The Todd Glass Situation (16 page)

“Wouldn't it be funnier if I was sitting at the table with the customers?”

I managed to stay seated through the whole audition for
Lucky Louie
. The minute I left the room, Louis looked at the producers. “Are you all thinking what I'm thinking?”

“He's the fucking guy!” they said.

“Yeah, he's the fucking guy!” Louis said.

Chris Albrecht, who knew comedy from his time managing the New York Improv, was running HBO. Like it or not, I've got to give him credit: He sensed there was something a little bit odd about my performance. “Let's get him back in here for a minute,” he said.

Someone called me back into the room. “We'd like to try the scene again,” the casting director said apologetically. “Only this time, can you walk around the room while you do it?”

“You got me!” is what I should have said. Instead, I did the audition again, this time on my feet. Needless to say, I wasn't the fucking guy, and Louis found another costar.

Commercial auditions were even worse. They made me feel like I was back on a yellow bus driving to school. They made me sick the night before; they made me sick the day of; they made me sick the day after, thinking how bad I did the day before. (I'm starting to feel a little sick right now just writing about auditions.) My manager at the time, Bruce Smith, was pretty good about booking commercials for his clients, so I was nauseous about five days a week. The worst moments were the evenings when seven o'clock would roll around and I didn't have any auditions the next day—
Yes!
—only to have Bruce call me: “Hey, guess what? Good news! I got you a reading for Kia tomorrow . . .”

Cue the stomachache.

Most of the people who were casting commercials were great—the majority of the time they went out of their way to be friendly and accommodating. That didn't help. I would totally blow the reading, and someone would say, “Why don't you go out into the hall, come back in, and you'll do it again?” Or, “Do you want to come back in on Monday?”

NOOOOOOO!!! Let me go! Please let me just go home now.

“Let's do it again, only this time we want you to try . . .”

Okay, I'll do it again, but are you okay that I'm going to do it exactly the same way?

I know that auditions are a necessary part of the process—I'm not blaming anybody but myself for the constant stomach pain—but I think I hate them for the same reasons I love stand-up comedy. When you're performing onstage, you are the writer, the producer, the director, the editor, and the star. If the joke bombs, you can't blame anyone else. (Well, there's always the crowd . . . the sound system . . . the lights . . . the comic who came up before you . . . but other than that it's you.)

Auditions feel like the opposite, especially commercial auditions, which are based primarily on the way you look. They tend to cast two kinds of people: the drop-dead gorgeous, and their best friend, who maybe isn't ugly, but isn't that great-looking, either. The first time I walked into an audition and saw a roomful of drop-dead gorgeous people, I smiled.
So this is what I look like!
Then some guy with a clipboard glanced at me and said, “You must be here for Clearasil. That's down the hall.” By the time I got to the end of the hallway, I had a much more accurate idea of how I really looked.

Sometimes it's so arbitrary your looks don't matter. One time I decided
not
to go on an audition. I just didn't feel like going, so I blew it off. The next day, my manager called. “Good news, Todd . . . You got a callback from Chevrolet.”

He's fucking with me
, I thought.
He knows I blew it off and now he's fucking with me.
I decided to call his bluff: “Oh good! When is it?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Oh. Good. Great. I mean, I thought I did a good job. Okay, well, you know, fax me over the information.”

“I will.”

“I'm sure you will. Thanks for the call.”

Turns out, he wasn't fucking with me. I'd really earned a callback for an audition I didn't even go on. And yes, I ended up landing the part.

But I still hated the whole process. I remember finding out that my friend Andy Kindler didn't bother with commercials. “Do we really have to go on auditions?” I moaned to my manager like a whiny teenager. “Why do I have to if Andy doesn't?”

“Todd, you're a full-grown adult. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do.”

His words were on my mind when I went for what would turn out to be my last commercial audition. Like I said, most of the people involved in the casting process are actually very nice. But then there are the other people: the ones who are bitter about having to videotape two hundred people at a cattle call so that the client can look at thirty. “Okay, everybody come over here,” said the casting director, like he was talking to a group of unruly second-graders. “No one is doing this right. The guy
in the ad isn't
happy
, he's
excited
. And he's not
disappointed
; it's more like he's
bummed out
. Not
anxious,
but
frustrated.
Has everyone got that?”

Now I didn't know what the fuck this guy was talking about, but he seemed pretty confident about what he wanted. “Hey!” I said. “You sound like you know what to do. Maybe you should do it!” The line got a couple of snickers, just not from the casting director. I walked out of the audition, clearly having impressed no one.

Well, maybe not
no one
. A few years later, I was at the Improv and Nick Swardson was telling me about a hilarious comedian that I had never seen before. So I walked down the hall to catch Zach Galifianakis doing a set and, within two minutes, I fucking loved this guy. After the show, Nick introduced me to Zach.

“Actually, we've met once before,” Zach said. He'd been on that same audition and had seen me storm out. He was so amused by the pathos of it all that he'd stolen my Polaroid from the casting director and had held on to it ever since.

•  •  •

W
hile I knew I hated commercial auditions, I was more conflicted when I heard about the tryouts for the second season of a TV show called
Last Comic Standing.
It was a reality show that put ten aspiring comics in a house somewhere in the Hollywood Hills, wired with microphones and about sixty or seventy cameras, and let them compete against one another until there was a winner. The show was hosted by my old neighbor and fellow outdoor peeing enthusiast Jay Mohr.

I didn't know if I wanted to do it. Reality shows weren't
really my thing and I suspected that they were more likely to damage my career than do me any long-term good. But I'd seen what
Last Comic Standing
had done for the Season One contestants—you couldn't argue with the fact that being on the show had helped their careers.

