Seeing Stars (10 page)

“You’re on deck, you two,” said somebody’s mom, checking off an item on her clipboard. Bethy closed her eyes for a minute, smoothed her ponytail, straightened out the kicky little skirt she and Ruth had found on the clearance rack at Forever 21, and ran her tongue over her teeth in case there was some last-minute lip gloss on them. She and Allison were doing a scene from an old episode of
That’s So Raven
. She loved doing scenes with Allison, because, like Quinn, Allison would do absolutely anything, where Bethy still held back sometimes. “
Commit!
” Dee always hollered at her in class. “You’ve made your choice, so what are you waiting for?” Bethy took a deep breath and so did Allison, and then they burst into the showcase like gunslingers.

B
EFORE
J
ASPER HAD EVEN PULLED INTO THE STUDIO PARKING
lot, Quinn could see kids swarming around outside. Little kids, mostly, seven years old, nine years old, mostly girls. Mimi always had a ton of girls. Thank God she didn’t pair him up anymore, except with Cassie Foley, who was only eleven but was a great, even a superb, actor. She had credits as long as your arm already, mostly TV episodics. If
Grey’s Anatomy
was looking for a kid to play a terminally ill or molested character, Cassie was on the short list. She’d had guest star roles on almost every major dramatic episodic there was. She had a perfectly heart-shaped face and a widow’s peak and big blue eyes and she smiled all the time and she meant it. She was a sweet kid, and she liked Quinn, too. Not that many kids did. Hardly any kids did. People thought you didn’t know that kind of thing, but you did. He did.

Now he spotted her on the far edge of the pack, wearing an iPod and moving her lips. Getting in character and going over her scene. She was a professional, and he liked her as a scene partner because she was always prepared. They’d been on
ER
together a year or so ago when she’d been running a fever of 102. Her mom had stood by with a puke bucket and when they hadn’t needed her on set she’d lain on a couch in her dressing room and tried to keep tea and saltines down, and she’d
still
delivered a performance that was great. After she was released for the day they’d taken her to Cedars-Sinai, administered IV fluids, and the next morning when he got to the
ER
soundstage she was there and she was smiling. Now she saw him across the parking lot and trotted over, her earbuds dangling around her neck. “I was just running our scene,” she said.

“I know—I could see you. You want to run it together?”

“Not unless you do.”

“Nah.” It was a scene they’d done a hundred times. He was the big brother; she was the kid sister. He’d gotten her to run away with him because his dad was beating them. He’d stashed her in a park while he went off to try to find them something to eat, and before he left her he kept telling her in this really chipper way that they’d do great on their own, but you knew he wasn’t really sure he could do it. A lot of the scenes they all did were about fucked-up kids and families. He guessed writers didn’t want to write about happy people. What would be the point? And there probably weren’t that many happy people to begin with. Cassie was the only one he knew who seemed like she was really happy. Well, her and his kid brother, Rory.

It was hot out in the parking lot, and the younger kids were shrieking and running around and suddenly Quinn wasn’t in the mood for it. He hadn’t slept that well because the valve in his air mattress had broken and the mattress kept deflating; and since he was pretty bony, it hurt, so he kept having to reinflate it. He signaled to Cassie that he was going inside.

The little kids had finished and the studio greenroom was full of the latest crop of older kids and their stupid mothers. The mothers were standing around gossiping, taking up space and laughing a lot because they were nervous for their kids. Quinn had been doing Mimi’s showcases for years, and he knew they were nothing like what Mimi described to the parents to get them to pay for their kids to participate. First of all, she bribed the casting directors and talent agents to come and give feedback. Hardly anyone was ever discovered at showcases, though you might get an agent—one of the ones who would take just about anyone who breathed and then never pitched any of them, so you got only the auditions the whole world was in on. Showcases made Mimi a wad, though. She was always in a good mood the day after. When he’d lived at her house, she’d always hummed while she was counting the money. Money made her happier than anything else did. Quinn sure didn’t, even though he’d booked stuff more than just about anyone besides Cassie. She said she was still his manager, but when he turned eighteen he was going to fire her.

Allison Addison came up to him and said, “Hey, chicken-lickin’.” Then she swung her hair around and over her shoulder. He couldn’t stand that. She thought she was beautiful. So did everyone else. She thought it gave her power over people, and maybe it did, but it didn’t give her any power over him. They’d lived together at Mimi’s. He’d seen what she did to her arms late at night when the other kids were asleep.

