As you may know by now, most of the bellmen at my hotel are actors.
Choosing to be an actor is choosing to live a daring, spontaneous and challenging life.
For most actors, especially for neophytes, the uphill battle is full of money constraints, time constraints, energy constraints and, of course, competitive constraints.
Being in the most competitive job market out there, actors fight industry barriers on innumerable fronts. So many, it’s funny.
One of the most necessary keys to success is always being available.
In truth, it’s pretty hard to be “always available” when life requires you to pay bills to survive. You’ve got to pay the rent, food, classes, student loans, insurance, transportation costs — and that’s just the beginning. It’s no easy task to juggle two careers.
That’s why most actors seek work in restaurants or hotels where there tends to provide some “flexibility.”
At my hotel, we took that flexibility to a whole new level. In fact, bellmen would sometimes show up for work in the morning and leave the entire day for a shoot and then return to work right before their shift would end. Generally, bellmen would leave for two-to-four hours a day for auditions. Per usual, all about the hustle.
Over time, I learned to become an expert of slipping in and out of the hotel. Of course, most of the guys knew how to cover you if management ever did come looking. There are cameras everywhere in hotels, so you always had to be quite sly so security didn’t catch on to you, either.
Once I had a final callback for a huge national network commercial. That means it was between me and four other guys for a payday of $15-to-80 grand. Of course, I couldn’t miss it.
If you wondering why I didn’t call out or get my shift covered ahead of time, you have to realize we audition a lot. It wasn’t possible. I think I was hovering around 40 call-offs at this point. My employment was on thin ice. I did what I only knew I could do: Have my boys cover me.
Fast forward to me in SoHo waiting one hour. Things are moving slow because the producers haven’t showed up yet. Fuck! What am I supposed to do?
One hour turns into two hours. The producers arrive, settle in, and call the first guy up.
I feel a buzz in my pocket. My blackberry is vibrating.
I look down and see its one of my fellow bellmen calling. I pick up.
“Jared is asking where you are,” he says.
“Fuck, what should I do?” I say, as my stomach tightens.
“Hurry up and get back here. I’ll try to hold him off,” he says.
Another guy goes in. And another.
And then finally the producers call me in, “Thank God!”
I shut off my phone, enter the room, and spend the next ten minutes getting analyzed by eight producers. Another audition down.
When I make it out of the casting office, I turn my phone back on. A voice mail awaits. Listening to it, I hear, “Hey, this is Jared, just wondering where you are.”
“Oh shit,” I think, “This is over. I’m screwed.”
I hop in a cab. There is no time to wait for the C or E train.
As I walk back into the hotel, all the bellmen are coming up to me, “Dude, Jared has been looking for you.” “Where have you been?” “Uh oh” “Come on, papa.”
One of the bellman says, “Come on, I have to go with you to meet with him. There has to be a union delegate present with all manager meetings.”
My heart is thumping. I’m breathing heavy. I’m freaking the hell out. “How am I going to pay my bills?” “How am I going to get health insurance again?” “What the hell am I going to do?”
And then as if a gift from God, the wisdom hits me.
My mind says, “Aren’t you an actor?”
I say, “Damn right, I am.”
“Really?” my mind says
“Really,” I say.
“Then prove it, right now, when you go into this meeting.”
“You know what? You’re right,” I say.
My union delegate and I go into the manager’s office. Jared waits. He doesn’t have a good look on his face, but he makes small-talk jokes, anyway. It makes me more uncomfortable.
All I can do is think, think, think. “What is my story? What is my story?”
BAM!
“I got it. My parent’s just broke up and I had to be on the phone consoling my family members,” I thought.
Now, this was a true story in some sense. My parents had in fact split. However, that was about five years ago. It was the best I had.
In acting there is a technique called preparation where you spend a few moments dwelling on the emotion you must embody coming into a scene. You do this by dwelling on imaginary or real life events that put you in to the state of whatever emotion you need to feel for the scene. I needed to feel distraught. While all the small talk was occurring in Jared’s office, I was bringing the most disturbing images into my mind and feeling them take an effect on my breath and heart beat.
Jared began, “I called you in here, because I have been looking for you for two hours and couldn’t find you on the radio or on property.”
“Sweet. He only thought I was gone for two hours. It was more like three and a half hours. But, two is cool with me,” I thought.
“Is there anything you want to say?” Jared asks
I look at his eyes and my fellow bellman’s. Worry is ever present. It’s not looking good.
And then the emotions flood my eyes. “I just. I…My par..My par-ents. I just found out. My parents broke up. They’re getting divorced,” I stammer.
Tears continue to flow. I look down. The feel of the room has changed. I’m the victim now. And victorious! I know I have won.
Jared says, “God, I’m sorry to hear that. I thought you went on an audition or something. You know, I was gonna have you sign this.”
He shows paperwork for a suspension of a week’s work.
“But, under these circumstances, I just couldn’t do that. Look, next time, if something like this comes up. Just let me know where you are.”
“Okay,” I say, bending my head down.
“Alright, guys, get back out on the floor,” Jared says.
My fellow bellman and I depart Jared’s office.
My bellman delegate says, “You slick bastard.”
Still in a daze from the moment, I don’t react.
“You can drop it now. Come on, I know you were fucking around. You were so at an audition,” he says.
I still don’t respond.
“Hey, snap put of it.” He shakes me.
“Holy Shit,” I say, “It worked.”
“Yes it did. Good job,” he says.
And that was that. My acting came into use in the real world. And it was a successful venture. I’m not going to lie, I was scared shitless, but it was either that or face reprimands. And in the life of the hustle you can’t get fired. So I hustled on and I kept my job.
And thanked the acting gods.