Too Much Is Not Enough

by Andrew Rannells

  Years would go by too quickly. One morning, waking up hungover next to the now forty-five-year-old, whom I despised with all my heart, I would stumble to the bathroom and see myself in the mirror, my copper-y highlights askew and plastered to my head, making them seem even more haphazard and uneven. My fake tan would seem particularly orange in the bathroom light. I would see the marks under my eyes from the tanning goggles more clearly than usual. My body, now tens of pounds heavier from drink and processed foods, would disgust me. I would then start to surveil the room itself. The cheap burgundy bath towels folded fussily by the shower. The dream catcher in the window from our last vacation to Santa Fe. The Pumpkin Spice Yankee Candle by the sink. The poorly framed Casablanca poster hanging above the toilet. My god, this guy has shitty taste, I would think. But is this also my taste? Why am I living here? Why do I look like this? Why is this my life? Something would snap in my brain, like a fuse blowing or an ice cube cracking on your molars.

  I’ve gotta get out of here.

  I would grab a bag and shove what few belongings I actually liked inside, leaving behind several blazers from Structure and Nehru-collar shirts from J. Peterman. I would wake up the forty-year-old by shouting at him, “I’m leaving, fuck face! I’m out! I’m dead to you! Don’t try to contact me ever again!” I would storm out of that house without letting him speak to me, and I would get in the Ford Escort that I had bought from my dad and drive straight to my parents’ house. I would explain that I needed a place to stay to collect my thoughts and regroup. My parents would agree and not ask too many questions, which I would be grateful for. Over the next few months I would re-register for classes at UNO, now fully understanding what “Communications” meant. I would drop out of all community theater productions I had committed to and cut ties with most of the people I had interacted with.

  I would let my tan fade and I would cut every last highlight out of my hair, starting fresh like a monk in an ashram. I would dig out my sister Julie’s Sweatin’ to the Oldies VHS tapes, and I would sweat to those oldies until I could fit back into the Abercrombie & Fitch chinos that I’d worn senior year of high school. I would throw myself into school, and being one of the oldest students in my class, I would stand out as a real force to be reckoned with. I would get an internship at KETV (our most popular local news source), and I would prove myself as a hard worker and dedicated student. I would probably have an affair with a local news anchor, because…Who am I kidding? I would have to make some mistakes somewhere. But it wouldn’t be disruptive, and we would part ways maturely, without incident.

  Most important, I would rebuild my relationship with my parents. I would make them proud and finally live up to the potential they had always seen in me.

  Flash forward a couple years: I am now a full-blown anchor at KETV NewsWatch 7. I am known for my steady tone and empathic delivery, whether I am reporting on a State Fair Ferris wheel accident or the birth of a baby tiger at the Henry Doorly Zoo. People love me. I am respected. I live in a beautiful and tastefully decorated home in the Fairacres neighborhood of Omaha. I had to painstakingly restore every inch of original wood in the house, but you know what? It was worth it. A real labor of love. And I had the help of my wonderful boyfriend, Dr. Zack. Dr. Zack is a cardiologist at the Creighton University Medical Center. We met while he was taking care of my father after an irregular heartbeat was discovered. My dad actually suggested I meet Dr. Zack after he found out Dr. Zack was gay. Dr. Zack was a fan of mine after watching my six-part series about teen runaways living in the abandoned Southroads Mall. We hit it off and have been inseparable ever since. That was three years ago. We are seriously thinking about having a commitment ceremony in our backyard for our family and friends. You know? Something intimate. Just for us.

  Yes, I really turned my life around in Omaha. It was looking iffy for a couple years there, but then I got it all sorted out. Do I ever miss performing? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe sometimes. But I am quite fulfilled with my job now. I like helping people, telling their stories, connecting with the community. Would I ever think about a career in local politics? Me? Oh gosh, I mean, I’d be lying if I said I never thought about it. It’s something Zack and I would have to talk about. We are considering starting a family. We’ve looked at adoptions in China and we are really close to ordering a toddler. It’s a big step, but I think we have a lot of love to give. We certainly have the space!

  Eventually there would be holidays with the family at our house. Nieces and nephews playing in our yard. No nosey in-laws to deal with because Dr. Zack is, conveniently, an orphan. (But he’s super well-adjusted about that.)

  I would picture myself back in Omaha, living this Sliding Doors version of my life, and it all seemed right. It all seemed perfect. Too perfect. Too safe. At this point in my daydream I would usually hear a New York City police siren, or Zuzanna in the next room watching Real World, or my downstairs neighbor would start to blast “Crystal Blue Persuasion” at a deafening decibel, as he was wont to do. I would force myself to get out of bed, and I would think about the day ahead of me.

