Jimmy Yang - How to American

Central Casting is like the open mic for actors; there’s zero barrier of entry and it was filled with desperate people. Every day there are packs of people lined up to “register” to be an actor. Everyone had to grab a number and wait in a folding chair, inside of a cold gray building, just like the DMV. It was more like herding sheep than becoming an actor. You fill out some paperwork, wait for them to call your name, take a passport photo, then off you go to be a star in Hollywood. They compile a database of people who are willing to work on set for minimum wage and then they call you if they need a person to blend into the background of a commercial, TV show or movie. There are many words for extras: background actors, background artists and, my favorite, atmosphere. I quickly realized this isn’t where dreams come true; it’s where people sign up to be warm flesh bags that are as unnoticeable as the air in the atmosphere.

There was every type of person waiting to sign up in Central Casting, from a midwestern mom, to an authentic Montana lumberjack, to the super-good-looking dude who truly believed he was destined to be a star. It was kind of beautiful in its own way, to have a place where people who would never hang out with each other came together to pursue the same dream. But as beautiful as that might sound, realistically, only one out of a hundred thousand of us flesh bags would ever make it in this town. I’m sure this was the point where many of these people who left their lives behind for their big Hollywood dream realized, Fuck, what am I doing here? At least that’s how I felt that day at Central Casting. I started to second-guess myself for not taking the job at Smith Barney. Maybe I am delusional. And just then, a dude snapped a picture of me, perfectly capturing all of my regrets in that moment. That was my first headshot in Hollywood. I was now officially signed up to be a star. Shit. I went home, and by home, I mean a random Craigslist guy’s living room with my twin-size mattress.

Random Craigslist guy was a twenty-year-old black dude named Nathan, but he insisted people call him Nathaniel. He was smaller than me but had twice the pizzazz, a gay man having the time of his life in Hollywood. I never figured out what he did for a living, but he somehow managed to rent this apartment and throw the occasional party. One night he invited his buddies, five gay Latino dudes to be exact, to the apartment for a little get-together. They seemed like nice, friendly dudes, and I mostly kept myself occupied playing Halo on the Xbox. What Nathaniel didn’t tell me was that all five of his fabulous Latino hunks planned on crashing in the apartment that night, and he could only accommodate one of them in his room, because, well, Nathaniel believed in monogamy. The other four dudes would crash in the living room with me. Whatever. I guess I’d finally have my first all-American slumber party.

It was three in the morning, I lay down on my bed, but all of them were still taking tequila shots. Then two of them started making out right next to my head, and the other two were egging them on. I kept my eyes closed, pretending to be asleep. Then I kept hearing one dude repeatedly say, “Hey, Pablo, you’re a power bottom, huh?” For people who don’t know what a power bottom is, I’m not going to explain it in this book; just google it on UrbanDictionary.com. Look, I love gay people, but if anyone, gay or straight, starts talking about taking it up the ass next to me when I sleep, I’m right to feel a little uncomfortable. I didn’t want to know what was going to happen beyond this point, so I kept my eyes closed, put on my headphones and started blasting Jay-Z at max volume. Till today, I have no idea what exactly happened that night. All I know is there were four dudes with perfectly trimmed eyebrows next to me and one of them was a power bottom. By the time I woke up, nobody was there anymore. Maybe it was all a dream? It was definitely all a dream. Right?

There were a lot of things I chose to not understand when I lived with Nathaniel. The second month I was there, he had trouble coming up with his eight-hundred-dollar share of the rent. I had already given him my precious three hundred dollars, so this was beyond frustrating. What if he takes my three hundred bucks and we still both get evicted? That’s bullshit! When I asked him, “Hey, are you going to be able to come up with your rent?” he would just brush me off and say, “Don’t worry about it, I’ll get it.” I tried my best to not worry about getting evicted and prayed that Pablo or his four friends would loan him some money.

It was now the twentieth of the month, the landlord had already come and knocked on our door twice and I was sure the third time was going to be the end. I was about to either be homeless or institutionalized in the old Chinese people community. I was stressing out so badly, no amount of Halo or Jay-Z could distract me. And Nathaniel was just chilling in his room without a care in the world. Then around four o’clock in the afternoon there was a knock on the door. I turned off the TV and jumped under my covers, pretending nobody was home.

“Coming!” said Nathaniel, as he casually cruised out of his room.

“What the fuck are you doing? Don’t answer that!” I whispered.

“It’s okay, it’s my friend.”

Nathaniel opened the door. It wasn’t the landlord. On the other side of the door was a sheepish seventy-year-old gray-haired man wearing a cashmere cardigan sweater. They didn’t greet each other or even shake hands. Nathaniel led him to his room without saying a word. He shut the door behind him and locked it. And once again, I chose to remain ignorant and put on my headphones to Jay-Z’s Black Album . Ten minutes later, the old man strolled out of Nathaniel’s room and left without ever making eye contact with me. I had no idea what happened in that room that day. All I know is Nathaniel had the rent money after that and I wasn’t evicted.

I couldn’t even land a job as an extra. I’d call in to the Central Casting system every day, where there was a prerecorded message for available extra work. If there was something that fit your look, you would call another number to put your name and headshot in for approval. I called in for “college background kids” and “Chinatown teenagers” several times, but for some reason I’d never get a response. Maybe they saw the deep regret in my headshot OR maybe I was too good looking to blend in with the atmosphere. I’m sure they thought if I was in a background of a TV show, the audience would be so distracted by my beauty, they couldn’t concentrate on the show. “Oh my God, who is that kid in the background eating a sandwich? He’s way too hot, I can’t even pay attention to the show!” Well, at least that’s the story I tried to tell myself of in order to preserve what little ego I had left.

A few months went by and I’d made zero dollars and no progress in LA. I was just hanging out at open mics with zero prospects and my strip club savings were running thin. A friend who worked at the Comedy Store suggested I sign up on the casting websites. Casting websites such as LACasting.com and ActorsAccess.com give actors opportunities to submit for acting jobs themselves, without representation. Usually, these jobs are shabby nonunion reenactment gigs like America’s Most Wanted that pay a hundred dollars to play a serial murderer on the loose. I didn’t mind working those jobs and I desperately needed that hundred bucks, but the problem was none of them ever really fit my description. I mean, when was the last time you saw an Asian murderer on America’s Most Wanted ? But what the hell, I didn’t have anything else going on, so I gave it a shot. I signed up for a membership on all the casting websites. It was as desperate as a divorcée signing up for all the dating websites on the Internet in search of a new lover. None of these casting sites was free. They were all part of a racket to make money off of people’s dreams in Hollywood. It cost fifteen dollars a month to be a member, thirty dollars to upload a headshot and forty dollars to upload an acting reel on each website. I couldn’t afford new headshots, which would have cost a cool five hundred dollars, so I had my friend take some amateur headshots of my hair blowing in the wind. I didn’t have an acting reel. How was I supposed to have an acting reel if I’d never acted before? So I just put up two minutes of my stand-up comedy video. I checked off all the special skills on the websites’ digital résumés. I thought if someone was willing to pay me, I could always learn to ride a unicycle and wrangle some ferrets. On LACasting.com, there’s an “additional skill set” comment box, and I wrote “New in town, good comedic timing, looking for representation.” It was a desperate cry for help.