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THE GRASS IS BROWN ON BOTH SIDES OF THE FENCE

Seven Days in the Mouth of the Lion (part 3)

Michael Caine said that every actor would get one chance at the big time, so just make sure you are ready. Well here was mine I guess - I wasn’t comfortable with it, and hadn’t liked the experience so far. Where I really wanted to be was on the plane and on my way home. Rather than let the depression that I could sense was in the room overtake me, I busied myself on the phone. I rang my agent who was understandably excited about what was happening. He passed on the best wishes of the production team that had shifted their schedule for me. Then I rang Michael Rymer who asked where I was. When I told him that I was in the Marriott he said he ‘had been in LA for five years and that this was the best Hollywood story he had ever heard and that he would be right over’. He duly arrived with Deborra-Lee Furness (I had done the miniseries Glass Babies with her in Australia. This is all long before she married Hugh Jackman). Deborra-Lee said that she was on hand to help in any way she could. I ordered some sandwiches and coffee and filled them in with the events as they had unfolded. Deborra-Lee summed it up by saying ‘You have got something that they want.’
I was exhausted and resisted the offer of hearing my lines or working on the audition. Deborra-Lee and Michael understood and told me that if I needed anything at all to call them. They then left me to gather my wits. Easier said than done, as I couldn’t remember where I had put them.
Sleep came to my rescue.

Los Angeles is a quiet town on any weekend, and the comings and goings of business people that flows through the Marriott during the week slows to a trickle. I split my attentions between the script, the swimming pool and spa, and the television. But my head felt as if it was full of sawdust. The atmosphere that emanated around me during the audition was, and I knew would always feel, foreign to me. I was looking in the mirror having a shave when I heard some inner voice calmly say -- Don’t worry I won’t let you get the part.
The voice is me of course and it was right. The core of me didn’t want it but the shaky me felt obligated to try. But I was not centred and found committing the lines to memory, for some reason, very difficult. I was reminded a lot of what that inner voice had said ‘Don’t worry I won’t let you get the part.’

Monday arrived and the black car would be picking me up within the hour. I had bought a short sleeve, silky lightweight shirt that I thought was suited to the character - but as I looked down at it I could see it was shimmering. Nerves I thought and I didn’t want to take them with me. How to get rid of them? The only way I could think of was to put myself in a situation that was going to be more fraught than the impending audition. So, I went down into the hotel foyer, took a deep breath and walked across it doing the dialogue from my audition speech loudly to anyone and everyone. ‘Hi there. I may be accused of having a large ego here. But I think that the sexual chemistry between us is going to be too hard for you to resist.’ Then I went through the revolving doors into the street, and down the long line of cab drivers leaning against their cars, getting some fresh air. ‘Hi pal you want tennis lessons then you ask for Lou because I’m the best tennis teacher you are ever going to see’. People’s reaction ----- I’m here to tell you that no one, and I mean no one, took the slightest bit of notice of me. Cab drivers talking to each other didn’t miss a beat in their conversations. I continued on and turned into a small shopping mall - never did I stop talking and not once did anyone take the slightest bit of notice of me.

Then I saw some guy standing drenched in the mist that was coming off a water fountain. He was arguing with no one. But someone in his imagination was copping an earful. I briefly wondered what part he was going for. Seeing him was enough for me to stop my shenanigans. Anyone seeing me returning to the hotel would now deduce that my medication had just kicked in.

The next audition. I’m sitting in yet another waiting room drinking mineral water and watching another shoe twirling around on the secretary’s toe. How many workstations does this girl have? Having been told to wait in this new waiting room by someone else, the secretary doesn’t know that I’m there. She’s talking on the phone ‘Would you tell Walter to ring James as soon he comes in. No, whenever, but James really wants to talk to him. Yes. Thank you, Mrs Matthau.’
Suddenly it dawns on me. The dialogue I’m auditioning with always sounded like someone that I could never quite put my finger on. Walter Matthau. Then the secretary, still oblivious of me, was on the phone again ‘No I don’t know what’s happening but James has found this Australian that he thinks might be right for it. He reminds James of Jack.’ I had wondered about that. I had lived with Nicholson comparisons since Easyrider in 1968. Serge Lazareff, an actor, arrived at acting class having just seen Easyrider. He went on to say that he’d just seen me on the silver screen.