  Anything was possible. I could do anything I wanted in New York City. Yes, I was poor. Yes, I was jobless. But I had everything to look forward to. I was here pursuing my dream, the dream I’d had since fourth grade. If Imaginary Omaha Andy could turn his life around and get what he wanted, so could Real Life New York Andrew. I didn’t want to be a news anchor. I wanted to be on Broadway. I didn’t want to restore an old mansion. I wanted to live in a co-op in Chelsea. I didn’t want a kid from China. I wanted to be friends with Patti LuPone.

  I would allow myself to have these daydream moments whenever I needed to, just to remind myself of what it was I was truly after, and while my alternate universe life was appealing, it always led me back to what it was I actually wanted.

  I would still take a Dr. Zack though.

  I Don’t Want to Catch ’Em All

  A huge factor in the mental instability of actors is the uncertainty of the business we have devoted our lives to. You can be nearly destitute one day, with no prospects, not even a glimmer of hope for success, and then with one phone call, the next months or even years of your life can completely change with a single job. You live with the power of possibility—and the burden of it—every day.

  In the weeks following my final Hand Jive as Doody at the Westchester Broadway Theatre I found myself waking up and trying, desperately, to will the phone to ring with the news that would give my days a shape—and my life some purpose—once again. I didn’t have an agent at the time, so the possibility of just magically getting a job on my own seemed bleak. I was not good at survival jobs, but it was becoming clear that if I didn’t get another gig soon, I would have to dust off my skills as New York’s most uncoordinated restaurant host or reprise my role as “Coatcheck Who Hides in the Bathroom.” I reminded myself that I had booked work on my own before, and that I could do it again. I just wished that it would get easier at some point.

  Miraculously, after months of what seemed like endless rejections, I got a call from a casting director I had auditioned for a few months earlier for a non-Equity production of Godspell, a show that was always confusing to me. Why were they dressed as clowns? Why did the person playing Jesus have to wear a Superman T-shirt? Why was there a character named “Sonya”? Who the hell was she in the Bible? (I know it’s the name of the original actress, Theater People, calm down.) I wasn’t cast in Godspell, but I could tell that this casting director liked me. This time she said that she was casting a show at Radio City Music Hall that would run for a month of performances and then go on a brief tour across the country. It would be steady work for six months and the pay was $1,000 a week. I had never made that much money in my life. I hadn’t even auditioned yet, but I was already mentally packing my bags and spending that paycheck. There was just one quick detail I thought I should go over before signing the contract: “What is the show?” I asked, not
really caring what the answer would be.

  “It’s called Pokémon Live!”

  I was taken aback. I had only a hazy understanding of what Pokémon was, or were. (Were they people? Animals?) My only reference point was the news story about the cartoon being so frenetic that it caused seizures in some children. The casting director sensed my immediate hesitation/total fucking panic.

  “You wouldn’t be playing a Pokémon,” she said. “You would be playing a human. The Pokémon are going to be puppets, I think.”

  Okay. This is looking a little bit better, I thought. It’s children’s theater. I’ve done plenty of that, and this is at Radio City Music Hall for the love of God. This is just some highbrow children’s theater. Then the casting director started telling me about the people involved in the show. The director was from the Broadway company of Chicago, the composer wrote all the music for the Pokémon TV show, and the book writer wrote on…wait for it…Days of Our Lives.

  Let me explain something about how my head spun this information into me basically becoming Tom Hanks from my involvement in Pokémon Live! (The exclamation point was part of the title, by the way. It wasn’t “Live” period, it was “LIVE” EXCLAMATION POINT, DAMN IT! These Pokémon were LIVING in front of your very eyes!) I heard “Chicago”—a show that happened to be wildly successful at the moment—and it immediately legitimized the entire operation. I wasn’t totally sure how sexy Fosse dancers with bowler hats would work their way into Pokémon Live! but if I had my way, I would be brunching with Bebe Neuwirth in no time. Because the composer of this production worked on the Pokémon TV show, there would obviously be other TV people around, who, perhaps, would need my voice-over expertise at some point. And the book writer coming from Days of Our Lives, well…if he worked there, maybe he would see me and realize that I was perfect for soap opera work and whisk me away to Pine Valley or whatever fictional soap opera land Days of Our Lives takes place in. (I know it’s Salem, Soap People, calm down.) I was already planning my next four moves after Pokémon Live! and I hadn’t even gotten the job yet. I believe this shows a real ability to plan on my part and also a huge disconnect from reality. In any event, I was on board.

  I showed up for the audition at Radio City Music Hall, which in and of itself was VERY exciting. I had never been to Radio City, so entering for the first time through the stage door was pretty frickin’ cool. The hallways were plastered with posters of all the greats who had played there: James Taylor, Carole King, Stevie Wonder, the Rockettes, Jessica Simpson! The audition looked and felt like a normal audition. We sang, we danced a little, and then they started giving us scenes and pairing us up to read together.

