warning: this post describes graphic, disgusting, depraved sexual mime.
For a couple of years, I was on a roll with the roles.
Let’s have a peek at my IMDB acting credits at the time.
You’ll note my complete absence from Spartacus: Gods of the Arena
It needn’t have been this way.
I’d discovered the knack of nailing auditions.
I’d been booking guest roles left, right and center.
I’d taken a course run by casting director Terri De’ath.
I won’t disguise her name, as I usually do when writing about people who are not me, because it is so magnificent, and maybe she’s still in business.
Go see her to get audition fit and start landing gigs.
Her guidance boiled down to one fundamental principle:
Shoot for the callback
So for those of you mercifully unfamiliar with the industry….
You almost never get the role off the first audition.
The first audition is to whittle a large number of candidates down to a digestible shortlist.
Once you’re on that shortlist, actual decision makers see your tape, and from there, a manageable number of candidates, likely only two or three, get called back to an in-person audition in front of the director and producers, and maybe with other actors who have already been cast.
Then it’s all about vibe - and so much more is in your hands.
You might be the best candidate based on some form of ontological meritocracy, and/or you can fluke/charm your way into contention1.
Anyway, you can’t win the lottery without buying a ticket, and in audition world, your ticket is to win the callback by doing something different.
Mexicans with cellphones.
The NZ screen production scene was thriving at the time - mainly thanks to US cable TV shows taking advantage of skilled crews, a ready supply of talent (like, er me), good facilities and locations and comparatively low costs.
Actually, I’ve buried the lede. They came to New Zealand first and foremost because of the comparatively low costs. Everything else was a bonus.
“Mexicans with cellphones” they called us, fondly.
An email from my agent.
The ‘sides’ or the audition script was so unusual that it’s impossible to describe, so I’ll just let you read it in full
You can really see it in your mind, can’t you?
What you can’t see is the physical environment of my audition. Imagine, if you will, the cold garage of a suburban house in Auckland that’s been minimally dressed with a couple of lights, a neutral back screen and some sound proofing around the walls. Not a studio, per se. A garage set up to store a car when it’s not in use as an audition suite.
One woman, the casting director, operates a camera mounted on a tripod, and another woman acts as a ‘reader’. The reader reads the ‘off lines’ - lines spoken by other characters in the scene… tho you’ll see in the sides above that there are none.
The reader in this case is playing the character Diona, whose responses are
‘winces as he roughly penetrates her’
‘biting back the tears’ and
‘cries out, caught between Gnaeus and Cossutius.
This is a challenging acting job for someone committed to the role.
Bless my reader*, but she’s been doing this all afternoon.
During our off-camera run through she keeps her eyes fixed on the page like she’s reading a menu. Her vocalisations sound like a coeliac trying to navigate said menu to find something gluten-free.
But I’m not going to let this phase me, I’m shooting for the callback.
I know I have to do something different here, something memorable.
Something that makes the casting director show the tape to the director and say
I think we’ve found our anal rapist.
I pick my moment.
I steel myself to win the callback by making an outstanding offer that shows how deeply I’ve invested in the character and scene.
I identify myself for the camera, take off my shirt upon request, spin around so they can film my torso and back, and put my shirt back on.
We’re ready to shoot.
I say what needs to be said, then get to Cossutius’s last words:
It must be felt… and never forgotten
You’ll see the stage directions then oblige Cossutius to ‘enter her anally’
Well, during my preparation for the audition, I mentally placed myself in the scene and thought, hmm, lubrication will be an issue here for Cossitus.
So upon delivering the line
and never forgotten…
I spit into the palm of my hand, and rub it onto the shaft of my mime penis.
My reader blanches. The casting director puts her hand over the lens of the camera.
Casting Director: What are you doing?
Me. I was rubbing saliva onto the shaft of my penis.
CD: Why?
Me: So that my character can enter her anally.
CD: Is that in the script?
Me: It’s implied.
CD: Is it in the script?
Me: No, but/
CD: If it’s not in the script, don’t do it.
Me: OK. Thanks for the note. Shall we do another take?
CD: No. We’re done. Goodbye.
I didn’t get the callback.
I didn’t get the role.
But another poor fellow did.
Here’s a ‘reaction’ video of the scene I found on YouTube.
*my daily prayer
