July 26, 1995
My callback time today was 2:30pm. Much to my surprise, about 30 other people had the same "appointment." Consequently, my arrival at 2:35pm put me at about 28th on the sign-in sheet. Whatever.
I shuffle into the little theater they've set aside to hold us and take my seat amidst the masses. There are little pockets of people who already know each other chatting and laughing. There are people working on voices and discussing their favorite cartoons. Everyone is trying to figure out what we'll have to do when we get in there. And there I sit, random guy who doesn't really do voices, who doesn't really do improv, who doesn't have a pocket of supporters. What am I doing there?
About 20 minutes into this waiting stuff, I decide that it might be better for me to just take off. They're taking in two people every five minutes or so, meaning it will be over an hour before they get to me, plus I just seem so out of place. Why try to "fool" them any longer?
But, of course, I stay and suck it up. Gotta look like a professional for my new casting connection. Maybe he will call me in for some other project that I have a shot at. And as I sit there, eventually word trickles down which scenes we'll have to do, so I start to look at and prepare those. Preparing scenes... hey, that's something I can do! Maybe this won't be too bad after all.
After about an hour in this room, I am called in with Mr. John Crane, one of the main pocket of people who knows each other, and seemingly a witty guy. We are officially informed that we will be performing the "trial scene" together. For the first part of the scene, John is assigned Bugs, and I, the other line or two. Having been told they want to see lots of movement and expression, I keep myself active during the Bugs monologue making faces and gesturing and tapping my foot. All seems well.
Then we switch. I take on the role of Bugs for the interrogation portion of the scene. Now since I am not a guy who does voices, I trash that whole approach and play up the "good cop/bad cop" elements of the scene. Success! I end up getting a fair number of laughs. All seems quite well.
We switch back for a repeat of that scene with me as incidental characters again, and in my Daffy Duck Oscar speech parody, I throw in "You like me. You really like me" as the last words of the audition. That gets a nice little laugh also. Things couldn't seem more well.
And so I was glad I didn't leave. Ivan Reitman was there and I think
I looked good in front of him, so if nothing else comes of this, at
least I've got that, baby.