McDonald’s or Mother’s Day?
Okay. I don’t even eat fast food (maybe In-N-Out twice per year). But whatever that fast food “look” is, I apparently have it…Taco Bell has called me in three times in the past two months. So when I went to a recent audition for a McDonald’s coffee commercial and saw that the callback date was the last day of my short trip home to NY, I thought to myself: Oh, they’ll call me back. If I’m going to leave the state, then the cosmos will ask me to change my schedule. And thus spake the Big Mac in the sky yesterday.
I grappled with this conflict: Do I leave my Mom, brother, his wife, and my beautiful new niece early on Mother’s Day to make it to my Monday morning callback in the chance that they might actually cast me? Or do I invest in the quality time I really want to spend with family and let the opportunity go, potentially irking my currently enthusiastic agent? Grrrr. Granted, I felt lucky to be getting a callback, but I also wondered if this would become one of those actor moments where you move mountains to please your agent and casting director and in the end, you get the shaft because the client wanted the guy with blue eyes after all. Just like that, after battling holiday traffic to JFK, potentially not even making it off the standby list, and if lucky enough to arrive at LAX at midnight — then crashing on my friend’s couch in Venice because the callback is in Santa Monica the next morning.
Well, such is this industry I’ve chosen. My family was in agreement that I should make the callback because it’s what I do. And I concurred, though I am still pained at the thought of leaving my six-week-old niece so soon after meeting her for the first time today. We make these personal sacrifices every day in order to make a living — and often we end up with nothing more than the experience of having auditioned. It’s like I want to walk into the callback and tell them: “If you cast someone else, I expect to at least get six more hours with Scarlett Marie, and dinner with my mom.”
Yeah, I know– funny. Where’s my rewind button, just in case?
All in the day of the life of an actor.
Well, so did you make the callback or not? I hope you did. It’s what you do and what you have to keep on doing. Your family loves you and understands!
Yano, for two guys growing up in the same neighborhood with the same values we ended up in completely different fields (The Arts for you, Technology for me). But the sacrifices we make and the choices that we are forced to consider are very similar. Obviously I travel a bit for work…understatement…so I can understand how torn you feel when you realize that if you leave that dinner early, you can get back in time for a great opportunity for your career.
I firmly believe that at some point we will be able to dictate those terms instead of just getting bullied into it. At the moment we are still developing, soon the decisions will be ours to make in the opposite direction, being secure in our respective areas of expertise that if we postpone that meeting for the family dinner, instead of missing an opportunity, we make a positive statement that our personal lives exist and do sometimes come first. And that’s OK!
This coming from the guy who has spent the last several weeks working crazy hours (got up at 3 AM today for meetings) for a client that may or may not actually appreciate the sacrifices made to help them succeed.