Seeing Stars (13 page)

“All right. Go ahead and start over.” He turned the video camera back on.

“My name is Bethany Ann Roosevelt, and I’m represented by Big Talent.”

The casting director looked at a ratty copy of the script, and read the part of Heather, a bossy ninth grader. “
Who do you think you are, anyways?
”

Bethany as Lucy said, “
I’m Tina’s sister and I don’t think you should say things like that about her.
”

“
Yeah?
”

“
Yeah. She’s nice to everyone and Stuart likes her better than you, so get over it.
”

The casting director turned off the camera. Bethany was confused. “But I had two more lines.”

“That’s okay, kid.”

He stood up, walked across the room, and opened the door.

“Oh,” said Bethany. “Well, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity.” That was what Ruth had worked out with her to say at the end of every audition, no matter how abysmal a failure it might be.

“What? Yeah, sure. Thank you.” He let her out, closing the door behind her. It was like being excused from Eden, except that even God would have at least said, “Have a nice day,” or something. She could hear him on the phone before they’d even made it out of the suite.

By the time she and Ruth got to the top landing, she was crying. “He didn’t even let me do it all. And that was the part Greta made me work on the hardest.” She delivered the line, full of feeling, to the stairwell: “
I just think if someone liked someone else more than me, that I’d be nice about it and be happy for them. So you know what? I feel sorry for you.
”

Ruth put her arm around Bethany’s shoulder wordlessly and led her downstairs and away.

E
VERY NOW AND THEN, FOR REASONS THAT WERE UNCLEAR
even to him, casting director Joel E. Sherman decided to give something away: a costar role to the kid who was
not
the sure bet; the decision to bring straight to producers a kid who’d never had a guest-star role before. These were things he didn’t have to do; things he could even be criticized for doing, since they all involved an act of enormous faith that a child actor could deliver under the hellfire that was network television:
CSI, Grey’s Anatomy, The Closer, Ghost Whisperer
. On prime-time dramatic sets, even more than most, no one—not the director, not the assistant director, not the PAs—had time to coach, pamper, or reassure. You’d been hired at big-boy prices to deliver big-boy goods; your scene came up and you delivered, period. It made no difference whether you had to cry or tremble with fear or contemplate your dead mother using only your eyes to convey your emotions. You had just minutes to dredge up what you needed, and you did it all by yourself. If you blew it, you could be replaced by the end of the first day.

Mystifying as these decisions were even to him, Joel had never had a kid replaced. Not once. Producers trusted him to weed out the crap and zero in on the diamond, and he did; it was as simple as that. And this time, his gut told him to choose this wide-eyed kid, Bethany Rabinowitz—Bethany Ann Roosevelt,
such
a crock of shit—and plug her into next week’s
California Dreamers
as the sweet and plucky kid sister of one of the teens around whom the episode turned. She’d delivered her lines well, and she’d kept her poise even when he cut her off. That was important. The kid sister had only two small scenes, but the working conditions were difficult, because the one thing that was always lacking on the
Dreamers
set was time. More than a handful of adult actors had been broken on the rack of its production schedule.

He picked up the phone, flipped through a stack of headshots until he found hers, and dialed the kid’s pain-in-the-ass manager. Normally he would have called the kid’s agent directly, but he couldn’t help himself: he wanted to screw with her a little. “Yeah, Mimi Roberts,” he said when someone finally picked up the phone on the fifth ring. Soon he heard her wheezing on the other end.

“Yeah. This is Joel E. Sherman, how you doin’? Listen, I want to bring one of your kids to producers. Yeah, Bethany Rabinowitz. New kid.”

“You mean Bethany Ann Roosevelt?”

“Not if she’s going to be on one of my shows.”

