The Young and the Anxious

The casting director glanced at the glossy photograph on her desk. A handsome young man named Brent smiled back at her. “Brent, Brent, Brent,” she said. “Get a new picture. I’ve seen this one already, 10,000 times.” She flipped the 8-by-10 into a small trash can positioned directly behind her chair. She could do this without looking back.

It was not yet 10 a.m., but the small receptacle, marked “recycle,” already was crammed full with photographs and resumes and just-wanted-to-touch-base postcards. The casting director works for a soap opera. She also is a friend, which is why she agreed to let me follow her around for a day.

The only ground rule was that I avoid proper nouns and any description of new roles to be cast. Although it may seem all soaps are the same--a human circus of confused family trees, hyperactive libidos and inoperable tumors--the shows guard plot turns as closely as the Pentagon does nuclear war codes. In any case, my interest had nothing to do with who might turn out to be the biological father of little Ned or Fred.

My interest was with the actors, with that relentless core of dreamers who arrive in Los Angeles with nice smiles and long resumes and little real chance of ever finding steady work before a camera. My interest was in the yearning--an old theme, perhaps, but always compelling--and the daily mail call was a good place to start.

*

“I cannot express through a letter,” wrote an actor named Matt from Chicago, “how much I want . . . an opportunity to be a part of something as special as,” and here he named the show. Typical, my friend said, flipping it into the bin.

“I hope,” sniffed another correspondent, “that I haven’t done anything to offend you . . . .”

A little too sensitive, she said. You need a thick skin.

“Hey,” she said, scanning a resume, “here’s a guy who knows how to work a pressure hose steam cleaner.”

She noticed one actor’s height and put down his resume. Too short. She looked at a picture--”maybe this guy looks a little too much like O.J. Simpson.” She picked up a postcard. “Eric,” it said, “is a serious actor--when he’s not playing a purple dinosaur at children’s birthday parties.” She paused now to remember other gimmicks. Once an actor delivered his resume by homing pigeon. Several have attached their pictures to bars of soaps--soaps, get it? She remembered a letter that began: “My child just had heart surgery and I need a job.”

Not all the mail winds up in the trash. The bookcases in her small office are crammed with binders that contain pictures of applicants. There are stacks of videotapes, piles of unfiled resumes. Near her desk hangs a blank contract form listing the standard day rate--$580, plus 10% for the agent. A television set provides a live feed of taping under way in a nearby studio: “All right, buster,” an actress tells an actor, “it’s your turn to hand me that suntan lotion.”

In front of her desk is a chair. Here, actors who had been invited to audition for various parts--a triumph in its own right--would sit and read snatches of dialogue. The chair squeaked, but only the most confident applicants dared to make light of it. Quite a few, though, took pains to inquire politely about the casting director’s children. “They are always nice,” she said through a smile, “to me.”

*

I saw maybe 25 actors come through the door. Hip young men dressed in black; grandma-types in wheelchairs--careful, careful, no secrets. Most seemed pretty good, with resumes that listed years of theater work and special training. Some were noticeably nervous. “Can I start over again?” one croaked. His mouth had gone dry. Another flushed when my friend looked at his resume and read aloud how many years he’d been in Los Angeles, trying. “Has it been that long?” he said. “My God. I guess I am in denial about that.”

One young optimist wore a beeper; it never beeped. Others came in already defeated. “Let’s do this,” one older actor said grimly, slumping into the chair. And indeed, all but one or two left as they had arrived--one more actor without a role, one more steam cleaner operator yearning to break through.

“All my life I have had trouble breaking hearts,” my friend said afterward. “And now I am in a job where I have to do it every day.”

I asked her how many of them are out there. “Oh,” she said. “Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots. Tons and tons and tons.” And that they have cast themselves into a story about as compelling as anything on screen comforts them not at all.