Weirdest-audition-ever-backroom-casting-couch -

“He’s already moving to Stage two: Anger,” she noted.

“Uh… ‘creativity’?”

The bathrobe woman smiled for the first time. “Acceptance. Then stage six is ‘convincing the hamster to rate your performance on a scale of one to wheel.’ Stage seven is when you eat the meatball sub without asking whose it was.”

And that, my friends, is Hollywood.

“The producer will see you now.”

The nun cackled. “Oh, honey. We wish it was that simple. Just sit.”

I sat back down. Not because I wanted to. Because my body had entered a state of shock. weirdest-audition-ever-backroom-casting-couch

That’s how I, Marcus Cole, a semi-employed actor with a resume thin as rice paper, ended up in a part of Hollywood that smelled like stale cigars and broken dreams. The address led to a warehouse behind a laundromat. No sign. Just a red door.

The meatball sub looked three days old. The hamster squeaked again – approvingly, I think.

“Stage one: Denial,” said the bathrobe woman. “He’s already moving to Stage two: Anger,” she noted

So I did it. I sat on the farting couch. I performed the Seven Stages of Existential Dread, culminating in a whispered monologue to the hamster about my fear of being forgotten. The hamster ran on its wheel. The nun cried. Gerald the Avocado gave me a standing ovation.

I sat. The cushion immediately let out a long, wet fart sound. The woman in the bathrobe made a checkmark on her clipboard.