Now, ignoring her, he walked across the greenroom to look at the order in which they’d run the scenes. There was one scene to go before his and Cassie’s. That was good—he could leave after that. He didn’t stick around for the feedback anymore. He didn’t care about the feedback. All he cared about was whether he booked something or not.

The kids from the scene before theirs were just finishing up. He could hear polite clapping. The same kids had done the same scene a thousand times, and every time, the scene sucked. They couldn’t act their way out of a paper bag, plus they were thirteen. He hoped Cassie wouldn’t get all giggly and stupid like that when she turned thirteen. Maybe he’d talk to her about it sometime.

Some mother he’d never met before told him to go on in—like he needed to be told. Cassie was at his elbow, her face bright, her iPod and earbuds tucked away someplace. She smiled at him; he smiled back:
Ready?

She nodded, tucking her small hand into his elbow. The door opened and the casting director, agents, and parents looked back expectantly. Mimi introduced them both and let the panel pull up their headshots, and then they were on. He could feel his character come over him like a fever. “
Come on,
” his character called back to Cassie’s, because she had let go of his arm and stopped walking, not sure she wanted to follow him.

“
It’s going to be fun,
” he said. “
It’s going to be just fine. You’ll see!
”

Chapter Six

A
FTER THE SHOWCASE ENDED AND
M
IMI HAD ESCORTED
the agents and casting director off the premises—mainly so parents wouldn’t mob them, but also so Mimi could discreetly hand them envelopes with two crisp one-hundred-dollar bills inside—kids surrounded her, clamoring for their feedback forms while their parents stood back and waited anxiously for the stone tablets to be handed down from the mount. Let them wait. For forty-five minutes Mimi stayed locked in her office with Tina Marie, reading all the feedback forms filled out by the two agents and the casting director, Evelyn Flynn. Normally reading and collating took half that time, but Evelyn Flynn was a goddess in the casting world and Mimi had been trying to get her to one of her showcases for
years
. The TV episodics and pilots she cast were magic; she worked only with the best directors and producers in the industry. She’d come here today to shop, Mimi knew: some project she was casting must call for something unusual, or something she’d been casting for months hadn’t burped up the right kid.

From what Mimi read, there was consensus that Laurel Buehl had been excessively overwrought in her scene from
Clear Glass Marbles
, but still, her performance had been authentic, definitely authentic. She might do well, Evelyn Flynn had noted, in daytime drama. Which, of course, she didn’t cast. One of the agents had said,
Good commercial look.
They often said that when they meant,
Don’t hold your breath.
Mimi went on.

Quinn, everyone agreed, had worked very sweetly with Cassie Foley, whom he had not upstaged although the opportunity had certainly presented itself in the course of the scene. Only Evelyn Flynn was seeing him for the first time.
Certainly a young man to watch,
one of the talent agents had written on Quinn’s feedback form.
Is he happy with his representation? If not, give me a call.

Of Allison the other agent wrote,
Unless she turns horsey by seventeen, this girl is worth gold. I’m serious.
As though Mimi needed to be told.
Are her parents tall?
Evelyn Flynn had said only,
Good acting. Work on that.
And no one had had much to say about Bethany Rabinowitz, besides checking boxes that indicated she’d most likely be cast as a nerd, a sidekick, a brain.
Good diction,
one of the agents had noted.
Needs to bring more depth to the role. Experience will help.

Once Mimi had distributed the papers, parents and children drifted away to look at them in private. They shared only rave reviews with other studio people, and hardly anyone got rave reviews because Mimi directed the panel to be tough or the kids would never learn. She watched the kids and parents flip through the pages with varying degrees of disappointment and letdown. In Mimi’s experience there were rarely any surprises and even fewer discoveries, but it gave the kids something to work for and the parents handed over their $220 without a second thought.

Mimi had been running these showcases for years. In some of them, not a single actor stood out. Certainly one of the little-littles—the tiny children—might be picked up for representation by one of the agencies that had a big commercial department, but that would have happened with or without the showcase. All Mimi had to do was pick up the phone and make a call or two, send over a few headshots electronically—God bless the Internet—and the child was in. Placing the older kids was tougher. Bethany Rabinowitz, for instance, had been a hard sell to Big Talent. Mimi had had to court Holly Jensen with a box of hand-dipped chocolates and a bottle of decent wine. Laurel had taken considerable work, too. Her skin was what sold her, initially, but her agent, Ruby Johnson, who was with one of the medium-size agencies, had been pleasantly surprised when she found that the girl could actually act, though Mimi had been telling her so over and over.

