
Finally it got closer to my number being called and I was allowed to go upstairs and wait in a smaller line to have my picture taken. Then it was up to a window to pay the twenty-dollar fee to register. The frumpy girls behind the windows barked orders at me.
“Stand behind the strip of tape at the floor! Look straight at the camera! Now turn to the wall and give us your profile!”
It was like getting arrested and having your mug shot taken. I should have known they were all a bunch of raging bitches. When listening to their phone recording for directions I remembered the hostile voice on the other end exclaiming in disdain “If you are sick, please do not come to the office. We do not want the whole office to get sick!”
When the whole thing was over I felt like I had been at the DMV, only a strange, surreal DMV full of drivers with stars in their eyes.
It was almost evening by the time I made it back to Candy’s. Dean wasn’t there because Frank was coming into town the next day. I was glad it was just the two of us. Before long we were laughing hysterically as I went on in detail about my day.
“That’s why I refuse to do extra work,” Candy rambled on while munching chocolate chips. “You sit there for hours feeling like a piece of dirt.”
Neither of us felt like going out, so we settled for baking chocolate chip cookies instead. Candy climbed onto the counter to search the cupboard for vanilla, her blonde ponytail bouncing behind her. Her cats, Goldie and Frosty, watched in wonder as we danced around the kitchen to ABBA Gold.
“Take a chance on me . . . take a chance, take a chance, take a chance,” I sang to the cats while jumping up and down. Used to being around erratic behavior, the cats didn’t flinch.
After eating half the batch between us, she went to bed and I scanned the papers for work. I had picked up some local gay papers at the Abbey that first night. Maybe there was something in there.
Before hitting the sack I prayed to God that I would have an easy work search. My thoughts drifted back to the few times I had done ext
ra work in New York, besides the Woody Allen project. The worst experiences that stuck out in my mind were the films The Mirror Has Two Faces and 54.
The first was shot on location at Columbia University and consisted of a slew of college-age extras crammed into a huge lecture hall while Barbra Streisand paraded around as our supposed professor, in the ugliest Donna Karan dress I’ve ever seen. It looked like she was wearing a black potato sack. We were subjected to early-morning calls and being kept all day until the following morning while Ms. Streisand did take after take. The scene consisted of her playing a professor and giving a lecture that her students are just mesmerized by. Then, as her admirers, we applauded in sheer admiration and adulation at the end.
I guess it’s hard for her to lose the diva personification, even playing a teacher.
By the time the whole thing was done and over I hated Barbra Streisand’s guts. Talk about the walking, breathing, and living definition of neurotic. That and the fact she was addressing us like we were a herd of simpletons and providing the most unrealistic college scenarios in order to direct us.
“So you’re just in awe of this professor,” she gestured wildly with her hands.
In reality most of the people there were college students anyway, but the way she spoke to us made it clear she had never stepped into a lecture hall in her life. I ran out of there screaming. This was before I joined the union, so one could say I ran screaming with nothing but peanuts for pay.
In contrast, the 54 set was a complete circus in freezing subzero temperatures. The film, which turned out to be a huge bomb, was based on the legendary club and shot at the actual location of the former nightspot in the middle of the winter. The problem was, the geniuses behind the project decided to film exterior summer shots outside the front of the building in unbearable, freezing cold weather. They even had contraptions to blow hot air at the masses outside, which dissipated immediately and didn’t do shit to keep us warm. Even more bizarre was the number of elderly people there dressed in disco outfits, people who never would have thought of venturing into the actual club in its heyday. After being herded out a few times in the frigid air, I told myself there was no way in hell I was going to contract pneumonia for the slim chance of being glimpsed on camera for a split second. Freezing to death while waving my hand around like a maniac and posing as some stupid loser unable to get into Liza and Halston’s playground just wasn’t worth it.
Lucky for me and twenty other smart people, we found a stairwell in the corner of the club that led to a few locker rooms and a boiler room that you could squeeze through a narrow opening to get into. We hid out for hours, sipping hot tea and coffee, basically talking crap. When the production assistant went on this search for us we ran like the most frightened refugees you’ve ever seen.
“Here they come! Everybody run!” the person on lookout would urge, and we’d scatter faster than mice.
We stood silent, ignoring the impending doom that threatened us. Stifling laughs, we kept still as the exasperated production assistant yelled.
“Come on you guys! I know you’re down here! Just a few more shots and then were done!”
With the other few hundred suckers freezing their asses off outside, they got along fine without us. We spent the rest of the time playing with old hats we found in the basement, and laughing as we wondered when we’d creep upon one of Steve Rubell’s old cocaine vials or condoms. That night when the set was wrapped, we filtered into the rest of the crowd and got our waivers signed with no problem. A few months later, when the weather warmed, I was coerced back to the 54 set with the promise I’d get a bit on camera as one of the fabled and legendary bartenders. Sure enough, I was given a short scene on camera counting cash from the bar till, only to discover I had been cut and all you could see were my hands in the actual film. Not that it was a big loss. Nobody saw the big box office stinker anyway, and I got paid.