I tiptoed out of the waiting room, knocked on the door, and coughed to alert she of the shoes that I had supposedly just arrived.
She poked her head around the door, bid me good morning and said that they would be ready for me soon. I took the time to reflect on the Nicholson factor.
I saw Easyrider and while I thought that Nicholson was great, I couldn’t see any similarity to myself. But as more comparisons came my way, I had to admit that there had to be some resemblance.
Even Jack Nicholson had recognised that. I was going to the premiere of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in Melbourne. I was walking past McDonalds in Bourke Street, when around the corner from Russell Street came Nicholson. He was dressed in a pale blue Safari Suit. Naturally I knew who he was, and as our eyes met, he gave me a smile that translated as I bet you cop it. I nodded my head in agreement as we passed and thought to myself well at least I’ve got better legs
I have only once replied to a theatre critic. Some dipstick in Sydney kept saying of me that I had again come up with a Jack Nicholson imitation. I sent him a sarcastic note that said I agree with you it’s a problem, so much so that I rang Jack and we discussed it, but as he is not prepared to have plastic surgery, there is bugger all I can do about it.
I don’t know if my resemblance to Mr Nicholson has been an asset or a hindrance. I strongly suspect the latter. But better him than W.C. Fields.

They are ready for me and along with the secretary’s shoes and my shimmering shirt, we are again on the march. I was not looking forward to it and the moment I stepped into the room I knew why. There must have been fifteen men in the room, most of them in suits. The only woman was Judith Light, the actress from the sit-com Three’s Company. She had obviously been reading opposite other auditionees and as she would know her lines, I assumed that she had been cast in the main female role.

A round of introductions, no handshakes, just head nods. Out in the centre of the room was a wooden stand with a box of Kleenex on top of it. A camera was pointing at it.
I got a big surprise when I realised that I was not going to be directed by James Brooks, who was in the room - but by the guy who was going to direct the series. He looked as if he was there under sufferance, which was exactly how I felt. James was not part of the proceedings and was keeping very much in the background.
The audition. I only got as far as pretending to lick her face when the director’s voice cut through the room. ‘Whoa. What the hell was that?’ My reply - ‘I was… um… licking her face?’
He looked at me as if I was the most disgusting thing he had ever seen. ‘Christ. I don’t think you should do that. No. You wouldn’t do that.’ I flashed a quick look to James who was looking at me. He acted as if he was oblivious to the fact that he had ever suggested I do such a thing. Strange place. Strange people. Get me outa here.

I thought it wise not to mention that it had been a directive from James, and quickly said to the director that it was just a thought I’d had, but I wasn’t moored to it or anything. I then plucked a tissue from the box on the stand and applied it to my face where it stuck. I cursed the fact that I had recently finished a bottle of mineral water that had decided to burst out of my body to drench the surface of my skin. I plucked another tissue to help remove the first one then another to remove that one. We did the audition again and again and I wasn’t in charge of it. I forgot my lines, stuttered and, to make matters worse, there were a couple of people in the room whose role was to laugh at me, funny or not. In hindsight, I should have knocked that on the head by saying knock that shit off - if I do something that warrants a laugh, then laugh, but if it’s not funny - don’t. But hindsight is easy. At one point, I stopped and said that I wanted to just have one run through where I played the scene seriously. My reason for this was twofold. One, it would show my serious side and the other was that I needed to break the pattern that had me floundering. The serious take went well. Phew, at least they knew I wasn’t entirely hopeless. After I finished, James finally broke his silence with… ‘that was good and that is exactly where you should be coming from. Now make it funny’.

But I didn’t recover and it was more of the same - and that led to more tissues being plucked from the box. Then when I had another go at it the director cut me off mid-sentence with a loud… ‘Ok. That’s enough.’
Hit with the rudeness of his tone, I instantly withdrew into myself and I was never going to come back out. No one had ever been so rude and dismissive of me at any audition, ever. But at least it meant that the ritual humiliation was over. Thank God. I was then told to wait outside. I thanked everyone and left, embarrassed that I had to walk through the sea of soggy tissues to get to the door. Those tissues looked like wet dead doves and were a testimony to what I had just been through.

I waited outside. It was all over. Shoes arrived and arranged for me to be driven back to the hotel. My friend at the gate looked confused by my exuberance when I told him that I hadn’t got the gig. Back at the Marriott I stripped to my jocks and lay down on my bed thinking thank Christ that it was over, and then happily went into a deep sleep.

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