“On the bed,” said Ruffles inside my head.
I leaned over to grab my bag. I felt Peter’s eyes on my double-wide ass sticking up in the air. No amount of starving made my butt any smaller. My only hope was large-pocket jeans, for all the good they did. I snatched the shoulder strap of my bag and turned, expecting to find a look of disgust on Peter’s face, but instead it was blank and unreadable.
“What?” I snapped.
He shook his head and muttered,“Great, it’s going to be one of those nights.”And then I hoped we could get to the end of the block without having a big fight.
Sarah drove a much harder bargain than the studio that might hire me. Her terms were funds for one month. If I didn’t secure the training funding for month two, I had to move back to California for treatment under her watchful eye. When I agreed to this, Ruffles said, “Holly, for God’s sake, call the Father.”
I buckled down instead. No distractions.We were all in training for our lives, Betty Jane most of all. She had to put her money where her mouth was, literally, while the rest of us did everything we could to make sure this endeavor didn’t become a fool’s errand.
After a month of private training, I met Brenda again. She came around her desk and hugged me when I walked through her office door. “Holly, sit down.” She pointed at the chair and then sat back on the edge of her desk.
Get the Windex
. “All your teachers are raving about your work.”
Inside my head, Sarge raised his arms, signaling a touchdown. Ruffles clapped and the Boy jumped up and down. Betty Jane
remained calm, but a tiny smirk danced at the corner of her mouth.
“The studio decided to forgo the preliminary audition and wants you in tomorrow for the real deal. They’ll send a car at eight o’clock.”
I was dressed and waiting in the lobby of my building at seven forty-five. At exactly eight o’clock a shining black Town Car pulled up, ready to take me to the proverbial dance. Inside my head, I had a woman who was determined to be the Southern belle of the ball. As the front door to my apartment building shut behind me, I heard Betty Jane whisper, “I have arrived.”
I watched the city pass as the car cruised along to Chelsea Piers, where we were taping the show. I had learned from Brenda that it was unusual to do an animated show in New York, but Mike’s stature as a director made it possible. He wanted to be in New York; we were in New York. Lucky me. I wasn’t thin enough to move to Los Angeles. Anyway, constant sunshine depressed me.
When we pulled into the piers, the driver rolled down his window and said,“Audition for
The Neighborhood
.” I rolled down my window.
“Which part?” said the guard.
“The star,” I said with a smile. I alternated between feeling embarrassed about my comment and the warm glow from Betty Jane’s nod of approval.
The receptionist told me to have a seat. Mike Davey would be out in a moment. I dropped my bag on the chair next to me and opened it. I wanted to make sure I had all my highlighters, water, perfume, and, of course, two rolls of Charmin toilet paper.
I had to carry Charmin with me wherever I went. This was one of Betty Jane’s rules. Only Charmin. Nothing else. My options
were to bring the toilet paper or never be able to use a bathroom that didn’t stock Charmin. This narrowed my choices to my apartment or my mother’s house.
I felt a hand lightly touch my shoulder. “Hello, Holly.”
I turned to see Mike’s smiling face. My eyes lit up and I smiled back at him.Walter appeared behind Mike. I extended my smile to him. He didn’t return it. The corners of my mouth dropped as fear nipped at the outer corners of my eyes.
“Make sure our Little Waitress is ready for the suits,” Walter said to Mike. He walked away, tapping his watch.
The suits?
“How’ve you been? Did you enjoy the training?”
“Yeah,” I said shyly.
“I, for one, am not a fan of any formal acting lessons.Training on the job is enough for someone who has a natural talent,” said Mike.
“Oh—”
“Voice-over classes are good because you can learn technique, how to work on a mic, how to use your voice. But as soon as some teacher starts messing with your acting instincts, the next thing, you’re worrying about doing something wrong. I say the best and easiest way is to go strictly by instinct. Ad-lib a little bit if the spirit moves you. Don’t be tied totally to the script.”
I nodded.
