The Audition
Sunday morning was an adventure for my daughter DeadRose and me. It started off with questionable weather, winter advisories and the whole bit. I even wondered for a while if we’d get the chance to go—but we did, just with a little extra caution.
The Hilton Hotel we were looking for was right across the street from The Quest Center— large, impressive, and exciting. People were rolling through the underground parking garage with family vans and lots of kids.
The auditions were held in the Grand Ballroom. Everything was organized like precision clockwork. We were handed a fistful of papers and brochures, ushered into rows of chairs, and given a presentation by a variety of people, including one character who professed to be the ‘assistant VP of 20th Century Fox in charge of casting’—it was a pretty long title and he went on for a good while telling us all about it, with lots of famous movie titles thrown in just for good measure, to make sure we understood just how important he was, I guess.
After all the speakers, and all the ‘Your ‘hello’ wasn’t enthusiastic enough, give it to me again...’ crappola, we were lined up and papers handed over, ushered from one area to another.
DeadRose was lucky enough to get her interview with the head honcho lady from "The" (pronounced tay—long a, we were told several times). It’s suppose to be some sort of talent agency that will be holding a workshop in Phoenix, grooming the privileged few accepted for future meetings during their week with talent agents and scouts...at a hefty priced registration fee, I might add. This interview was totally separate from the company running the auditions for commercials we were told, and one would have nothing to do with the other. Which I thought was a good thing, because I knew we wouldn’t be spending $3000.00 for a weeks spree to Arizona.
Finally, after my DeadRose did a superb acting job during this interview shoveling the you-know-what to this heady lady, we finally wound up in line for the commercial audition before the cameras—and the crowded ballroom of about 900 people. I am really amazed that my daughter, who usually avoids cameras—that’s why there are so few pics of her here!—stepped up to the plate without blinking an eye. She read for a Pepsi commercial and about bowled me over, not that she’s another Meryl Streep, but at the fact that this shy kid popped out of her shell and was incredibly animated, with her image plastered on a towering screen above the ballroom.
We were done in minutes and off and out. We finished up with lunch at The Spaghetti Works in Old Market, and a stop at our favorite shop on the way home.
Whether anything ever comes of this or not, this was an incredible experience for my daughter and an extreme self-confidence booster. She told me that she didn’t think she’d ever be nervous over ordinary job interviews again after she realized what she was capable of doing.