Those memories coupled with today’s experience at Central Casting almost gave me a panic attack as I lay back in bed staring up at the ceiling. This was one of the many times I wished I had turned out to be a normal person with normal ambitions. Why couldn’t I have just decided on becoming a pharmacist, an architect, or an engineer? Anything with some degree of safety and order would do. Today’s events were the perfect example of the ongoing struggle between the side of me that desired creative freedom, artistic freedom, and fame and fortune, versus the side of me that desperately craved stability and order in my life.
I guess many artists possess this inner conflict, almost a schizophrenic battle between the two. The bottom line in life is you can’t have your cake and eat it too. It’s either one or the other. I had made a choice in what path I had to follow, and these were the obstacles in my way. Whether I picked the right path to begin with, I wasn’t sure of. And that’s what bothered me the most. I didn’t have the strong attitude that it was all or nothing. I wasn’t prepared to eat out of garbage cans like Madonna supposedly did before hitting it big. Somehow the vision of a nervous six-foot-tall gay man eating out of garbage cans is considerably less of a charming tale than that of a sexy street urchin from Michigan.
Oh, the life of a tortured artist!
Good Lord, talk about envisioning worst-case scenarios. I wasn’t going to worry any more about it tonight. Tomorrow I would start afresh and begin pounding the pavement for a job waiting tables. But one thing was for sure: after today I was pretty sure my future didn’t lay in being a professional extra.
Circuit Disaster
The job hunt wasn’t going so well. The hot bars and restaurants on Santa Monica were less than receptive. I was so burned out from hitting up every other restaurant in town I couldn’t keep track of where I’d gone or how many applications I filled out. It was the same story everywhere. “The manager is in tomorrow” or “We’ll keep your resumé on file and if anything happens let you know.”
The worst moment was when I hit one popular and well-known restaurant on Santa Monica and the aging sexpot of a waiter, pushing into his late thirties, sized me up and down and said coldly, “We haven’t hired a new waiter in over three years. There is no turnover here.”
“Thanks anyway. Keep reaching for the stars,” I said to the career waiter before leaving in frustration.
With half the people in town aspiring actors and all them vying for a server position, I might as well be auditioning for the role of a waiter in real life.
The temp agencies weren’t much better.
“I can schedule you for an appointment a week from today,” a tired-sounding woman said on the other end of the line.
“Can’t I just come in during open interviews?” I asked.
“No. We do scheduled interviews only,” she replied.
So much for accessibility. I always did horribly on those typing and computer skills tests anyway. Back in New York I was always assigned to the phones.
To ease my worries I attended my first big social event in LA, the “Labor Day LA” celebration. This was the end-of-summer circuit party in town and was being held in a space called The Palace located in the heart of Hollywood. I wasn’t a huge circuit party fan. I did enjoy them every once in a while but didn’t plan my whole existence around them like countless other gay guys. Besides, I didn’t have the money or energy to organize weekend drug binges that enabled me to stay up endless hours packed into a crowded space with a bunch of gym queens strung out on crystal. But I appreciated the energy, the music, and checking out the hot bodies every once in a blue moon.
I was glad when Sarah had invited me to go out with her and her cohorts. They were obnoxious but other than Candy were the only people I knew in town.
“You’re coming to Labor Day LA with us, right? Stephen is getting the whole crew customized tank tops,” she went on.
I had gathered by now that these people considered themselves an exclusive group. When they walked in a place they acted like they owned it, all of them gravitating toward one another. And many of the other peo
ple gravitated to them, stopping to chitchat and make idle talk. I even heard a few of the guys jokingly refer to themselves as “the A-list,” but they sounded half serious. And I’m sure they really believed it. Strangely enough, other people around them seemed to buy into the idea as well, which I found even more disturbing.
The night of the party I planned on picking up Sarah at her place and then driving over to her friend Fred’s apartment, where we’d meet up with the rest of the group.
Fred was the uber-stud of the clique, with a perfectly chiseled body, a face that was almost too pretty, and the ideal job and apartment to go along with his looks. I actually liked him better than any of the other guys in this conceited convergence of queers that was the A-list. He seemed much more genuine than the others. The rest of the guys were well aware of Fred’s physical appeal, and I had even heard a few of them make sniping remarks suggesting he might have had plastic surgery. But when I was first introduced to him he asked me plenty of questions about my interests and seemed genuinely interested in getting to know me as a person.
He was definitely not afraid to show his gay side, having an extended conversation with me about who our all-time favorite actresses were, a sure sign of two gay men hitting it off.
“And I love all those luscious women from Fellini flicks, you know like Anita Ekberg and Claudia Cardinale!” I gushed, going on and on.
“Mmmm. And what about Lana Turner?” Fred would reply, pursuing the subject further.
This guy wasn’t concerned about appearing macho, or maybe it was that he just wasn’t trying to impress me in particular. Either way it was cool. Nothing irritates me more than a gay guy who tries to maintain a rigidly straight and heterosexual image in public, just for the sake of attracting other men, then goes home at the end of the day to dance around to his Diana Ross CD collection.