WRITER - Vancouver Lifestyles -
Ah the Glamourous Life
The phone rang.
I was just about to call my agent and tell him, “John, never send me for a commercial audition again. I hate these things. They’re rude cattle calls and no TV commercial wants this face. They want Mr. Bland Canada Middle-of-the-Road Potato Face. Something that doesn’t distract from the chips, breakfast cereal or nose wipes. It’s a waste of everyone’s time. I’m too old for this. I’d rather re-read the front page.”
It was my agent.
“Hi David. It’s John. Good news. You’re booked for the Volvo Commercial.”
On Tuesday, my cell phone had been off all day. I was running a workshop for a small company downtown. I turned the phone back on at 5:05.
“Hi David. It’s John. You’ve got a costume call for the Volvo shoot today at the Wall Centre.”
“Today? When is today?”
“Now.”
“Oh. That’s kind of tight. I’ve got tickets for a concert at the Orpheum for 7:30 and we’ve got to eat first. (Strained silence.) Right. Ok. Thanks.”
The fourth floor of the hotel had been turned into a command post. Three costume mistresses were sorting through a kind of Value Village of dreadful, old shmatas that, under the magic of kreig lights and Panavision, would be transformed into haute couture. Whereas make-up people are sort of like your old neighbourhood barber, George, chatty, upbeat, cocooned by disco music and doughnuts, costume people are all of a stripe. First, they all look like they just fell off the back of a vegetable truck. They’ve got ringlets on their ringlets and bangles on their jangles and they make Johnny Depp look absolutely square. Think Gypsy.
Second, next to Opera tenors and NFL wide receivers, they are hands down the world’s most self-absorbed people. Nothing – Hurricane Katrina, Hamas, Hezbollah – is more important right now than that scarf for the girl who will sit in the back seat of the SUV in shot 17a.
Of course, I get them revved at the get-go with my standard Big Actor announcement. “Look, I’ve got another commitment. I’ve got to be out of here latest 6:15.” Now they love me so much.
We rip through pants, shirts, vests, jackets, cotton, suede, poly, you-name-it. The colours are loud, they’re muted, they’re summer, they’re winter, they’re ski slope, they’re pastureland. The entire presto-chango act is being performed in full public view, dozens of other actors, second assistant directors; happy again am I for mother’s nagging about clean underwear.
Finally, an ensemble worthy of a granddad who would be driving a new Volvo SUV in a national American TV Commercial. Did I mention I’m a granddad? For this I play tennis and ride my bike, to be a granddad in the eyes of eleven-year old casting agents?
The director approves the clothes. I’m outta here. Dinner and the opera.
The director is the sweetest most engaging young man. His name is something like Pera Uto, so anybody who hasn’t met him assumes he’s Japanese. Of course, he’s from Finland. He has long, blond hair, blue eyes, a great laugh, and a clear and decisive manner when it comes to shots, locations, takes, prints and what kind of clothes a guy should wear on camera.
The most important people, other than the director and the director of photography, on a film shoot – the sine qua non – are the teckies, the grips, the gaffers, the lighting and camera men and women, and, of course, the drivers and the food services crew.
The most annoying, other than the actors, of course, are the producers, and, in the case of commercials, the ad agency people.
Just when I thought the world-shattering issue of what I was going to wear for my 2 seconds of exposure in a TV spot was settled, the director hurried me off to another meeting room in the hotel. Here they were all assembled. A dozen ad agency mavens, young and old, male, female and in-between, each equipped with a laptop, a bottle of Evian water and a thousand knowing opinions about everything under the sun. Surely this is the group that demoted Pluto.
“The vest is too textured.” “Are you sure?” “Look at those buttons.” “No. He’s a granddad, but much hipper than that.” “I don’t want the Swedish stereotype, do you?” “The striped sweater fills him out nicely.”
The day of the shoot, a beautiful, sunny Sunday in Kerrisdale and Shaughnessy (Hey! It’s a Volvo!), the agency people were everywhere. They had their own shade tent. They were first to the food trough, first to the shuttle busses, first to share war stories about how they got the better of some airline employee or hotel clerk.
The director was magnificent. With perfect charm and calm, he nodded sagely to all their urgencies (“Shouldn’t the boy lean just a smidge further to the right?” and shot and re-shot every breathless moment of their commercial.
The actor who played my son was a nice guy. He’s 49, a bartender in Los Angeles and doesn’t really do much work in the biz. My actual son, Sean, is 39, he’s a nice guy and a gifted actor and he doesn’t have to be flown up here and accommodated to sit in the passenger seat of an SUV and say no lines and improv a scene that, among 10 other scenes, will stay on screen for a nano-second. He couldn’t do this part? Twenty-three other Vancouver actors couldn’t do this part? Does Volvo know what they pay for? Do they care?
Fifteen executives approved the suede jacket. But, when I actually got into the cab of the SUV, someone hollered, “Kill the jacket.”
So, when this piece airs, watch for me. I’ll be the terribly handsome, older guy with the son in the co-pilot’s seat and the grandson in the back, bugging us about going to Disneyland or something. If you have one of those freeze frame gizmos, you can catch the sheer ecstasy in my eyes. This isn’t acting.
I’m thinking about the cheque.
