“A Strange Turn of Events.” Part 5

My Adventures and Brief Brush with Fame in Community Theater continued…

I returned to my Temp Job the next day my Coworker who for brevities sake I’ll call “G.” was all polite and smiles. No mention of any casting or callbacks – other than “Good Job on the monologue and where did I get such a nice suit?!” Other than that – nothing. It was with mixed emotions that I slunk back to my desk to do more boring word processing. Part of me was relieved and a tiny part of me was pissed off. “Fucking Hillbillies! They think bellowing into space is what they call “Acting” up here in the Sticks!”
So my workday resumed and the following day and then the following day after that. Which puts me up to Friday. On that morning G. came in with two scripts. He said the Theater was considering doing these two plays for their upcoming Season and would I read them over the weekend and… and…there might be a part for me? 
“Okay I can do this, no problem,” I thought and I continued to type or I should say hunt and peck away slowly on my screen. I was never a very fast typist. 32 words a minute with 29 of them spelled wrong was my usual meter.
I was looking forward to the weekend anyway. It was during the weekends I could binge watch what my wife called “My Monster Movies” and I had a couple of new Zombie, Vampire, Werewolf movies to watch. Everybody later would think Quentin Tarantino to be so cool because he was into “Cult Cinema ” but I had fallen in love with the genre years before it was thought of as cool.
It had started when I was a Fat Lonely Kid back in the sixties and all I had to do was watch TV. Saturday’s meant Monster Movies and I usually watched a couple of them each Saturday.  Sundays were boring as the mainstream channels ran religious or reruns of old Bonanza episodes programming. Snore!

My Mom didn’t really care what I was watching as she was usually dealing with some kind of drama with one of her “Beaus” or figuring out where to move us next. She was terrible with her personal life and her finances. These movies were fun. They had powerful beings that either wrecked personal lives or whole cities and usually had hot babes running around in low cut gowns or various states of undress. Wow! However, as I grew older to claim any association with this genre meant you were a very uncool being or worse a Geek. So those kinds of movies were forgotten as I got older.
Years later after my wife and I had moved back to California in 1987 I  rekindled my fondness for Monster movies as by that point I didn’t give a shit what anybody thought of what I watched on TV.

To further my interest in Cult Cinema there was a funny guy who ran a Video Store on Telegraph Avenue which specialized in these kinds of movies. His store was called “Professor Curtis” Cult Videos.” He had all kinds of monster movies including Kung Fu flicks,  old Scifi movies, Chinese Action movies usually starring Chow Yun Fat or actors with names I couldn’t pronounce.  Real exotic stuff. Needless say I was a regular there as I expanded my education watching all kinds of off the wall movies. Which is now viewed as something very cool. Hey, Quentin loves this stuff and isn’t he one of the cool guys now? An Avant-Garde Auteur? Bah! He was probably stocking shelves at some crappy “Quick Market” while I had already had a master’s degree in this stuff! Still back then one didn’t talk about Zombie movies in a mixed company not unless one wanted to be thought of as some kind of Weirdo. Still, there were small press magazines where one could read and correspond with Fellow Weirdos. I even had a couple of articles printed in a couple of magazines with titles like Scary Monsters, Asian Cult Cinema,  Euro Trash Cinema, and Monster International. 

Anyway back to my weekend. G. had given me two scripts. One was Moliere’s Tartuffe (Oh God no!) and the other was a comedy with a part I really liked.  The part was an Italian Movie Star who was basically a fop, a coward, a blowhard who was always shooting his mouth off or hiding when the action got going. Damn, I can’t remember the title of this play but it would be fun to see a production of it at some point. Kind of a “Murder on the Orient Express” kind of play except it was funny and I think it takes place on a luxury boat. 
On Sunday G. called me and asked me what I thought of the two scripts. I told him that Tartuffe was ok but I really liked the other play and I would like to be considered for the part of the Italian Actor. Me – the bigshot negotiator. G. then told me I could get the part of the Italian Blowhard if…I would play the part of…get this…Tartuffe! “You mean you want me to play a part of one of the characters in Tartuffe?” “No, he replied I want you to play Tartuffe.” “G., are you nuts? I don’t know anything about Classical Theatre or French Comedy? I would be terrible” I screeched. “No I want YOU to play Tartuffe ” he again calmly stated. “Why me?” Why?” “Well, he said I like the Suit.” “Your kidding?” “Nope…I like the suit and I think you’d make a great Tartuffe. ” Oh for crying out loud. “Let me think about it…no wait…Oh,…What the Hell…Okayyyy.”
The deal was struck. I would get to play the part I wanted if I played the part I knew I would totally suck at playing. 
What a Devil’s bargain. 

End of Part 5

To be continued…