Mike led me by the elbow to a door down the hall. Before he opened it, he said,“We’ve auditioned a good pool of talent, so the competition is stiff.”
The room was stuffed with at least thirty people. Mike told me these were other actors, writers, plus a few interns and hangers-on. Walter and a couple of guys stood over by the wall talking. Judging by their attire, I guessed that these guys were the unexplained “suits.”
All was quiet in my head. Though she wouldn’t admit it, I think even Betty Jane was a bit unnerved.
“Those are the network guys,” whispered Mike, pointing over at Walter.“They wanted to see what they’ve been paying for, for the last thirty days; one of them has his heart set on a woman we auditioned yesterday.” His honesty made me understand why my mother spent her life avoiding the truth and taught me to do the same. I smiled but I wanted to scream,
This is not helping me
.
“It’s always a little stressful when they’re here,” said Mike.
“Uh?”
“They have approval rights over who we choose for the lead.”
“I thought Walter—”
“Let’s get started, shall we?” said Walter.
Mike led me into the sound booth and pointed at an empty music stand with an individual microphone in front of it. Then he introduced me and I waved at everyone. The console on the other side of the glass was crowded with Walter, the suits, Mike, the writers, and a whole bunch of other people with already forgotten names.
“Are there always this many people at a recording?” I whispered to the guy next to me.
“Not usually. But Walter has a lot riding on you, and everyone is here to see if his ‘Little Waitress’ . . . ” He paused, and I suppressed a facial expression. “Everyone wants to see if Walter’s ‘Little Waitress’ passes muster.”
I nodded.
“No pressure,” he said. I didn’t hear anything comforting in his voice. I scanned the other faces behind the mics and music stands and found nothing warm on any of them.
“Let’s pick up at the beginning,” said Mike through the talkback.
I closed my eyes and thought,
Please don’t let me be humiliated,
as I floated backward and Betty Jane took over.
We read past line fourteen and it was finally time for Violet. I read the script through Betty Jane’s eyes.Violet had a good two pages’ worth of bantering with a couple of other characters.After the first few lines, it was clear Betty Jane was in the zone. Mike hadn’t indicated a stopping point, so the dialogue continued. My wandering thoughts wondered if he had done that to help me. Then I had a guilty thought about Peter. Betty Jane faltered a bit.
Focus, Holly.
Betty Jane found her rhythm again in time to do her last couple of lines.
“Oh, agony!” exclaimed Betty Jane as she threw out my arms.
What’s she doing? That’s not in the script.
“Cut!”
Walter, Mike, the writers, and the suits huddled outside the booth. One of the writers pointed at the paper in front of him.
Oh, shit. Do we wait? Should we go out?
I couldn’t ask any of these questions because Betty Jane was still in control. Mike motioned through the glass. I stood in the Committee’s living room and then felt the transition between me and Betty Jane. Once back in control, I blinked my eyes and squeezed my toes in my shoes. I had read somewhere that this brings an errant spirit back into the body. I didn’t feel any different.
I pushed the door in front of me. It felt impossibly heavy, but I knew that under other circumstances it would probably be featherlight.
“You changed the script,” accused one of the writers. Mike shushed him.
“Oh,” I said pensively,“it just felt like how Violet would end a conversation.Was it okay that I did that?”
“It was inspired,” said the suit who had his heart set on someone else. I’ll say it was inspired. Betty Jane ended every conversation
she didn’t like with this phrase. As if she were Jesus on the cross. “Love it. Go with it. Write it in. Hire the waitress. Walter, lunch?”
Walter nodded. “Get her a pop shield,” he said, and ushered the two suits out the door.
{ 5 }
W
e have the contract. You start in a month,” said Brenda.
I hung up the phone, switched on music, and danced around my apartment while everyone, including Betty Jane, did the same inside my head. I stopped when I noticed Cats One and Two crouching warily against the wall.
Sarge granted a week’s liberty, and I called Sarah to tell her the news. Brenda called me the next day with a booking for the following day. So much for liberty, but I tell you it felt good to earn enough money to pay my bills while I waited to start work on
The Neighborhood
.
