Boss Lady (14 page)

As we drove toward Freedom Theater, right past my old neighborhood on Girard Avenue in North Philadelphia, I was in a dream world. Could I really handle the power that Tracy was trying to prepare me for? I didn't know. But it was too late to back down. The next level of the game had already begun.

Tracy chuckled to herself in the silence of the limo as we got closer to Freedom Theater. She said, “Don't get scared now, Vanessa. Be who you were meant to be.” She said, “Your whole generation is a step up from mine. We used to think about making it on a minor level with a family, a husband, and kids. But you guys . . .”

She shook her head and said, “You guys are thinking about running girl companies. Every last one of you.”

I said, “I don't know about all of that.” Tracy was starting to exaggerate.

She said, “We'll see. And if you start with something as big as
Flyy Girl,
then where do you go from there?”

When I thought about her question, it scared me even more. What was I about to get myself into?
Flyy Girl
was big! I still don't think my cousin understood how big it was, or it could be. I mean, I could be satisfied with running Flyy Girl for life, with Tracy's blessings of course. I could see Flyy Girl scholarships, fashion shows, reading
centers, even a doggone sorority organization or something. I would never have to leave the Flyy Girl brand. And we could have everything we needed in house.

I finally spoke up with a smile on my face. I said, “Like you told me, law number one is to remember never to outshine the master.”

I was no damn fool. I was still a young nobody next to a giant, who just happened to be my cousin. Without her power, her hard work, and her hustle, I wouldn't be worth a phone call. So I had to play my cards like I had some sense.

Tracy smiled at me real easy from her side of the limo and said, “Good answer.” And that was all she needed to say.

*  *  *

We arrived at Freedom Theater on Broad Street, and I was amazed by the crowd.

I opened my mouth and said “Oh my God!” It looked like a concert line out in front of the building. People flowed all the way down the block and wrapped around the corner. We couldn't even see the end of the line. More people were hopping out of cars, off of buses, and crossing Broad Street to join the line. And it was only just after nine o'clock in the morning, which meant that a lot of the people at the front of the line were out there at eight o'clock or earlier.

Tracy looked over at me and smiled again.

“Now you see what I'm talking about?” she asked me. “This is what you got me into. And we don't even have a green-light for this film yet.”

I thought fast and said, “Well then, we need to take a picture of this line and show it to your producers.”

Tracy looked at me and said, “Another good idea. Girl, you are just bubbling with them.” She said, “I'm gonna get a cameraman out here immediately.”

I couldn't believe it. She had me afraid to speak anything else. I was only getting myself deeper in trouble with every idea that I came up with.

When the driver opened the limo door for us to climb out, I became nervous as hell. All eyes were on us. I wasn't used to that. I was
used to all eyes being on Tracy in Hollywood. They didn't pay much attention to me once they realized I was only the little cousin. But in my home city of Philadelphia, on a casting call that I had instigated for
Flyy Girl,
I felt a thousand eyes on me, and I was ready to puke. I was preparing to step out of a limo with my cousin, while wearing original Flyy Girl Ltd. clothing that I had helped to come up with, and it was a totally different feeling for me.

Oh my God!
a little voice inside my head continued to scream.
Just walk straight in behind her,
I told myself.
Just walk in behind her.

But as soon as my feet hit the pavement among murmurs of “There she goes” from the people in the line who recognized my cousin, someone yelled out, “Vanessa! Hey, Vanessa! I knew I'd see you down here.”

I looked back nervously and spotted my girl Danielle Watkins from my Engineering & Science High School days.

She said, “Oh, now that's flyy,” in reference to my lime green Flyy Girl Ltd. shirt, hat, and matching pants.

“We'll have them for sale inside,” I told her.

“Let's go, Vanessa,” Tracy told me. “We got work to do.”

Before I could leave, Danielle whispered, “Get me in there, girl. Get me in.”

As they say, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I squirmed in response to my old girl and said, “I can't. But I'll see you inside.”

I felt ready to hurl with each step I took toward the entrance. It got worse when we stepped inside.

Robin grabbed Tracy by the hand and pulled her behind the stage. She said, “Girl, this is the craziest casting call I have ever been involved with in my life, and we haven't even started yet.

“We have about two hundred agency talents here already, and a thousand people who are just walking in off the street. So I let my agency people in to sit them down in the front audience seats. Then I started letting some of the first walk-ups in and directed them to the back rows. But I can already see that this here is gonna be a mess.”

Robin was excited with big eyes and everything.

Tracy responded as if she had ice water in her veins. “Well, we'll
just move them in and move them out. I know what I need to look for. Do they have their script sheets?”

“Yeah, but we ran out of them real fast,” Robin answered.

“So we'll just have our assistants collect them and redistribute them.”

“Exactly,” Robin agreed.

Tracy then addressed the Freedom Theater staff.

“We don't know if it was a good idea to go on the radio and advertise this,” an older black woman told Tracy. She said, “We didn't expect a crowd as large as this. People have literally been here waiting since seven o'clock this morning.”

Tracy had run advertisements on Power 99 Radio for a week before we had arrived.

“We'll try to make things move as swiftly as possible,” she said. “In the meantime, you have thousands of new supporters and talent to sell on Freedom Theater.”

That was part of the deal with us using the Freedom Theater. They would get to collect information from potential supporters and solicit new talent from the crowd.

Tracy had no time to waste, so she moved on toward the front of the stage where the auditions would take place. I hurried behind her, and caught Jasmine rushing past with paperwork in her hands.

She spotted me with wide eyes of her own. And despite it being nine o'clock in the morning, or six o'clock L.A. time, Jasmine was wide awake.

“Do you see all of these people in here this early? Is this an East Coast thing or what?” she asked me.

