Notes From the Underwire: Adventures From My Awkward and Lovely Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

be unavailable for three weeks because he was off to star in—and also haul props for—a friend’s independent movie to be shot in the Sonoran Desert where there was no cell-phone coverage.
    The whale would evade me again.
    Finally, finally , I got a script worth something. True, it was an independent film with no studio attached to release it, but there were actual, reputable actors signed, as opposed to many of my projects that starred Dolph Lundgren or, more depressingly, someone described as “the next Dolph Lundgren.” This was the real deal. The script was funny, the director wasn’t the son-in-law of the financier, and, the most thrilling news of all: they were paying more than union scale.
    I developed a nosebleed from excitement.
    Best of all, there was a perfect role for Dick, an actor capable of flawless comedic timing while shirtless. I submitted his picture and received no response, which isn’t surprising, considering how in three days the casting director probably received five hundred headshots for that one part alone, and there wereforty roles to fill. I started working the phone. I pleaded, flirted, begged, nagged, and cajoled. Not the casting director, mind you; she knew better than to answer her own phone. I may have propositioned the cleaning crew. But something in my cringing and whining tone must have worked because I got Dick in for an interview. I threw myself into the boat and headed out to the high seas to find my white whale.
    I managed to locate him, convince him to call me back, pick up the script, and read it within a week. This set some sort of land-speed record. The good luck continued; he agreed to audition. I had the whale in my sight! He read for the part and the director fell in love with him. The casting director called me within an hour to offer the role, with a salary that would actually buy more than ramen noodles and Tang.
    My hands shook when I called him. Barely able to conceal my glee, I told him he booked the job, that the money was not bad, and that he would be shooting in two weeks.
    “Yeah,” he said absentmindedly, “I forgot to tell you. I promised my friend Ace that I would help him with his movie. I’m going to be in Riverside, on and off, for the rest of the month.”
    Wave good-bye to the nice whale, Ahab.
    No, he wouldn’t consider bailing out on his friend; that wouldn’t be right. Besides, it was a really cool script about speed-dealing bikers who spoke in blank verse. Half the characters would be sock puppets.
    I got the phone number of the producer of Ace’s movie, a person I suspect was also Ace’s mother. She gave me Dick’s shooting schedule—contingent, of course, on the sock puppets being mended in time. I then called the production manager ofwhat I had come to think of as the real movie and got every single day Dick would be needed on set. They overlapped by two days. I went back and forth between the two people, trying desperately to get one to adjust his or her schedule.
    It took the better part of a day, but I finally had the sock puppet producer offering to shoot Dick from 12:00 to 3:00 a.m., and the real movie’s production manager saying he wouldn’t schedule Dick to the set any earlier than six hours later. It was horrible, but my client was young enough to handle a long day in the name of art and a union gig.
    Laughing in relief, I called Dick and, swelling with well-earned pride, I walked him through the schedule. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t him drawling, “Yeah, but if Ace needs me to help, I’m going to have to stay.”
    Help ? Help what? Put the other actors back in the sock drawer? I put down the phone and slammed into another agent’s office for advice.
    This agent, call her Medusa, had been doing this forever. If you caught her on a good day she was personable and well-seasoned. The other 363 days of the year she was a wolverine with a toothache. The pot she smoked to take the edge off