“I’m sure we can work something out,” Mimi cooed. He could hear that she was trying to sound blasé but was nearly pissing herself. There were very few agents or managers who weren’t afraid of him. If he didn’t like them, their kids didn’t audition for him, period, and right now he was casting some of the hottest shows on prime time. Truth was, Bethany Rabinowitz had gotten into the initial audition pool only because whoever had photocopied and assembled her headshot and résumé had left a huge smudge over Mimi Roberts’s logo and contact information, and he hadn’t spotted it when he threw her headshot into the audition pile.
Roosevelt.
Please.

“All right, listen,” he told the woman now. “Have her at my office at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Yeah. And make sure she’s on time.”

What he hadn’t told her was that Bethany Rabinowitz was the
only
kid going to producers. They trusted him that much.

T
HE NEXT AFTERNOON AT EXACTLY TWO O’CLOCK, THE
casting director introduced Bethany to the executive producer of
California Dreamers
, who had cost overruns on his mind and watched the kid’s audition with a minimum of enthusiasm because it was just an under-five, for Christ’s sake. Still, he maintained an absolute veto power over who set foot on his soundstage, right down to the one-liners. After she left he told Joel, “Yeah, yeah, set her up, she’s fine. The mom’s not going to be a nightmare, is she—you’re willing to promise me she’s not a nightmare? Because if she’s going to be a nightmare—”

“Nah. Trust me, she’ll be a mouse.” He could promise this because he was going to give the mother explicit and personal instructions that if she so much as
spoke
to anyone, he’d never cast the kid in anything again for as long as he lived. Mothers couldn’t stand him. He loved that. He picked up the phone and dialed Holly Jensen at Big Talent.

“Yeah, hey, Joel E. Sherman, how you doin’?” He liked Holly—young, good agent, big boobs, fun at a party.

“Joey?” she said. “Hey, how’s my favorite casting director?”

The whole town turned on a wheel of bullshit.

“Just fine, baby, just fine. Listen, I want you to put one of your clients on avail for
California Dreamers
. They’re on hiatus next week, so it’s for the week after—Bethany Rabinowitz.”

“Who?”

Joel sighed. “One of Mimi Roberts’s kids, Bethany Ann Fucking Roosevelt. New kid.”

“Oh, yeah. Really?”

He smiled at the phone. “Call me a nice guy.”

“Sure, Joey. Everyone does.”

“I must be slipping, then. I used to be a son of a bitch. Okay, but listen, here’s the deal. We’re going to credit her as Bethany Rabinowitz. You okay with that? Otherwise, there’s no deal. Okay?”

“Okay.”

H
OLLY CALLED
M
IMI, AND
M
IMI CALLED
R
UTH, AND
Ruth called Bethany to the phone and Bethany started crying and had to give the phone back to Ruth. “I don’t know how we can ever thank you for everything you’ve done,” Ruth told Mimi in a quavery voice. “You must be a miracle worker.”

On her end of the line, Mimi just smiled.

October 2006

E
verybody wants to be special, it’s just that in Hollywood it’s not a dream, it’s an industry. Delusion makes the world go round, but here it goes much faster and the spinning never stops. You can either hang on or you can let go. Or you can fall. A lot of people fall. Every day, all the time. Sometimes it happens in slow motion and sometimes it happens suddenly, but either way it’s a hard landing. The kids are more resilient than the parents, at least most of the time. The parents are the ones who fall the hardest, and some of them never get up again.

—
VEE VELMAN

Chapter Eight

O
N A BEAUTIFUL SUNNY
T
UESDAY IN
O
CTOBER
, L
AUREL
Buehl reported to the PA on a commercial shoot for a Midwest fried chicken chain. Laurel hated fried chicken—some daughter of the South
she
was, Dillard was always teasing her—and she especially hated drumsticks. If you looked closely you could see that they were mostly tendons and blood vessels and cartilage. Even the thought made her a little sick. But she’d booked this commercial above hundreds and hundreds of other girls and she was going to do the best job she could.

