A Bit Weird : Audition Gets a Small Sample of the Strange

A weird thing happened Sunday when television producers held an open audition for “strange acts and weird people” to be in a new fall series.

Instead of the Hollywood onslaught that studio executives expected, only 13 people were waiting in line at a Burbank sound stage at the start of the eight-hour tryout session.

Oddly, even though trade-paper advertisements urged performers to come in “unusual costumes,” only three of the 13 did. Two men were dressed as women; a third man wore an Elvis Presley outfit.

“This is a strange town,” moaned Ben Platt, segment producer for the new “Best of the Worst” series show to be aired by Fox Television.

“Maybe there just aren’t enough weird people in Los Angeles anymore. Maybe we’re gonna have to go drag people off Venice Beach to be in the show.”

Production publicist Valerie Scott nodded. “They all look pretty normal. It’s scary when weird people look normal,” she said.

Executive producer Mark Wolper was determined to make the best of the worst situation.

“If we find a few real bad ones, we’ll do good,” he said.

Not so strange was the attitude of the performers standing in the 90-degree heat outside the studio, which until recently housed a defunct home-shopping cable television show. They couldn’t have been happier at the turnout.

“I was expecting thousands to be here,” grinned Charley De La Pena, a 39-year-old Glendale market research interviewer who came to lip-sync and dance to the old Coasters rock ‘n’ roll song, “Yakety Yak.”

De La Pena arrived 1 1/2 hours early to get a good place in line. As it turned out, he could have waited until just 10 minutes before the auditions began and still beat the second person in line, actor Stuart Malkin, 59, of Woodland Hills.

“We should have some pretty good odds,” Malkin said happily. “They say they’re looking for 14 people to be in the series.”

Malkin’s “totally bizarre and unique stage act,” as the show put it, consisted of wiggling out of a straitjacket as he told jokes. He was followed by a succession of stand-up comics, mimes and dancers.

Perhaps the strangest act was was performed by Olatungi Obebunmi, 21, of Costa Mesa. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he admitted to Wolper and Platt. Without further explanation--or music--he did an impromptu, 10-second dance and disappeared from the stage.

Twins Raleigh and Raymond Friend, 28, of Hollywood, joined to sing a rap music duet about Siamese twins. Burbank resident Dean Grey, 66, a bartender at an American Legion hall, wore a red dress and a blonde wig as he sang “Old Man River.”

Carpenter Skip Banks, 40, of Orange, said it took six months to put his short act together. He wore shoes on his hands and crouched on his knees as he “danced” to a pop music recording. He said he has performed at “swap meets and weddings.”

As the afternoon wore on, latecomers straggled in, carrying prop hats and cassette tapes of their own special music.

But the leisurely pace of the tryouts took their toll on some. It lulled record store clerk Erik Von Weener, 19, of Huntington Park, into going too far with his act.

Von Weener drew polite applause when he sang a song about cockroaches. But he drew gasps when he sang a second tune--this one about sneezing and picking one’s nose.

People agreed that he blew it.