Casting or: How I Nearly had a Heart Attack in a Hilton Lobby

Allow me to set the scene: it's 11 on PM Friday, March 6th, and I'm attending the Florida DECA Career Development Conference with my school's DECA chapter. In the past three days I've had eight hours of sleep and been forced to keep track of three kids that couldn't find their way out of a wet paper bag. My blood was comprised almost entirely of a cocktail of energy drinks the color of Windex. I had completed a presentation that my senior year depended on and was awaiting the results. For most of the day I had been running across the hotel and conference rooms assisting with various DECA activities, and while doing all of this, I was scheduling auditions for my film.

Earlier in the week I had set up  a series of auditions with the Cypress Bay High School Drama Club using a connection I had with its sponsor, Ms. Lutwin. As I was only looking for someone to play my female lead, I only asked for girls who looked the part (18-25 year old "alternative" woman). Once I had the initial auditions planned, I needed something for the girls to deliver. After much deliberation, I chose to have them deliver the "Jackrabbit Slim's" scene from the Tarantino Classic "Pulp Fiction" because the character they would be reading (Mia Wallace) reminded me of my female lead and this was the only scene in the movie in which she had multiple monologues.

Having never done an audition before, I asked the advice of one of my fellow Media Studies students who has experience in the theater. She recommended I hold what is called a "cold audition" where the girls would receive the script just a few minutes before they read it with me.

After reading through the scene nine times with nine different girls, I went about quantifying the auditions. I used three different categories: "Delivery" (how well they delivered the lines), "Look" (how well they physically fit the part, and "Accuracy" (how accurately they delivered the lines). Once all of this data was inputted into a spreadsheet, I narrowed it down into the four actresses who ranked on the top. These four would come to the second audition in which I would judge their chemistry with the male lead. Now on to my near coronary.

So it's 11 o'clock at night and I'm in the lobby of the Disney Orlando Resort Hilton Hotel and Convention Center sitting at an empty bar with a list of phone numbers in one hand, a cell phone in the other, and a paper with an empty timetable laid out on the bar in front of me. I furiously called each of the actresses trying to find a two hour window that would work for all of them, me, my production partner, and our male lead. After struggling for nearly two hours and somehow evading the chaperons who had been looking for me, I had done it. From four to six  on Sunday, I would be at a large coffee chain in a local shopping plaza auditioning the top four. And then I got a call, then another, and then another.

The first was one of the actresses, the one who (to be completely honest) was the best and my first choice. She had something come up at the last minute and had to reschedule. Fine. Whatever. I'll do it to get her in my film. The next call was my production partner. He told me he would not be able to come do to a family matter he didn't want to discuss. Oh well. I can always record the auditions and review them with him. And then the big one came. The final call was from my male lead. He told me that he would not be able to attend the audition because of work issues. At this point I lost it. My heart was pounding. My blood was boiling. My brain was pulsating from the mix of anger, sleep deprivation, and chemical stimulants. I genuinely worried I might have some sort of medical emergency.

This fear forced me to calm down.  I shed a couple of  tears of frustration, and called back my three remaining actresses and told them we would need to reschedule the audition. I cried myself to sleep that night.

Now this post is not a wonderful piece of Pro-Tyler propaganda. This is a piece describing one of the many small hurdles of making a short film, one without any romanticism or glorification.