The shoot was taking place inside an older production studio. Everything had been painted with shiny gray marine paint, including all the pipes and exposed wiring. A bank of monitors was set up at the far end of the space. The set itself was a kitchen, with a refrigerator, sink, range, cupboards, dishwasher, and microwave. The refrigerator had a couple of photographs stuck on it with magnets, like a real kitchen, and Laurel could see a takeout menu pinned up there, too—advertising the chicken chain, of course. She wondered who the kids were in the photos. Maybe they were the client’s kids. Producers did little kiss-ass things like that on commercial shoots, she’d noticed. Someone from the ad agency that was making the commercial had said the budget to shoot it was $250,000, partly because it was a union gig. If it had been nonunion, she’d be paid peanuts, like she had been before she’d become a SAG member. Her nonunion commercials had paid $150. This commercial paid $2,000 up front, plus thousands in residuals every time the commercial was aired anywhere. The best of all was when you were in a commercial that was shown nationwide during prime time, like the McDonald’s commercial she’d shot last week. Mimi had told Angie that they might be able to put away enough to pay for college with just that one commercial. Not that they were doing it for the money.

The PA, who Laurel identified by the headset and clipboard, was tall and skinny and had black hair, a lip ring, and sleeve tattoos. His T-shirt said
THE MATRIX
, so she figured he’d probably worked on the movie. She’d love to have a shirt or jacket with the name of a movie on it. It would mean she’d gotten theatrical work at last. Not that commercials were bad. When she checked in with him, he grasped her arm and said, “Thank God.”

“Am I late? It’s seven thirty. Wasn’t that the call time?”

“For you, yeah,” said the PA. “For your frickin’ little brother it was seven. Do you see the little shit around here anywhere, because I sure don’t, and the client’s having a fucking
cow
. Come on over. I want you to sweet talk them, get their minds off the kid for a couple of minutes.”

Laurel approached a young woman in jeans and very high stilettos, and an older man in a Hawaiian shirt that failed to conceal a considerable gut. He was from the chicken chain, and she worked for the ad agency making the commercial. Laurel recognized them both from her callback, and right now they looked furious. Laurel put on her best smile, and her best South’n voice, and said, “Hi! I want to thank y’all
so
much for letting me be in your commercial. And I love your chicken, by the way. We eat it any time we have family night, which is usually Thursday but if my daddy’s working late, we make it Friday.”

“How sweet,” said the woman in the stilettos. Up close Laurel could see she had some hair loss on the crown of her head. She’d teased the hair around it a little and put a velvet headband on, but you could still see her scalp as plain as day. Laurel’s nightmares included being bald by the time she was forty. Once you started paying attention, you saw women like that more often than you might think. There was a whole community of them out there using Rogaine in secret and considering spray-painting their scalps to make the thinness less noticeable. She’d seen commercials for that. Her hair was thin, but it was nowhere near
that
thin.

Just as Laurel was trying to come up with something else to say—she was a pleaser, and she’d stay there doing her part as long as she possibly could or until the PA gave her the sign that she could be done—the kid playing her little brother showed up. His mother was just fit to be tied. “Oh, good lord—I’m
so
sorry,” she said. “He’s been up forever but he lost a shoe, and then he refused to leave without his Game Boy—”

“Yeah, well, at least you’re here now,” said the PA, taking the kid’s elbow and pulling him a little roughly. “I need him in Hair and Makeup ASAP.”

Laurel could see exactly why they’d cast him for the commercial. He was around nine or ten, and had freckles and huge ears and big front teeth. You could do really well in commercials if you had an extreme look; they didn’t always want people who were conventionally good-looking. Laurel figured they’d cast her as the older sister because she was pretty, so she balanced things out. Plus the kid was the main person in the commercial. All Laurel was supposed to do was bite into a juicy drumstick and then high-five his piece of chicken with hers.

The smell of chicken was already coming from a catering truck. She hadn’t even had breakfast yet. She started breathing through her mouth, a trick Angie had taught her when she was little because she’d always been odor-sensitive and used to throw up when she smelled things like bleach and garlic. Even so, her stomach rolled.