The first Monday in March that same Town Car picked me up. This time, when we pulled into the Chelsea Piers, the guard said, “Well, all right, you got the part.”
“Holly Miller for
The Neighborhood
,” I said to the receptionist.
“Everyone’s in the conference room.” I didn’t move. Mike had called me the night before to tell me how the day would go.
But his instructions didn’t include the location of the conference room.
The receptionist looked up.“Are you the waitress?” I nodded. “They’ll never let you forget it,” she said.
“Looks like you won’t either.” I froze. I couldn’t believe that had come out of my mouth.
The receptionist’s face changed. Her new look wasn’t one of compassion. “Down the hall, make a right.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Yeah, good luck,” she said in a bored tone.
Mike said it was customary to do a table reading to review the script before taping. This got everyone on the same page and saved time later.
The table reading took place in a wood-paneled room with a window that looked out over the Hudson.The table itself was big enough to seat at least thirty people. Crowded around it were the same people who’d been at my audition. I scanned the room and saw Walter and the suits standing in the same spot they’d held four weeks ago. Did they sell tickets?
Mike waved me to a chair. “No need for introductions.You all met Holly last month.”
I sat down and pulled out my script and a packet of highlighters. I’d read that highlighting the script as the director read through it was a good way to give yourself visual cues. One of the writers smiled at me. Highlighter brownie points helped me relax. A little.
Mike read through the lines that were planned for that day. He described the action, how the characters moved, where they were (sneaking around a corner . . . shouting from the third floor to someone below), so that in session, when we taped the action, we’d have a good idea of the characters’ environment.
After we read through the script, we moved into the sound booth. Betty Jane and I transitioned and she took her place in front of the music stand in the center. I watched the other voice actors spread out their scripts while Betty Jane neatly stacked hers so that the paper fell together in a tidy rectangle.The voice-over tutor had told me over and over again to spread out the script, because many good recordings were ruined by rustling paper. Betty Jane knew this.
I stood up, ready to take over and fix the script.
She didn’t cede control. Then I remembered what she had said to me in the car earlier.“Why, Holly, my place on the pedestal is a right. Not a privilege.” I sat back down on the Committee’s couch.
We waited for the engineer to roll tape and slate. I’d learned that this helped him locate the proper takes when it came time to edit. Betty Jane didn’t have any lines on the take, but everyone still followed the other actors’ lines in the script.
My hand turned the page at line eighteen.
“Cut!” yelled Mike through the talkback.
Everyone waited in the booth for me to adjust my script. They didn’t know that inside my head we were all praying that Betty Jane would do it. She smiled and adjusted her hair instead.
“Someone get Holly’s script set up. I don’t want her turning pages during the recording.”
Finally, the voice actor next to me reached over and spread out the papers while Betty Jane stood and watched.This was not how I wanted to start out my new life. Sarge brought a barf bucket over. Sometimes having your thoughts immediately known wasn’t so bad.
“
The Neighborhood
, scene one, take two,” said the engineer through the talkback.
“Action,” said Mike.
We did twelve takes of that scene before Mike was happy.
When Betty Jane finally got her turn, she nailed her lines on the first try.We still had to do four more takes to get exactly what Mike wanted from the other actors.
“This is the last take for the day; make it a good one,” said Mike. I looked at my watch. Four hours had passed.
When I first saw the schedule, I thought,
Four hours, a breeze
. I was used to being on my feet for a lot longer than that. At the end of the four hours, we’d done at least a hundred takes. My back hurt and my legs ached, and I wondered if this was all I’d ever remember about working as a voice-over artist, since I’d always be on the Committee’s couch while Betty Jane stood in front of the microphone.
As I packed my stuff, one actor said begrudgingly, “Good work today.” The others just whispered to one another, and one actually pointed at me when I exited the booth.
“Let’s use one through ten from the second take and thirty through fifty from take six, but I want to edit in the pickup of line thirty from take four,” said Mike.