Success
I stood before a linoleum and wood-panelled hallway whose spokes shot out in several directions, pairs of waiting room arm chairs placed at intervals throughout. To my right, a pony-tailed old man with jeweller’s glasses stood in a shop offering “reweaving.” To my left, an open door marked “Success Casting” and a generous dose of pomade, and below that, a man about thirty who asked: “Are you here to be a paid audience participant?”
In the waiting area, I leaned over the odorless bowl of purple potpourri that sat between us and struck up a conversation with the woman next to me: “Have you ever done this sort of work before?”
“Yeah,” she said. ”It beats sitting at home. It’s the kind of thing you do between two other things,” she went on. ”I mean, some of the shows are insanely stupid. Have you ever done this before?”
“No.”
“It’s interesting to see what goes wrong. Occasionally they go into these fits of giggles where they can’t look at each other with out laughing and they just keep fucking up. It’s funny when it gets to the point that they apologize to the audience because they can’t remember their lines—It’s like, if you just want to sit there laughing then we could trade places and I’ll come down there and say your lines.”
As it turned out, Marie had been involved in this side of the business for quite some time. “I worked on the first and second seasons of American Gladiator, and we had huge audiences for that. They were all paid.”
For a second, I was unsure whether I remembered American Gladiator. “One of the hosts was Hulk Hogan, and the other was Leila Ali,” Marie said. Hulk Hogan appeared in my head and then American Gladiator was there in full detail: the flood-lit arena with glistening, UV-tanned bodybuilders in American flag leotards. Gemini, Ice, Nitro, Hawk and the others, chicken-fighting with styrofoam jousts from atop oversized pillars.
“It went off air when [Leila] got pregnant, but I heard it’s coming back. Maybe they’re waiting for her.”
Perhaps the locked doors and tinted windows at the entrance were a ploy to scare away the undetermined. Everyone who managed to find their way into the building—10 or 12 while I was waiting—gave the place the same bewildered once over. A woman with tinted eyeglasses floated in with her husband on a cloud of perfume and asked, “Is this where you get paid to watch tapings?”
With each new arrival, Marie chuckled gamely at the incoherence of the interview procedure. For all of us, the sequence was unclear—do I knock upon completion my application or wait for someone to come out? Marie and I fell behind 3 or four rounds of interviews with our failure to knock promptly. ”I wish i could figure out how to do this, Marie muttered, “because if I knew what type of shows they’re seating for or how they got them, I’m sure I could do a better job.” She giggled.
Marie was a veritable encyclopedia of TV trivia and paid audience info. We talked about the sorts of shows that require paid audience members—sitcoms (“directors think it makes the performances more genuine”), game shows (she once worked on “The Price is Right”), and especially court shows, who have to pay everyone in the room. “I think they give you a donuts and coffee break in the morning so you don’t fall asleep during taping,” Marie suggested.
“What about Jerry Springer or Montell Jordan?” I asked.
“I once sat in the audience for Dr. Phil,” she volunteered matter-of-factly.
The interview itself was practically non-existent. Tom read through my half-page application standing in a corner and Tiffany beamed from her desk through a charming gap between her front teeth.
“It says here you’ve never done paid audience work before,” Tom said. ”Ever been to any tapings or anything?”
“No,” I said. ”I just moved out here.”
“OK. And, this email, you check this regularly?”
“Daily,” I said.
“OK. And this phone, that’s your cell phone?”
“Yeah, that’s my cell,” I said.
“Like, we call you on that, you’ll answer right away type of thing?” He wanted to know.
When they’d determined I was sufficiently reachable, Tiffany had me fill out an I-9 and said I could send proof of eligibility by email, handing me a packet of thick, marbled, paper. “This will answer all your questions,” she promised.
Only Marie, I thought, could do that.