I was still on the fence the night before the tryouts. I probably wouldn't have gone if it hadn't been for Scott Aukerman and B. J. Porter, the guys who did Comedy Death-Ray. “This is a chance to do your act on network TV in front of millions of people,” they reminded me. “You really think you're past
that
point in your career?”

Lucky for me, the audition process just meant doing my routine in front of a few judges at the Improv. They flew me to New York for a second audition. Then a third in Las Vegas.

I'll admit it: By the time I got through the third audition, I really wanted it. When they called my name, I remember doing a
Fuck yeah!

Then I had to do the show.

It should have been easy for me. A reality show. All I had to do was be myself, which might have been fine—if I wasn't hiding a part of who I was. I could bring a noisy fan with me to help cover up my snoring, but concealing my sexuality in a house where every word and action was being filmed and recorded? I might as well have had to memorize a script.

When you're on a reality show, you really do forget that there are people watching your every move. You might glance into the refrigerator one day and wonder out loud to another comedian why there isn't any orange juice. The next day, the fridge will be stocked with four different brands—an odd coincidence, until you remember that you're wearing a microphone.
One night I snuck downstairs for a midnight snack and accidently dropped a glass bottle, which shattered all over the floor. Before I could finish shouting whatever expletive popped into my head, a door sprung open. A guy I'd never seen before emerged with a broom and swept it all up.

Okay, having secret elves to clean up after me was pretty cool. But the phone calls to the outside world were another story. They let me switch my microphone off when I called Chris, but I knew that I was still surrounded by cameras and probably more microphones.

Fortunately, Chris and I were already used to hiding. We worked out a series of codes beforehand so that we could communicate with one another. “Did you get my fax?” meant “I love you.” “Can you resend that email?” meant “I miss you.” As an added benefit, keeping our relationship secret made my career seem a lot more thriving than it was—I was clearly waiting on a lot of faxes and emails.

My biggest fear was that one of the other comedians would out me. I went into the house with the naïve idea we were going to spend nights around the fire talking comedy. “Who's better, Leno or Letterman? What comedians do you like? Who do you dislike? What does it mean to sell out?”

Some of those conversations actually took place. My friends Gary Gulman and Bonnie McFarlane and I had a lot of fun talking shop and doing bits with one another. Most of that material went straight to the editing room floor: The producers were much more interested in getting what I called the “Who ate my cookies?” footage.

Like the night I climbed into bed and realized my fan was missing. I knew that the producers were messing with me,
setting up a long night of me snoring while my roommates tossed and turned and cursed me. (It didn't happen—instead I yelled at the top of my lungs that I was three minutes away from ripping cameras off the walls. One of the secret elves returned my fan a few seconds later.)

They constantly tried to pit us against one another, encouraging us to form alliances, break alliances, and otherwise partake in all of the reality TV bullshit you've seen before on other shows. Gary, Bonnie, and I did our best not to get involved with any of the drama, sticking to jokes and bits and shoptalk. Alas, not everyone saw it our way. The smell of fame and fortune led the rest of the cast into schemes and betrayals. It broke my heart to see comedians act that way, but this was the nature of the show and I don't blame them for it.

And while I'd like to say that I avoided all the drama out of some noble calling, the truth is that I was terrified of pissing off the wrong person. I didn't know if any of the other comedians knew that I was gay, but I suspected that getting outed in front of millions of viewers was the kind of material that reality TV producers dream of. I kept quiet, didn't make any waves, and was the second person eliminated from the show. I guess when it came down to it, I was still a long way away from being ready for “reality” anything.

So
I'm in the ambulance, the lights flashing, siren blaring, cutting a path through the traffic on La Cienega. “BLUE FORD TRUCK,” the driver says through his PA, his voice full of righteous anger. “MOVE TO YOUR RIGHT, NOW!”

I've got a huge grin plastered across my face.
If this is what having a heart attack feels like, everybody should have one!
Later it will occur to me that the good feelings probably have a lot to do with the gallons of morphine that they've pumped into my system.

They lower me out of the ambulance and wheel me into the emergency room with a definite sense of urgency. A doctor in a white coat strides into the room, looking over my chart. “We have some really good news for you . . . ,” he begins.

Your heart just skipped a beat
is the way I finish the sentence in my head.
A bit of a scare, but nothing to get concerned about . . .

“One of our best doctors is on the way. He'll be here in just a few minutes.”

Fuuuuuuuck.

This is bad. I mean, what's he supposed to say? “He's not one of our best doctors. In fact, he's a little bit of a drinker. But . . . he's got a great sense of humor and always makes us laugh. You'll love him! You know, just last week he performed open-heart surgery while he was blackout drunk!”

I finally puke. As I'm puking, I can't help but remember one of my brothers telling me that my dad vomited right before he had the heart attack that killed him. I am now officially terrified.

They push me out of the emergency room and down the hall into the OR. We pass Sarah Silverman and Jeff Ross on the way. They seem calm and playful. Maybe I'm overreacting. Still, just in case I'm not, and this is the last time I ever talk to them . . .

“Sarah,” I mumble. “If I don't make it, I just wanted to let you know . . .”

“Know what, Todd?”

“Your boyfriend cheats on you.”

Later Sarah will confess that even though she put on a brave face in that moment, she was thinking the same thing I was:
This could be the last good-bye
. But you'd never know it from the way she's acting now. “Todd, if you live . . . this is going to be
really uncomfortable.
”

One of Our Best Doctors arrives. His name is Dr. Dohad and goddamn it, he
is
good, lowering his body to meet me at my level, using that reassuring voice you get from pilots and
Tibetan monks. “Well, it doesn't look like we're going to have to do open-heart surgery . . .”