From across the set the PA signaled her to go to Hair and Makeup. She said, “Excuse me” to the ad agency woman and the client in the Hawaiian shirt and looked at Angie, who was sitting in a tall director’s chair near the bank of monitors. She winked at Laurel and gave her a wan smile. Angie hated fried chicken almost as much as Laurel did.

“Okay, Brandon,” the hair and makeup girl was saying. “I’m going to put some stuff in your hair, and then you can’t touch it, okay?
Do not touch it.
”

The kid shrugged. “Whatever.”

She put some hair product in her hands and then on his hair, which made it stand straight up all over. She stepped back a minute, pulled one piece into place, and said, “Nice.”

The kid reached up and the girl slapped his hand away. “What did I just tell you?
Do not touch.
”

The hair and makeup girl did Laurel next, pulling her hair into a couple of low pigtails—Laurel hated low pigtails—and brushing on a little powder and eye shadow. “You did your makeup really well,” she told Laurel. “I hardly have to do anything at all. And you have the most amazing skin. You probably hear that a lot, though.” Laurel nodded; she did hear it a lot, but she didn’t mind. “You know you’re going to have to be really really careful, right?” the girl said. “How long have you been in LA?”

“Five months.”

“Yeah, I figured you weren’t from here. You’re probably a skin cancer magnet.”

“SPF 60, every day,” Laurel said. “I’ve never even had a sunburn.”

“Good girl.” The hair and makeup girl fluffed her pigtails, pulled a few tendrils loose, stood back, and looked at Laurel with satisfaction. “Okay, you’re done. Break a leg. Or I guess I should say, bite a leg.” They both laughed, and then the hair and makeup girl said, “Next!” and a woman approached her who Laurel figured must be the commercial family’s mom. Once she was ready, the director—a young guy wearing Tommy Bahama loafers and a linen shirt, like he’d just flown in from Cabo or someplace—had them all sit at the kitchen table.

“Okay, Mom, I want you to look your son right in the eye and say, ‘You know, it
is
chicken-lickin’ good!” the director said. “Then you kids are going to do the high five and take big bites of chicken. Okay? There are spit buckets under the table, but don’t spit anything out until I tell you it’s okay, because otherwise you’ll ruin the shot. You have to chew, too—not just hold it in your mouth. Okay?” Everyone nodded. “Okay!”

For the next hour, they high-fived and took bites of chicken, chewed enthusiastically, and then once the director said, “Cut” they got to spit it out. Laurel lost count after the fifteenth piece of chicken. She could see boxes and boxes of it out by the craft services table. She looked at Angie from time to time, who smiled and mouthed, “Stay strong!”

They let her go two hours later, when she started gagging uncontrollably at every mouthful. “Hey,” the director said. “What was your name again—Laurel? You did good, girlfriend. You can sign her out,” he told the PA. Then, turned away from the client and the ad agency woman, he whispered, “I’d have been tossing my cookies an hour ago.”

Laurel smiled but, professional to the last, she just said, “I hope you got what you needed.”

“What?” he said. “Oh. Sure, yeah. Thanks.”

On the way home they stopped and bought a Coke to settle Laurel’s stomach and a backup bottle of Pepto-Bismol, just in case.

I
N
W
EST
H
OLLYWOOD
, Q
UINN LACED UP HIS PURPLE
Chuck Taylor high-tops and took some pains to find a shirt that might be clean. He waited for Baby-Sue and Jasper to leave the apartment and then he headed out himself. The day was warm—of course it was warm, it was LA—and there was a light breeze blowing the trash around in the street. At the corner he saw a used condom in the gutter. Someone had gotten lucky. Where would you have sex on a street like this, though? In an alley, maybe; or behind one of the spindly oaks embedded in the sidewalk. But then you’d have to take off the condom, stuff your slimy dick into your pants with one hand while you held the loaded condom between two fingers of the other hand, and carry it to the gutter. Who would bother with that? Maybe the woman. Women did that kind of thing, putting stuff in the right place even if it was trash and disgusting.

