The Open Call

So . . . I went to he open call for the next Scorsese film that will be filming here in Boston. It was a fairly typical , widley advertised, open call. When I got there , there had to have been at least 2,000 people in line ahead of me. I knew that there was a SAG line somewhere, very far away from where I was standing. I kept scanning the line for people I knew to be in the union. Generally , I focused on people going up or down the stairs parrallel to the vast unwashed on the other side of the stairs. Sure enough, my buddy Steve, went purposefully by me. I called his name and he knew what the SAG people needed to do . We breezed up the staircase and promptly got into a shorter line off to the side , composed of card carrying union members. Of course, here, I started to recognize faces.
We had to fill out a form and then we waited. Steve went to the bath room and when he came back , I went to the bathroom. When I came back , the good looking guy behind me went to the bath room. We waited some more, I'd say we waited for about a half hour.
We were waiting to be led into a hall that was set up with about 500 hundred chairs. The union people got led in first and got to sit in the first couple of rows and then every body else could come in until all the seats were filled. We got a little opening speech from the owner of the casting company and then his assistant explained what they were looking for and then the owner spoke to us again and told us that he would also be casting the extras for a couple of other films that are coming in the future. Though he seemed like a nice man , I couldn't help but wonder if he had muscled out the local casting companies. My buddy Steve told me that apparently , the local companies didn't want the job. Okay then, I feel better . Nobody local is getting screwed by some slick willy.
After the little speeches, we lined up and got polaroided and handed in our headshots. The actual business of the event didn't take very long . The waiting was for the processing of the non-union people from the previous group. Honestly , I wouldn't have gone that early in the day , but my boss wanted me back for the afternoon. It would have been a whole lot quicker if I could have gone in the middle of the process. By then they would have gotten through the bulk of the people and gotten into a groove of processing.
I heard from the good looking guys standing behind me that Scorsese was in town actually doing call-backs at some hotel. So, while we were lined up to hopefully be chosen. Somewhere across town, some local kids were possibly get a break at the big time. What a great time to be living in Boston !!!!
After work on Saturday , I went to my friend Angelynn's house and we scanned my headshot into the computer and on to my website. It's a horrible picture, but it's all I've got right now. So, go look at it . Remember . . . .. it's not pretty .