Well, the good news is that I booked that gig I auditioned for from my last blog!!! Yay!!! It is for a sketch on the comedy show,
Important Things with Demetri Martin (on Comedy Central). I play a pregnant woman who goes into labor on an airplane. I'm quite certain that my charming boy was the reason for me getting this job. He definitely had the room entertained.
I shot the scene this past week and had a ton of fun! It was really amazing to be back on a set again after such a long hiatus. The fun part was putting on a "pregnant belly". It looked so real, everyone thought I was really pregnant. It didn't weigh nearly what a real nine month pregnant belly weighs, but it was just as hot! The only big bummer was that I was gone from the boy for 10.5 hours. I missed him terribly. And of course, having been away from him for that long, I had no choice. I HAD TO PUMP!!!!! Argh. And this could not have been in a worse situation.
We only got a half hour lunch break and pumping took 25 minutes. And my location choices were trailer #1 (woman's dressing trailer), trailer #2 (make-up trailer), trailer #3 (wardrobe trailer), or a small, stinky bathroom. Trailer #1: way too small. Trailer #2: the make-up artist was a man. Stinky bathroom: no way. So I chose lucky Trailer #3. At least they had an outlet that I could use to plug in the pump but I had to stand up and be about two feet away from the door. Gee, I didn't think to bring my extension cord...
Overall, it was pretty painless. The two very sweet wardrobe ladies came in to eat their lunch while I was all hooked up. The younger one seemed a bit embarrassed and felt like she couldn't really look at me. Or maybe she thought I was embarrassed and wanted to give me some privacy. I declined letting her know that 1.) after having a baby, very little embarrasses me and 2.) I gave up all semblance of privacy since hhhmmmm, when would that have happened? Oh yeah, after having a baby. But that was very gracious of her. The other sweet lady was totally amazed that my boobs could be hooked up to a machine and milk can drain into plastic bottles which are suctioned onto my nipples. Watching it happen is really like a visit to the dairy farm. It's easy to be amazed at the capabilities of the female human body when witnessing such an event. I'm more in awe of the inventor who came up with the idea and wonder how painful it was for all of the lactating moms who were willing to be test subjects.
Anyhow, 25 minutes later, the deed was done. The bottles went into my handy milk cooler and off I raced to the lunch line where of course, everyone was just finishing their meals and heading back to the set. I ate fast. Other than that, a really great day.
So, that was one audition that panned out to be work. I had another audition that same week. This one was actually a callback at the Mark Taper theater so I was pretty excited about it. I had my initial audition on a day when my husband could watch the boy so there were no issues there. But I had no choice but to bring the boy on this day. I scrambled around for some plans on how to handle the situation and I came up with one that seemed to be flawless. For theater auditions, it's nearly impossible to bring a baby into the room. Theater auditions lasts longer than tv/commercial auditions so if I brought him into the room, there would be a strong possibility that the boy would start to make some noise (and probably a cute one). Then all of a sudden, what I thought would be my audition would actually turn into the boy becoming the star of the room. That would not be the time or place to be upstaged by my own child. Wasn't there some famous actor that said, "I will not work with children or dogs"? Smart move.
So my "flawless" plan was to have my friend watch the boy while I went into the audition. Brilliant! Until we decided to sit in traffic for over an hour just to get to downtown LA. Leaving with plenty of time, I picked up my friend who coincidentally lives less than 10 miles away from the theater. At this point, the boy was just about to experience his meltdown but he was so good. He held it back as long as he could. With 60 minutes in stop and go traffic, he still had somewhat of a smirk on his face. The remaining 10 miles is where he lost it. Of course, living in LA, those 10 miles took about 20 minutes to drive. Meltdown slowly escalates.
I pull into the parking lot that I went to last time because I thought it would be safe to stick to things that I am familiar with given the circumstances. It's 4:35 pm and the sign on the parking lot attendant's window says that he leaves at 4:30 pm. Surely there's some way to pay for the parking spot during "after hours", right??? The parking lot is open all night with no gate to let people know that it closes. Not one sign that lets you know what to do in case he's gone for the day. But of course, the biggest sign of all says "ABSOLUTELY NO FREE PARKING AT ANY TIME!"
The flawless plan was that my friend could walk around the area and entertain the boy for 30 minutes or so. He would without a doubt be distracted enough by all the cool things to see. There was even a beautiful fountain that he would have loved. But without paying for our parking spot we didn't want to chance leaving our car there. Oh yeah, after the fierce warning in bright red letters about no free parking, they listed the towing company that you should call in the event that they find out that you parked for free. No messing around with these folks.
At this point I now have 10 minutes to get to my audition. Definitely not in a good place. I wanted to quickly feed the boy before I left so he wouldn't be too hungry but because of his meltdown he was not interested in food one bit. So off I went to my audition leaving my poor friend in the parking lot with my poor boy, crying madly. He was really quite pissed that after making him sit in the car for so long I hand him over to someone else to hold him. Mommy-guilt. On top of it all, there was not an ounce of shade for them to hide under and it was about 100 degrees. And the scenery was worse than uninteresting. It was downright ugly. Just rows and rows of cars. Certainly not the beautiful fountain that I promised him.
I arrived at my audition sweaty and stressed. Definitely not in the mental or physical place I wanted to be. Especially after having prepared so hard for the callback, to be in such a state of chaos was very disappointing. But I had no choice. I did my thing and felt okay about it. Not great. Just okay. The only glimmer of hope I got was that I managed to make the playwright and director snicker a few times and then the playwright actually applauded when I was done. I figured this meant I did a good job or he was just really glad that I was the last person for the day and he was excited to go home.
Either way, I have no idea what they really thought of me but I haven't gotten "that" call yet. It's been well over a week so I've come to accept that they won't be giving me "that" call. I was beating myself up for quite a while though afterwards because I felt like I should have given a better performance. That's the tough thing about being an actor. The bruises and mental torture we endure which take us from one job to the next.
As my husband says, why can't I just focus on the good things that happened? Out of two auditions in one week, I booked one of them! But I wouldn't be a neurotic LA actor if I didn't obsess about the things that I could have done better. It's part of the job description. And like motherhood, it's a job that takes forever to see the pay off.