Finally all the kids and parents had gone off to do whatever kids and parents did on Saturdays. Mimi sent the Orphans off with one of the studio moms to hang out at the Oakwood for the afternoon. Then, finally, she locked the studio door and kicked off her shoes—she’d been having trouble with swelling lately, indicating a possible circulatory or water-retention problem, neither of which she had time for—and turned with some satisfaction to her computer screen. Tina Marie nipped at an itch on her front leg, then curled up in her bed beneath the desk, sighing heavily. Through hard experience, Mimi kept the dog closed in her office during showcases rather than risk an accident on one of the panelist’s handbags, which had been known to happen when Tina Marie felt the studio’s noise and activity levels were excessive.

For Mimi, Saturday was a day to go through the past week’s breakdowns—the casting studios’ calls for auditions. During the week she went through them at warp speed—dozens, if not scores, came out every day—but Saturday was the day to make sure she’d gotten her clients matched up with every last audition at which they’d make a reasonably strong showing. She could introduce a new client to a casting director this way, even if she knew there was no chance of a callback, never mind a booking. It was dumbfounding how many kids most casting directors could keep in their heads, and accurately, too. More than a few times she’d had one call her to request a child she hadn’t seen in a year, and she had the kid right, the part right, and always brought the child to at least one callback.

She paged through the calls:
House
,
The Suite Life
,
Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide
,
Ghost Whisperer
,
Unfabulous
, feature film, student film, student film,
The Closer
,
Entourage
, voice-over for a horror film (
must scream
), cartoon voice-over for the millionth
Land Before Time
,
The Mentalist
,
Heroes
, a CW pilot. The episodic season was in full swing. Mimi had just settled down to read the breakdown for the pilot—pilots always held the possibility of becoming shows that were picked up for years—when her phone rang. She looked at her caller ID and grabbed it on the second ring.

Fifteen minutes later she was in her car, headed for an exclusive little bistro on Ventura Boulevard.

E
VELYN
F
LYNN WAS A GORGEOUSLY WRAPPED PACKAGE OF
a woman. Her highlights had highlights; her sweaters were cashmere. She was what happened when money and ego met power. Feared by both child actors and parents alike, she had the perfectly honed instincts of a slave trader and could assess a kid in under ten seconds flat. Give her a child with talent—a Dakota Fanning, an Abigail Breslin—and she could peddle that flesh straight to the top with a network of contacts from agents and producers to network executives. She
made
people, and once you made people you could file your nails without a hint of conscience during the auditions of kids too green to cast until they’d toughened up on someone else’s watch. She was not the bitch she was widely held to be; she just knew when to cut her losses. Though she prided herself on looking fifty-something, she was really sixty-something and had honed her craft in the trenches of early TV, when the technology consisted of baling wire and electrical tape and the single essential quality in any TV actor was his ability to withstand anything without losing it live and on camera.

She clicked her nails on a glass of iced tea. Her hands were her vanity, long and slim and younger-looking than the rest of her. The tea had been garnished with a wedge of lime and a sprig of fresh mint that Chef Paul grew in a window box just for her. She regarded Mimi Roberts across the table, trying to remember the woman’s story: single, possibly lesbian, a veteran of the industry; she’d been around for years and years, almost as long as Evelyn herself.

“Talk to me about Quinn Reilly,” Evelyn said.

The woman regarded her shrewdly for a minute or two. “He’s one of the most talented actors I’ve ever had,” she said. “Maybe
the
most talented. But he’s difficult.”

“Difficult how?”

“Unpredictable. Unless you keep him busy, he’s disruptive.”

“Can he be controlled?”

“Most of the time.”

“ADHD?”

Mimi nodded. “His family gave him to me a few years ago, and now they don’t want him back.”

Evelyn nodded. This happened sometimes.

“Why are you asking?” Mimi asked.

Evelyn stirred a packet of Splenda—she hadn’t tasted real sugar in decades—into a fresh glass of iced tea. When she finished she smiled and nodded to an actor at the next table who’d been somebody to watch in the late eighties but had subsequently failed to deliver. Now he speared the last shrimp in his lunch salad like it was his final meal. Mimi repeated, “Why?”

Evelyn nibbled a single spear of chilled asparagus. “I’m going to be casting a pilot.”

Mimi straightened in her chair.

