Given Natalie’s penchant for two-timing and sophistry I knew the relationship was doomed but I couldn’t let it go and walked around in a half-daze with my heart broken in pieces. She’d break up with me, then I’d break up with her, then she’d break up with me. Then she’d break up with Sue. All of it giving life to the adage that lesbians date for six months and break up for fourteen years. Eventually the relationship died of it’s own weight as my mother would say, but not without its fair share of drama. I remained in a heart-broken funk for nearly a year.
Sadly, it was also time for my internship at the Taper to come to a close. Amy had extended it for as long as she could but it was only meant to be a six-month job and I’d been there a year. I started getting calls for work fairly quickly and ended up working for a casting director at a major studio whom I’ll call Debbie. Debbie cast a popular sitcom of the moment and did several pilots when they came her way. I missed the warm theater vibe of The Taper. Suddenly I was working for a new company with a woman I felt uneasy around. Debbie’s body was merely a vessel within which she stored endless amounts of rage. One of my duties was to make sure the back door was unlocked for her arrival. On the mornings I forgot to unlock the door Debbie would be outside frantically jiggling the door handle and glaring at me. She’d enter the office once I’d leapt up to open the door and began clearing her throat. This is something she did when she was really angry. A constant throat clearing. Then one day she simply stopped speaking to me and stopped making eye contact with me. Unless she had a session for me to set up she said nary a word to me. She underscored her dislike of me by lavishing attention on a girl named Olivia, an assistant to another casting director at the studio. The difference in how she treated me versus how she treated me and how she treated Olivia was starkly obvious and designed to be so.
She hadn’t said a word to me in weeks when one day she came out to my office,
“You answered me rudely about Bill Dana.”
I could now see the source of her anger. Her lips were pursed containing oceans of fury.
“How’d I answer you about Bill Dana?”
“You know.” She said. I most certainly didn’t know. First of all I was subservient by nature, more likely to kowtow than stand up for myself. It simply wasn’t my style to be rude to a boss. Since I didn’t know what she was talking about and she wouldn’t enlighten me, we were at a stand-off. I just know I dreaded going into work each day. I won’t say she was the meanest casting director in town, but I would say she was the meanest woman in all of show business. I went to my support group meetings and stayed sober, but inside I was a wreck. I was truly frightened of her. Even my mother once said to me “Why do you shrink when you’re around her! Stand up for yourself!” I didn’t see how my temperament and insecurities would ever result in my standing up to her. I literally cowered around her. I’d heard she’d sent an actress out into the stairwell to vomit. by threatening to call her agent and demand he never send her out on another audition. She loved to play with people’s livelihoods. She left a string of dead assistants in her wake. I was one in a line, but one of the more fragile ones.
I finally got my nerve up and went into her office to tell her I was quitting. She looked shocked. I rushed to my therapist after work to tell her I’d quit. My therapist was still getting her hours and well . . . she was an awful therapist.
“How can you quit your job!!!???” She practically howled instead of asking why I hadn’t quit sooner. “What will you do for money??” The truth was that my mother was supporting me so I had the financial issue covered, and yet the therapist rattled me so, I actually believed that quitting the job was a mistake.
The next day Debbie called me into her office. She was attempting to be “Nice Debbie” as though there just such a thing.
“I don’t want you to leave.” she said. Then, “I think you’ll make a wonderful casting director. I have a problem with boundaries, do you understand what I’m saying?”
I hadn’t the vaguest idea what she was saying, but my therapist had so frightened me against quitting, I agreed to stay. Then one day she called me into her office.
“I’m leaving the studio and going independent and I want you to come with me.” I was filled with shock and awe. Debbie wanted me to go independent with her? What about her boundary issues and Bill Dana? I told her I would. The next day I had spoken to an agent in passing saying that I was so happily surprised that Debbie wanted me to go independent with her. Said agent happened to be having dinner with Debbie that night and repeated what I’d said: that I was happy to be going independent with her. I don’t know how Debbie heard the news but it got twisted up in that complicated brain of hers and all she heard was that I was talking about her outside of the office. And I was. I was actually complimenting her.
Back into her office I went the next morning.
“I had dinner with (name of agent) last night and he told me you’ve been talking about me outside the office.” At this point I was spinning, had I said something bad about her? Was there something I don’t remember? She continued, “You have to leave, I can’t trust someone I just can’t trust.” I wish I had stood up to this paranoid maniac and said, “What’d I say exactly? You mean saying I was happy to go independent with you?” But I was frozen in place. I’d agreed to stay only to be fired. I knew when Debbie asked me to stay on it was just a matter of time before she’d reverse the situation once more gaining the upper hand.
To make matters worse, Debbie was now trying to blackball me from the field. Every interview ended with me not getting the job because Debbie would call the casting directors I’d met with and tell them not to hire me. This got back to me from another casting director in the office. For the first time I had real fear of being able to make a living on my own.
Yet another wonderful installment. I don't understand why this CD decided to be so horrible to you? Maybe it's like the grade school bullies who sensed vulnerability and sensitivity in my daughter so they went for blood! I am so sorry you were treated this way.
So great. Love your writing. Thanks for sharing this journey. So brave and good to know. Keep 'em coming. Stay safe, healthy and sane. :)