It's the Shoes

Casting office bathrooms are the worst—nervous stomachs tend to make a mess. You’d think the nerves would lessen with each audition, but that’s not the case for me. An experienced actor once told me to pop antidiarrheals before an audition—a trick I still use to this day. I’ve since added Siberian ginseng and CBD oil to my arsenal of pre-audition tinctures to help battle the nerves. When I was a Midwestern pre-teen dreaming of celluloid immortalisation, I didn’t think of such practicalities. All I cared about was becoming someone else. 

***

At my first audition, there was only one other actor in the waiting room of the casting office. I say waiting room—but it was a trailer in the dusty dessert north of LA. I sat silently rehearsing my one line.

‘It’s the shoes, not the feet.’

‘It’s the SHOES, not the feet.’

‘It’s the shoes, not the FEET.’

‘It’s the SHOES, not the FEET.’

‘It’s the shoes, not the feet.’

I was reading for the role of ‘smelly boyfriend’ in a shoe deodoriser ad. The ad was going to feature as a TV commercial in an indie comedy. From my one line—‘It’s the shoes, not the feet’—I surmised that ‘smelly boyfriend’ was emotionally abusing his girlfriend by blaming his malodorousness on his sneakers. I wanted to delve deep into that aspect of his character.

After fifty repetitions of my line, I reached semantic satiation. ‘It’s the shoes, not the feet’ became a meaningless singularity floating around my brain and I worried about presenting it as such when I got in the room. 

Around the same time, the armpits of my shirt reached their saturation point. It was time to take care of some more biological admin,—courtesy of my nervous stomach—and change into a spare black shirt in the toilet cubicle. Just then, the only other actor in the trailer piped up with something completely out of the blue. 

‘BHB,’ He said.

I was nervous enough without the mysterious non-sequiturs, so I asked him to explain what he meant.

‘Big heads book,’ he said. 

I remained baffled. Was he referring to a journal filled with cranially enlarged people that he kept?

‘All the best actors have big heads—Travolta, Hasselhoff, Gibson. They have no problems booking gigs,’ Said the actor, ‘You’re gonna do fine. Good head of hair too.’ 

He shamefully lifted his baseball cap and tilted his head forwards to reveal a puny bald bonce, which would have looked at home on the chopping block of a deli. When I thought about it, he was right—big heads have more real estate, more acreage for expression and emotion. His comment gave me a welcome glimmer of hope. 

‘I notice that you're going to the bathroom a lot. Is it number ones or number twos?’ He asked.

‘Err—number twos, mostly,’ I said.

He threw me a pack of tablets and insisted that I take two before every audition from then on.

‘Bradley,’ He said.

‘Terrence,’ I replied, popping a couple of the tablets and washing them down with hibiscus tea. ‘Thanks.’

***

When the assistant finally beckoned me into the audition room, my stomach swirled like a vortex. Everything remained in its right place though—the antidiarrheals were already working. 

The casting director held up my headshot and compared it to my face, checking for any potential defects that may have developed over the years. Thankfully, not much had changed since I arrived in LA and got my headshots done a year ago. Waiting tables and being constantly rejected can really wear you down—but it seemed like my body was holding on to its youth for longer than it would have had I been a mechanic or a cook.

Before we began, I said that I was ‘off-book’ already and had learnt all one of my line(s). Actors must have been making that joke all day, because it was met by stony faces. They were going to take some impressing. I had to turn it around, go full force and add some gravitas to the role. 

But that approach soon backfired—my first run through was ‘too menacing’. The casting director said that the commercial was meant to be playful and humorous. I regrouped and took a broad comedic swing, this time removing my shoes and gesturing to them incredulously, ‘It’s the SHOES, not the FEET!’ 

It was still too intense for them. I hadn’t bargained on scaling back my theatrical style after having it drilled into me at Juilliard for four years. I momentarily wished that I’d moved to New York or Chicago like most of my peers—but I wasn’t able to resist the call of Tinseltown.

I had pegged the ‘smelly boyfriend’ as massively in denial, gaslighting his girlfriend into believing that shoes were capable of generating their own pong. Evidently, the casting director had something different in mind, but wasn’t telling me what it was. So I threw them a few wildcards. I find that once you stop caring and the air of desperation evaporates, you loosen up and deliver the goods. With a sexy indifference, I decided to play it ‘adorable’. 

‘It’s deh shews, nat deh feet!’

That came out more Barney Rubble than I’d hoped, but judging by the snickers and giggles, it had registered. I amped up the adorable just a little and fine-tuned the cuteness. That did the trick. They lapped it up. Pointing their pens at me and nodding in agreement they said, ‘We like what you're doing, Terrence—err—Hayes. Can you make it to the next round of auditions?’

An instant callback—that was unprecedented. I assured them that I could and most definitely would make it to the next round. I floated out of the audition room lighter in spirit, but heavier with sweat. This was a big win for me because all I had amassed in LA up until then was a cramped apartment and Irritable Bowel Syndrome. 

***

After I’d changed into a fresh shirt, Bradley stopped me on my way out and asked how it went. With a wide smile and cemented bowels, I told him that I’d got a callback for the next round of auditions.

‘See,’ he said. ‘What’d I tell ya? Big heads book!’