I hadn't seen the people in the audience yet. I was still moving toward it.

“Wait till you see it,” Jasmine told me.

I took another deep breath and walked out to the front of the stage, behind my cousin's lead. I don't know how many people Freedom Theater could hold, but there was no room left in that place. The entire audience was packed to capacity.

I spotted Sasha, Maddy, Alexandria, and the other assistants and camera crew from New York, all working their positions and wearing the Flyy Girl gear.

My girls spotted me and shook their heads in my direction. None of us could have imagined that kind of enthusiasm for the
Flyy Girl
movie. Then again, we could, but actually seeing it made it more unbelievable than the dreams we had all shared.

There were four tables set up in the middle of the stage, with a camera pointed toward the audience at dead center. All of the casting crew were sitting at the tables with Tracy to judge the talent, while everyone in the audience watched. So if you were afraid to perform in front of a crowd, then you were definitely in the wrong place.

As I moved closer toward a chair that actually had my name on it, I heard Tracy giving instructions to one of the cameramen.

She said, “I want you to take the small, handheld camera outside with someone to interview the crowd about what
Flyy Girl
means to them. But don't put them on camera until you know they've read the book and they have something worthwhile to say.”

The cameraman, a young guy in his mid-twenties with uncombed hair, nodded to her.

“Okay, we can do that.”

“Good. Because that crowd outside is phenomenal, and we want to make sure we document their responses to all of this. Plus, it makes their wait a lot less painful. So make sure you guys move all the way to the back. Don't spend too much time at the front, and make sure you turn the camera on while you're walking past the line. If they want to scream out at the camera while you're moving, let them. But don't stop unless you find someone who can really work it for us. You know what I mean? We want people who are camera ready, and not the nonsense.”

The young cameraman took it all in stride and said “I got you” before he gathered his camera and a couple of staff members. It must have been about forty of us in there, all doing our part.

Tracy then grabbed a microphone and addressed the buzzing crowd in the audience.

“Hello everyone. In case you didn't know, my name is Tracy Ellison Grant—better known as the original
Flyy Girl.”

As soon as she said that, the crowd at the back of the auditorium got extremely loud with their cheering.

“Yeaaah! Yeaaah!”

The agency people in the front rows, on the other hand, were all cool, calm, and collected, concentrating on the task at hand—to impress my cousin with their acting skills.

Tracy went on and said, “We're gonna try and make this process as simple as possible. And for those of you who are used to a more private or secluded room to audition in, I apologize in advance, but this will be a movie with plenty of extras, so you all need to get used to the crowd.”

“I know that's right!” someone yelled above the cheering from the back rows.

Tracy said, “But once we begin this process, we're going to need complete silence from each and every one of you, as if you just paid a thousand dollars on Broadway.”

They all laughed with her. My big cousin was working it like I only wish I had the courage to do. It was easy to talk behind closed doors about all of my grand ideas, but Tracy was the one who could really work it out in the open.

She said, “And if you like the Flyy Girl Ltd. clothing line all our assistants are wearing today, well, I just want you to know, you can all buy it on your way out.”

They all laughed again, but Tracy was dead serious about her hustle.

“So, without further ado, let's get it started.”

*  *  *

We had acting agency people who had traveled from New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Virginia, Atlanta, and as far south as Florida. And of course, Philadelphians were definitely in the house. Many of the actors and actresses were pretty people, and some of them were not. But one thing was for sure, just because you were signed to an acting agency didn't mean that you were a lock, because some of those agency people were quick to overact, or totally misread the scene and their lines. I was actually wondering how many of those people had read the book, and if so, how many of them understood what they were even reading. Some of them were that bad.

As soon as we finished with one load of people, in came the next
hundred. There were more than a few performers that I actually liked for a callback though. Tracy spotted some of the same performers that I had taken notes on. So did some of the other casting crew. But we all had to keep the show rolling nonstop, so we made our notes and kept the lines moving onstage, offstage, in the door, and out the door.

“What does that line look like outside now?” Tracy asked Maddy after noon.

Maddy shook her head. She said, “It looks like it didn't even move. You just see the same people moving closer to the front, and people you haven't seen before in the back.”

Robin said, “You know it's no way we're gonna see the rest of this line today. So we may as well cut it in half and give the rest of the people numbers for tomorrow. It's a good thing we gave ourselves a week to do this.”

Tracy nodded. She said, “I knew what I was getting into. People have been waiting for years for a
Flyy Girl
movie.”

Sasha walked over to report on the clothing sales with a money box in hand.

She smiled and said, “We're sold out of our line for today. They had me taking orders for tomorrow.”

Tracy looked at me and grinned.

“We'll have Charmaine FedEx us a few more boxes for the end of the week. If we sell out of everything, not only will we break even, we'll make a slight profit.”

“And everybody will spread the word on the new line,” Sasha commented.

Tracy said, “All right, well, let's keep this machine moving.” She winked at me and hollered, “Next,” to the crowd of patiently waiting hopefuls.

We were all ready for a lunch break and couldn't take one. So we had to order in and keep right ahead, eating while we worked.

*  *  *

By seven o'clock that night we had cut the line in half for the next day, just as Robin had said, but we still had another hundred to two hundred people to see.

“You think we've seen enough by now?” Tracy asked me specifically. I had taken notes on at least five people I liked to fill every role of the movie, including girls for Tracy's lead, who had the same hazel eyes and everything. We had watched girls there who were prettier than all of us. Nevertheless, the process was the process, and the love-at-first-sight phenomenon, the casting crew had explained, was very risky when dealing with unknowns. That was the general reason why you called people back, to make sure you were getting what you thought you were getting.