Diane Hammond - Seeing Stars: A Novel

T he thing about Hollywood is it makes you doubt yourselfyour identity, your judgment, your motivation, your parentingbecause you are trafficking in children. Harsh but true: if you want to cast a Geisha-child in kimono, wig, whiteface, and tabi, fifty mothers will rush forward and offer you their daughters; if your taste is for a redheaded tomboy who looks like she could build the atom bomb with a pen, two rubber bands, and some baling wire, you can find her on any street corner. Baby dimples, Eurasian glamour, Chinese dolls with moving parts, black girls and Barbie dolls and boys as beautiful as angelsthey can all be delivered right to your door, where you can make them up and feed them lines and they will do whatever you ask them to do, because their mommies and daddies and agents and managers and producers and directors have told them its perfectly all right because they are going to be famous one day. Try your luck! Pull the lever, swing the hammer, throw the dart, shoot the gun, play any game you like, because you never know whos going to be a winner. And youll not only allow your children to play, youll hold the door open for them on their way through. Youll feed them and water them and dress them and coach them, and the fact is, youd slap their latest headshots onto the backs of the benches where derelicts sleep, if you actually thought it might help.

VEE VELMAN

R UTH R ABINOWITZ HAD A WAKING NIGHTMARE THAT SHE had hit a transvestite crossing Highland at Hollywood Boulevard. In her mind the transvestite would be lying in the crosswalk surrounded by Shreks and Dorothys and Princess Fionas; Batman would call 911 while Japanese tourists took pictures of the fallen one with their cell phones. The transvestite would be fine, of courseit was a waking nightmareand when s/he was set upright on his/her extremely tall platform shoes, s/he would look down on Ruth from six feet up and say kindly, Go ahead, honeyyou cry if you want to. Ruth would break down right there, and the transvestite would take her gently in his/her armsand his/her skin would be wonderfully silky and toned from hours at the gymand smooth her hair from her face while she wept.

Thats how much pressure she was under.

Driving into Hollywood was always harrowing, and though she and her thirteen-year-old daughter, Bethany, had been in Los Angeles for only three weeks, she had already learned that the smoothness of the trip to a casting studio was inversely proportionate to the importance of the audition. Right now it was three oclock, Bethanys callback time had been two forty-five, and they were stuck in choking traffic on Highland near Santa Monica.

Admittedly, some of their tardinessall right, most of itwas Ruths fault. She had a tendency, even under routine circumstances, to dither. Shed changed clothes twice before theyd left, even though no one would care or even notice what she was wearing. Shed checked and rechecked an e-mail in which Mimi Roberts, Bethanys manager, had forwarded the callbacks time and location. Shed printed out, misplaced, reprinted, and then found the original copy of the MapQuest directions shed pulled upeven though theyd driven to the same casting studio just yesterday. Now she heard the same maddening refrain looping endlessly inside her head: You should have left sooner, you should have left sooner, you should have left sooner. Her blood pressure was so high she could feel her pulse in her feet. I just cant believe theres this much traffic, she said.

Mom, Bethany said with newfound world-weariness. This is LA .

Well, you can certainly see why its the birthplace of road rage. They moved up a couple of car lengths and then stopped, still at least eight cars short of the intersection. Beside them a young man in a BMW cursed energetically into his Bluetooth. Ruth couldnt tell what he was saying, but she thought he looked very attractive in his nice suit and tie and tiny gold hoop earrings. She couldnt imagine her husband, Hugh, in earrings. He was only forty-six, but he could have belonged to their parents generation. He was, conceivably, the last man in America to own Hush Puppies. What? hed said when shed pointed this out once. Theyre very well-made and theyre comfortable.

You should try clogs, shed offered. Dansko ones, like your hygienists wear.

But hed just made a dismissive sound and applied himself to tying his shoelaces so that the loops of the bows were the same size and the leftover lace lengths matched. Sometimes it took him three or four times to get it just right. Ruth would have just pulled the hem of her pants down lower so no one would see. Not that she wore oxfords. Shed been wearing the same style of Bass Weejuns loafers since 1973.

Hold up the MapQuest directions again, she said. Bethany held the sheet of paper far enough away for Ruth to read without her glasses. She scanned the page and sighed deeply. At least were within five blocks. Do you have your script? Maybe you should run your lines.

Sides. Theyre called sides. If you call it a script, people will think were right off the boat.

We are right off the boat.

Bethany crossed her arms tightly over her chest.

No?

The girl gave her a look.

Dont sulk. I know we should have

Mom.

What? Oh! Ruth finally got it. Right. Youre in character.

Duh.

Ruth sighed. She wished Bethy wasnt in character, because right now her daughter was the rapidly fraying line that connected Ruth to everything she loved and gained strength from. Still, everyone talked about how important it was for even the youngest actor to walk into every audition in character, even if she had just one line. Casting, as Mimi had told her and Bethy in their first week in LA and repeatedly ever since, began in the waiting room. Actors were sometimes cast on the spot, before theyd even read a line, they were that right. Do you have the glasses?

Bethany held up eyeglass frames without lenses. She was auditioning for a costar rolea part with fewer than five spoken linesto play a nerdy sidekick on the Disney Channel sitcom Thats So Raven . Ruth felt a little shiver of possibility. The casting director at yesterdays audition had called Bethy adorable, just adorable, and specifically instructed her to bring a pair of glasses to the callback. According to Mimi, they werent even supposed to tell you they were giving you a callback; they were supposed to call your agent, who called your manager, who called you. The point was that protocol had been violated, the casting director had been that enthusiastic. Theyd gone to Target and found a pair of weird sunglasses and popped out the lenses. Theyd also done her hair in a side ponytail and bought her a pair of strange knit pants.

This was her first callback. Mimi had told them that you had to get callbacks regularly because if you didnt, your agent (in Bethys case, Holly Jensen at Big Talent) would lose interest in you, in which case you might as well pack up and go home. Mimi had amplified on this by telling a chilling story about one of her clients who hadnt been out on a single audition in six months , whereas when he was still in his agents good graces hed gone out two or three times a week. Shed then stated bluntly that the family was to blame. Not only had the boy not been enrolled in the acting classes Mimi had recommended, but his mother had insisted on using a terrible headshot that had been taken by a relative , for Gods sake, and if you werent willing to pay for professional materials, well then Mimi couldnt be responsible for the consequences. She had told the boys parents to take him to Honey Schweitzer, a photographer who was red-hot right now. Four of the clients whod had her take their headshots were series regulars now, three on sitcoms and one on a prime-time, hour-long drama. Honey charged five hundred dollars for a one-hour photo shoot and still clung to film instead of a digital format, but the pointat least as far as Ruth could follow itwas that people still used her, she was that good. If you did things on the cheapand how many times now had Mimi already emphasized thisyou might just as well take that money and shove it up a rats ass. Some of her clients mothersthe good mothers, Mimi implied; the ones who knew how to take directionhad commissioned as many as four different sets of headshots before theyd gotten the one in which the eyes reached out and spoke to you. If your headshot didnt do that, you could just forget about everything else.