“Disney’s floating a treatment—it’s still on the down low—about a wealthy LA family that has their own kid and three who are adopted—an Asian, a black, a Native American. Now they’re expecting triplets. It’s called
Bradford Place
.”

“So what’s the role?”

“The boy babysitter from the mansion next door.”

“Is he gay?” Mimi asked.

“Not so far. Is Quinn gay?”

“He may have issues.”

Evelyn just shrugged. “That shouldn’t be a problem, as long as he keeps them off the set,” Evelyn said. She’d seen this time after time after time with boys in their mid to late teens. Acting was a little too close to playing dress-up. They were teased mercilessly when they were young, and then they grew up and became Patrick Dempsey. Or T.R. Knight. A sweet revenge, whichever side of the street you were on.

“I’ll send you the breakdown,” Evelyn said. “The character’s a regular, not a recurring. The producers are going to spend a wad on big names for the mom and dad, so they’re looking for someone who’s not going to cost a fortune.”

“What’s the timing?”

“It’s a mid-season replacement, so soon. Officially, the breakdowns come out next Monday. Unofficially, I’m taking the kids to producers the day after tomorrow. I want him to read for me before then. If I like him and they like him, he’ll go to network on Friday.”

“No problem,” said Mimi. “Sides?”

“They’re already in your e-mail. I assume you can get them to him.”

Mimi nodded.

“Good,” Evelyn said, brushing her hands off. “Good, good, good.”

She held up her credit card and their waiter came over instantly. For a woman with her reputation, Hollywood was a well-oiled machine. In just under four minutes she had taken care of the check, drained her iced tea, bid Mimi a pleasant good-bye, tipped the valet parking attendant, slid behind the wheel of her Mercedes, and set sail.

Q
UINN LOVED BEING ON STUDIO LOTS
. Y
OU COULD SEE
anyone and anything. He always went to the commissary after he auditioned on one of the lots, bought something cheap like a Coke, and sat for an hour just to see who walked in. He’d seen Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, Katherine Heigl. The last time, at the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, he’d seen a woman in full evening wear—jewels, beaded dress, stole—with the hem of her gown chewed off and blood running down her legs from a shark attack or whatever. Probably a horror movie. She was walking with a guy wearing a tuxedo. No blood on him, though, so he must still be on the boat. Maybe he’d pushed her overboard. Maybe he was smuggling cocaine and she was a moll and squealed on him and now look. Bleeding makeup like crazy beneath the commissary table. He loved this shit.

Evelyn Flynn’s casting office was on the Paramount lot. Today he was early, but not early enough to do the commissary first—he’d save that for after—so he just wandered around among the huge soundstages, peeking in when someone opened a door and dodging bicycles—the old, lumbering, funky kind with no gears and pedal breaks. There were bicycles all over the place. You picked one up, used it, then left it for someone else. You could cover a lot of ground on a bicycle in a hurry, which was important because the studio lots covered hundreds of acres and had twenty-five, thirty soundstages, plus all the outbuildings for the writers and casting directors and prop houses and costume shops and about a million other things, and cars were kept off the lot unless you were Steven Spielberg or Brad Pitt or someone. Otherwise you parked across Melrose Avenue and walked under a huge, fancy iron entry arch that made it look like you’d arrived at the gates to heaven. Which, as far as Quinn was concerned, you had.

At Mimi’s explicit instruction, Quinn had dressed nicely and tried to look young and privileged, since the character he was auditioning for was sixteen and mega-rich. He wore his newest pair of jeans and a Ralph Lauren button-down shirt that he’d bought secondhand at
That’s a Wrap!
for another audition and which he wouldn’t be caught dead in, normally. He’d stuck the sides in his back pocket and looked them over again on his way to the casting office. He was off-book already; mostly he was reviewing them to keep his nerves in check. He still got nervous before almost any audition, which was why he had his little rituals: read the sides over one last time, even though he had a photographic memory; look skyward at the casting studio door, even though he didn’t think he believed in God and certainly didn’t pray; take a deep breath and do a shoulder shrug with his hand on the doorknob; and then he was in.

Evelyn Flynn’s office was in a back corner of the lot, in a building that might have been a guest cottage once, in the days when the lots still had places for writers and visiting actors to live. The waiting room was dark and empty. He closed the door behind him, being careful to make sure it latched, and then stood there, trying to decide if he should call out and announce himself or just sit down and wait. Before he’d made a decision, an inner door opened, a pair of heels clicked in, and there was Evelyn Flynn, standing before him with no smile and an outstretched hand, which he shook.