He stopped in front of Hazlitt & Company. The salon was packed this morning, noisy with hair dryers and laughter. Quinn’s plan had been to come to the salon, see that the stylist was busy, turn right around, and go back to the apartment. But the stylist glanced at the door, saw Quinn, and waved him in. He already had a client in his chair and Quinn intended to cut and run, but his shoes took him inside, instead. The stylist said something to the man whose hair he was cutting—an olive-skinned, jet-haired, bright-toothed man who looked vaguely familiar; Quinn could almost remember the skin-care ad—and came over to Quinn, who was standing just inside the door like he’d washed up there and stuck.

“Hey.” The stylist put his hand on Quinn’s shoulder. The hand felt warm and light through Quinn’s shirt. “I’m almost done with this one, and then I’ve got a break. Stick around. Read a magazine or something. I’ll fit you in.”

Quinn had never really meant to get a haircut, though he did have money in his pocket because his mother had just sent him his thousand-dollar-a-month allowance. But the stylist had returned to his station before Quinn could tell him that he was only—what? Checking on the stylist? Lonely? Sadly, he did have time—no auditions today or classes, and of course there was never school—so he sat on a stiff leather chair and watched his shoes until his pulse slowed down. Then the client was paying for his haircut and blowing a kiss over his shoulder to the stylist, who was sweeping hair clippings efficiently into a dustpan. After dumping the dustpan he walked over and Quinn got up and followed him meekly, his heart beating like crazy. He sat down in the chair, and the stylist whisked a black nylon cape around him, fastening a snap at his throat—his fingers were light against Quinn’s neck, like moth wings—and then he looked at Quinn in the mirror and said, “What are we doing?”

Quinn flushed.

The stylist smiled. “Cut? Color? I hope not color. We talked about that.”

So he remembered. Quinn wasn’t sure he would. “Cut, I guess.”

The stylist wove his fingers through Quinn’s hair just like the last time; and like the last time, Quinn went heavy in the chair. He’d remembered the way it had felt exactly. He had to fight to keep his eyes open.

“Let me guess,” said the stylist’s reflection to Quinn’s reflection in the mirror. “Your father still has a full head of hair. No? He’s
bald
?”

Quinn shrugged, looked away. He didn’t know—his father hadn’t been in touch in years and years.

“Oh.” The stylist looked dismayed. “Hey, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“Okay.” The stylist pulled Quinn’s hair back. “So what are we thinking?”

I’m thinking I wish you’d brush my hair some more.
But of course Quinn couldn’t say that, so he just said, “I don’t know. Something.”

“Well,” ventured the stylist, “you’ve got some natural blond highlights. Are you thinking, like, maybe a surfer dude sort of thing? You’re, what, sixteen?”

“And a half,” Quinn said. “Sixteen and a half.”

“We could make you look wholesome and tousled.” The stylist ruffled the top of Quinn’s hair, making it go flying around in different directions.

“Nah.”

“Too young?”

“Yeah.”

“So something edgy?”

Quinn just looked at him, having no idea what that might translate into.

The stylist smiled. “Uneven places. Some of it very long, some of it very short, and none of it where you’d expect it to be. Let me show you.” He went off and rummaged around in a pile of magazines, dog-eared a couple of pages, and brought them back to Quinn. “Here are a couple of looks,” he said. He stood right behind Quinn. Quinn could actually feel him breathe. He concentrated on the pictures, chose one that didn’t seem too radical—casting directors didn’t like radical—and the stylist strapped on a black canvas apron full of scissors and combs. Then he walked Quinn over to a sink and washed Quinn’s hair, and Quinn thought it might be even more wonderful than the hair brushing and the head massage. He felt drunk as the stylist walked him back to his chair.

“So how long have you been acting?”

“What?”

The stylist smiled. “How long have you been an actor?”

“Since I was six.”

“Are you good?”

“Very good,” Quinn said, and it wasn’t bragging, it was just the truth.

“I’ll bet,” said the stylist, snipping away. “Have I seen you on anything?”