I work in Hollywood, and it is usually as unglamorous as you can possibly imagine. Yes, I occasionally see stars walking around the lots or I see them out on the streets, but mostly, they look like ordinary people, and just like people who live in New York aren't that impressed by the Empire State Building after a few months of seeing it every day, seeing stars walking about becomes old too.
Besides, if you think that stars look the same in real life as they do on the screen, then you have no idea how a make-up person earns a living. They have just as bad skin and acne as the rest of us; they just have people working around the clock to hide it.
And I don't work on movie sets; I am an assistant to a casting director. Basically I sit in a room and listen to desperate (and often desperately bad) men and women read horribly written lines to try and get a part listed as "Second Tall Man" or "Security Guard" or "Store Cashier." All of the famous actors are cast before the movie is green lit.
But today was different. I knew it was going to be good because one of my jobs is to make sure that any wardrobe requirements were taken care of ahead of time. Rarely do the hopeful actors need to dress up, but in the past we've needed to see how the people looked in 18th century garb, or if they had the right mobility in a monkey suit, or one time we were casting for a caveman movie, and we had to see how the people looked in animal skins. This time the wardrobe requirement brought quickness to my pulse: bikinis.
I picked up half a dozen string bikinis at the costumer we work with and sped over to the casting office. In the waiting room I saw five very attractive women waiting for their chance to try on my wares, but I was running late, so I didn't have time to really look at them. There was no one in the normal casting room, so I was a little worried until I saw Bev walking to toward the garage.
She was a senior assistant, and usually helped out with the women if there were hair or make-up requirements. She also had to field most of the calls from agents and was responsible for posting the casting calls. I didn't ask her why she was going into the garage, because I figured I should already know. Instead I followed her and saw that they had emptied the two car garage and had a bunch of curtains hung up to section off a 20-foot area.
I walked around the curtains until I saw my boss sitting in a folding chair in front of the scene that had been set up inside the curtains. There was a six-foot square section of tile lying on the concrete floor right next to a drain. Above the tile was a shower head supported by a few vertical two-by-fours and attached to a hose the led off toward a sink in the corner of the garage.
I figured Denny had set it up earlier that morning. He was the set and props guy. Most of our casting auditions required nothing, and it was just a bunch of people reading a script, but every once in a while we were casting for an action scene and people had to have chairs broken over them or they had to be thrown through glass, and Denny was the one responsible for making everything work. This shower scene wasn't very elaborate, but it sent goose bumps up and down my skin.
My boss, Gary, caught my eye and called me over. "What's with the tie, Joe?" he asked rising from his chair to great me.
I had almost forgotten in my excitement and looked down at my clothes. I was heading to my cousin's wedding later that day, and I didn't think I would have enough time to go home and change, so I was wearing a shirt and tie with khakis. I was suddenly worried that my boss would be upset for out dressing him, as he was always in jeans and a t-shirt. "I've got a wedding right after this."
He just nodded. He was cool. There were just the three of us working for him: Bev, Denny, and myself. He handled all the conversations with the writers and directors to make sure they got all the people they wanted. He was really good and got contracts for a lot of big movies, so I was surprised when we got the contract for this movie. It was a standard teen comedy. We spent the past few days casting a lot of high school extras: jocks, nerds, in-crowd, cafeteria fodder, teachers, and the like.
"Did you get the suits?" he looked down at the jumble of strings and material patches in my hand that made up the half a dozen bikinis I had collected. I nodded. "Bev," he called over to the woman who was checking the temperature of the water leading to the shower. She jogged over and took the suits from me. "Let's get started," he told her, and she left in search of the first victim.
"You're in for a treat today," he told me as he took his seat and motioned for me to do the same. There were only three chairs. There was a table with coffee and donuts and a bench with a few towels on it. "By law, for a castings like this, I am supposed to have as few people as necessary and as many women as I can. I only have one working for me, and Denny already did his work, so you are the lucky one."
Gary didn't say any more than that, so I just sat and waited. About ten minutes later the first girl came out. She was wearing a bathrobe and sandals. She walked right up to Gary and shook his hand, introducing herself. Bev handed her bio to my boss, but he just handed it over to me, as he usually did. He would make notes on it later. He was far more interested in the live actress in front of him, then a description of what she had done before.
The girl's name was Heather Kim. It was an Asian name, but with long blonde hair and pale skin, I could only detect her ancestry from the shape of her eyes on the full color head shot on her bio. I flipped it over and saw that she had been in countless films and TV shows as a waitress, a life guard, an ex-girlfriend, and so forth. She even had had a few speaking roles.
"So, what are we looking at here, your typical shower scene?" She was very professional, and had probably done many, many auditions like this before. For every role we filled, we usually saw 6 to 8 people, meaning close to 90% of the time you auditioned, you didn't get the role. So to have as many roles as she had, she must do this every day. Also, she sounded so old and professional. Her bio stated she was 24, and I didn't see how she could pull off a high school girl.
"Yes," Gary responded to her question. "You are in a shower room with a half a dozen other girls. Above you are two guys filming your through the exhaust vent. One of them will misstep and they will both coming crashing to floor. I would like you to shower normally until I yell 'Crash,' at which time I want you to react. Okay?"
Heather nodded. She finally took off her robe and handed it to Bev. She also kicked off her sandals and moved over to the tile square. I was a bit disappointed that I was only going to get a bikini show, but she was still hot. Like I said before, most of the big name actresses are not as hot as they appear on screen. They are on screen because they can act and memorize lines. If you notice, it is rarely the lead actresses in these teen movies who gets naked, it is always a bunch of no-name extras. That's because the extras are hot, they just can't act. They think they can, but they can't.
Heather was showering away with imaginary soap under real water. I must admit she played the part well. She spent a lot of time rubbing her breasts and washing her ass. I doubt girls actually spend that much time on those areas when they take real showers, but this wasn't supposed to be a real shower. It was a wet dream fantasy for a couple of nerds in the ceiling.
"Crash!" Gray shouted.
