By way of introduction, I am an actor.  I prefer the gender-neutral “actor” to “actress” which makes one sound more girly and feminine than one really is.  I have enjoyed a modest success in my career, largely due to my relatively late discovery of the fact that I am really good at improv comedy.  I feel a little cheated by the fact that there was no IAT (Improv Assessment Test) administered to me in high school...

Had I known then what I was capable of, I wouldn’t have wasted all those valuable years working at a divorce law firm, dating service, car leasing office and special education department, respectively.  Or rather, I would probably have still done those things, but I would likely have been spending more of my time at those jobs dicking around on the internet and waiting for it to be time for rehearsal.

One day, while taking a “nap” at 6 in the evening on a lovely spring day in my New York apartment, which I couldn’t enjoy fully because I was poor, hated New York and kept a bottle of Georgi vodka in my closet (the only storage space of any significance in the whole damned apartment) behind a bridesmaid’s dress, I got a call from the director of an improv theater I used to work at.  He informed me that HBO’s fledgling semi-regular series “Sketchpad” wanted to buy one of the theater’s sketches and they had specifically requested that I fly out to LA to film the sketch.

Seems like a win-win, right?  “Seems” and “is” are two totally distinct and separate things in life, I’ve found, and this matter was no exception.

The next day, the casting person called me to tell me I would have to join AFTRA to be on the show, which meant me finding 1258 non-existent dollars somewhere in my household budget to pay the union “initiation” fee.  I had spent all of my “mad money” on the Georgi vodka, so that was out.  I wheedled with the union who let me get off with writing them a $600 check and made me “promise” to pay them the rest later.  As someone who lives by the motto “Pay the rent, pay Ma Bell, all the rest can go to hell,” I can safely say that the remaining $658 will be perpetually “in the mail.” 

About two weeks before I was scheduled to shoot the show, and after I had already received confirmation on my plane tickets, I got a call from the director of my old theater telling me that the whole thing might be off because the director didn’t think one of the other actresses looked young enough to play the part they had cast her in.  The theater director had said that the production company would tape the sketch with our actress or they wouldn’t get the sketch at all.  I was very impressed that he stood up for one of us with such an impressively hardline stance, but at the same time, I was thinking “Does this mean I’m not gonna be on HBO?!  Goddamn it!  Someone CAVE, PLEASE!”

In the end, the HBO director caved.  I guess the producers realized they had no way of casting another sketch group, doing a table read, buying the actors’ plane tickets and gathering appropriate costuming in time.  There was a little passive-aggressive retaliation involved, though, which I shall get to in a moment.

I flew out on Jet Blue, arriving in Long Beach, only to find out that my frantic calls to the production company and my own friends meant there were two people waiting at the airport to pick me up.  I let the friend off the hook and had the production company girl take me to my hotel.  This poor little PA picked me up at this airport a trillion miles away from LA in her tiny little car and drove me to my hotel, which was conveniently located across from the studio.  It was the kind of hotel that may have been nice once, but has since become the kind of faded glory place that only serves Frosted Flakes at the complimentary Continental Breakfast.  The first night I was there, I went out to a convenience store for aspirin and, in walking home, got propositioned by at least five people who assumed, incorrectly, that I was a hooker.  Apparently hookers these days wear Capri pants and Birkenstocks, because that was my attire and it was found, by my admirers in their pickup trucks, to be alluring.

The first day of the shoot was a dress rehearsal that was filmed.  Due to the director’s concerns with the so-called “aged” appearance of the actress he wanted booted, I spent an hour in the makeup chair, having liquid latex applied to my face and silver added to my hair to make me look several years older than the other actress, who happened to be my friend (Let me state for the record that she is not, in any way, an “older” looking woman).  The fumes from the latex made me loopy and I believe led me to flirt with the sound guy as he threaded a microphone up the front of my dress.  The fact that I looked like Aunt Bea didn’t seem to dissuade me in the least from gettin’ my flirt on, and I made a total ass of myself.

We taped our sketch in front of no one on what we were told would be the same stage that Sharon Osborne would be using for her new talk show the following week.  They made us awkwardly pause so we would know when to “hold for laughs” and we wound up shooting this tiny little 45-second scene about twenty to thirty times.  It was  odd, partly because the director kept having these private little side conversations with people after our scene, only to have the assistant director come over and give us a line reading for our next take. 

After we wrapped for the day, I snuck out to watch another sketch being taped.  Let’s just say it involved copious amounts of a certain bodily fluid and moaning.  Grateful I got off with looking like Aunt Bea, I left the studio and walked out into the dizzying LA sunshine.

The next day was my day off.  All I will say is that the La Brea tar pits look way closer to Sunset Blvd. on a map than they actually are.  Ye gods, my feet STILL hurt from that walk.

We did our “official” taping on the morning of the third day, in front of absolutely no one.  We were told at the beginning of the day that we may be shooting later, in front of an audience.  I hadn’t heard about this prior to my flight out to LA, so it was a surprise.  Just as we were about to tape our segment sans audience, the assistant director told us that we would be released after we shot the scene.  That meant no audience.  That meant my two friends in the sketch with me (who live in LA) had to make about twenty phone calls apiece to let their friends know not to come to the studio. 

When we finally taped our sketch this last time, there was some fuming, which I picked up on.  After my exit and the director yelling “Cut,” I made a snarky comment about the director’s parentage under my breath to my friend…you know, the elderly one.  She got this horrified look on her face and pointed to my chest.  No, my boobs weren’t on fire, she was simply reminding me of the fact that I would never again work in that town because my damned body mic was still attached to me and, in fact, still feeding live into the director’s ear.  My bad.

As I left the studio that day, the costume designer came over to tell me how much she liked my work.  It was a sweet thing to say and I wanted to tell her so, but about ten giant blonde things came swirling in on roller skates and I had to shuffle out of the way, but quick.  Apparently, they  were in the next sketch to be taped…

A few months after the whole debacle was done, I got an email from my withered, decrepit, old, old, old friend who told me that the premiere party was that night.  Apparently, the studio was required to let only ONE person on the cast know, and I was getting the information third hand.  I was all sorts of pissed off until she told me the next day that our sketch was on next to the ending credits and that the food at the party was bad.

So, what did I learn?  Never ever make nasty comments about the guy who’s directing unless you’re safely 2000 miles away and then only do it if you whisper it quietly into an empty bottle of Georgi.

--Amy Roeder is an improvisor, actor and producer based out of Chicago. She loves to hear other people's stories.