Jump to a couple months later, right around my birthday (October 19th). I got home that day and Mom told me that there was a message on the answering machine for me. We still haven’t erased it, so this is a direct transcription:
“Hi, this is a message for Shawn. Shawn, my name is Amy, I’m called with Akerlind & Associates casting. Actually, Paul Jensen, um, he gave me your phone number. I’m not sure if you’ve seen the notices at this point, but we are doing a casting search for the WB network for, um… a game show, like, um, television show in which they are seeking quite intelligent men between 21 and 32 years of age who are single. Um, anyhow, a-as I mentioned, Paul thought you might be a good candidate, um, so we’d love to have you in if you’re available, we’re doing, um, the initial interview would be Monday or Tuesday…”
There were dates and times, of course, but you get the idea. It seemed that during my three-hour shift at the State Fair, I made a pretty good impression with Paul. Amy told me later that I should feel pretty good about the fact that he recommended me—I do. I like making a good first impression, but like I said, I never thought it was any sort of networking.
[For the record, the notices she referred to were on the Minnesota Mensa website: given that it hadn’t changed for the first eight or nine months after I became a member, I rarely bothered to take a look and thus never knew about the casting search until they called me. One more reason to think it’s pretty cool…]
So I called and set up my appointment for 11:30 on the 26th. When I got there, I had to fill out a form asking a bunch of questions that I didn’t know how to answer. “What are your best and worst traits?” “Do you think there are any women you couldn’t date?” “What’s the first category you’d choose in Jeopardy?” So many questions, so little time to figure them out… it’s perfectly understandable to note that later that afternoon, I could have filled out the forms much more completely. There wouldn’t have been so many lies and half-truths, I would have chosen mythology instead of movies for Jeopardy, etc. Hell, there may have been conflicting answers between the forms and my little on-camera interview.
Once I finished the paperwork, they took my picture and Curt Akerlind took me into a separate room to get some more dirt about my life. That part was fun, really—I got to tell him stories like the ex-girlfriend who had sent me a list of things that I’d have to do for the relationship to continue:
- Shave my mustache (I had a goatee at the time)
- Get contact lenses
- Learn how to swing dance
Like I told Curt, the relationship didn’t last very long after that. There were the stories about how I haven’t had a date in about two years (shhhh, don’t tell anyone…) and how I prefer hanging out with my friends than approaching people in a room full of strangers, but overall, I had fun.
I’m also not sure whether this had any effect or not, but during the course of the interview, I had a flashback to law school. During a class exercise, I had to match up against another student to present a case in front of a “judge.” At the end, one of the things he pointed out was that we didn’t seem to know what to do with our hands. I honestly couldn’t recall what I was doing aside from eventually keeping one in my pocket most of the time while gesturing with the other. I thought about that during the interview and realized that I was just kinda rubbing my fingers together, so I started using them more while I was talking—it probably made me look more animated, more dramatic… more like I was having nasty muscle spasms in my arms? I dunno, but at least they weren’t just lying in my lap anymore.
When it was done, Curt thought I had done a pretty good job. I don’t recall a whole lot about the discussion, but he thought I was someone the audience would want to root for. Dunno if that means I’d be that appealing or I’d be such a complete underdog, but it was still nice to hear. He also said that he’d be sending the footage for everyone in and if we were one of the chosen few being led to the Promised Land, we’d hear back sometime around Thanksgiving.
Afterwards, I got to spend some time wondering about two things:
- Does he give complements to everyone after interviews like that?
- If I don’t get tapped, will they at least call to tell me that?
I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t the slightest idea how Hollywood works. I just remembered that in high school, they’d tell everyone who tried out that they did a great job and they’d hear back soon. I also remembered a story from law school about how some guy applied for a summer clerkship at a law firm and got a rejection letter. Unfortunately, the secretary neglected to remove a Post-It note on the front saying something to the effect of “Send this kid the ‘fuck-off letter.’” Oops… But I didn’t know whether the WB would be gracious enough to tell me to fuck off, so I was left wondering what might happen within the next month.