  The director was a handsome and intense man named Luis Perez. He had been in the original revival cast of Chicago but had recently left to pursue directing. I liked him immediately, and he seemed to know what he was doing. More important, he was more than a little eye roll-y about the whole project. When he was explaining what the show was about, there was a little wink accompanying all of it. He certainly didn’t expect any of us to know the ins and outs of the Pokémon storylines.

  The production team decided to have me read for both the male lead and the comedic villain, and both auditions seemed to go well. They asked a handful of us to come back later in the week, but this time we would need to learn some of the original music from the show. They gave us sheet music and a CD with the demo tracks, and we even had to sign nondisclosure agreements, which seemed silly. I mean, who the hell was I going to tell about this? But it also gave me the impression that these people weren’t fucking around.

  Luis also suggested that we watch the cartoon before we came back. “I don’t want to see an impersonation, but you should just have a feel for the characters.” Research! I can do that! I got on the subway and immediately put the CD in my Discman—it was 2000—so I could hear this secret music. I have to say, the songs weren’t terrible. They were sort of benign pop songs with catchy hooks and vague lyrics, but they were fun. The songs all sort of sounded like Richard Marx had had a musical baby with Mandy Moore. I had to learn “The Time Has Come.” (For what? I wasn’t sure yet.) And “The Best at Being the Worst.” (A possible premonition of my immediate future.) I was strangely excited about this callback. I could see that this show might be better than it seemed on paper.

  I got back to my apartment, and it happened to be close to the time Pokémon was going to be on television. It was a big after-school hit, and I think they ran two episodes in a row, so I could really dive into my research. I turned on the show, ready to break down the psychological intricacies of each Pokémon character. Now, I don’t know if you have ever seen Pokémon, but it looks and sounds like a combination of the worst fever dream you have ever had mixed with the volume and intensity of a grade school playground street fight. Everyone on the show was screaming their lines and seemed incredibly angry or scared. Or both.

  The actual Pokémon characters were these odd-looking, colorful creatures who could only communicate by saying their names. For example, there was a turtle-like thing whose name was “Squirtle.” (I didn’t make that up, that is a character’s name and not an autofill response on a YouPorn search page.) “Squirtle” would just say his name over and over again, and the other characters would somehow understand what he was trying to tell them. A typical scene might look like this:

  HUMAN PERSON

  Come on, Squirtle, what’s wrong?

  SQUIRTLE

  Squirtle squirtle squirtle squirtle squirtle.

  HUMAN PERSON

  I know you don’t want to go home, but we have to.

  SQUIRTLE

  Squirtle squirtle.

  HUMAN PERSON

  Thanks for understanding, buddy.

  SQUIRTLE

  Squirtle.

  END OF SCENE

  I was really struggling to get through this episode and not have some kind of aneurysm. I could see why children were having seizures while watching this show. I muted the sound and decided to just wait for the characters I was auditioning for to come on screen. Helpfully, in the demo CD, there were pictures of the characters for reference. My characters’ names were Ash and James, the latter being part of a villainous duo named Team Rocket. I was less interested in the villain and more interested in Ash. His song was better and he was the lead. If I was going to whore it out for children’s theater, I might as well be the lead, right? I finally saw Ash on TV and turned up the sound. It was clearly a woman who was voicing this character. She had a raspy voice and stayed true to the line-reading screamfest that was already established. Rather than sounding like a teenage boy, she sounded more like an angry office manager who smoked a couple packs a day. I wasn’t sure if I could accurately do this voice, but I remember Luis telling us he didn’t want an impression. Maybe there was some room for reinterpretation.

  In the same scene, my other character, James, and his partner in crime, Jessie, appeared. I was shocked to see that James had purple, bob-length hair and even more shocked to hear his voice. It was basically the most offensive impression of a gay man you could possibly do without putting a cartoon dick in the character’s mouth at all times. I was horrified and offended for my people. How was this on television? How was this acceptable for children to watch? I decided that I would focus on Ash and leave the other character for some other actor with less self-esteem to tackle.

  As I sat in my room, working on this material, I was bounced between genuine excitement about the project’s potential and total terror that I might actually get this job and have to do it. But I had no other viable options. I don’t have the job yet, I told myself. Let’s take this one step at a time.

  I went to my callback ready to nail my Ash audition. I was just going to tell the casting director that I couldn’t read for the role of James, that I simply wasn’t comfortable with the material. Surely she would re
spect my integrity. So when the time came, I marched up to her and, in the most positive way possible, told her that I wasn’t “feeling” the role of James and that I just wanted to read Ash. She frowned at me a little. “What’s wrong?” she asked while tilting her head to the side in a way that felt pretty aggressively passive-aggressive.

  “Nothing is wrong, I am just relating to the lead, I mean Ash, more. I hope that’s okay.”

  Her head somehow tilted even more. I’m not sure how it was staying on her body.

  “But you would be so funny, Andrew! I know that the whole team is really excited to see what you do with that part.”

  I’m embarrassed to say that even that tiny little compliment, or suggestion of a compliment, was enough to throw me off my integrity wagon.