Brothers, Sisters, and Housewives
When I was a freshman in high school, our English teacher went around the room asking each of us what we wanted to do. When he came to me, I told everyone that I wanted to get famous writing TV shows and movies. Frankie, a stocky jerk with an illustrious JV football career ahead of him, snorted and said, “Oh, yeah right, Truman!”
I saw my interview for an internship on the TV show Brothers and Sisters as the first step on the long road to the awards show acceptance speech where I go up to the microphone, hold up my award, and say, “Blow it out your ass, Frankie.”
The magazines outside my interview at ABC had advertisements for Learjets and listings of what were the best over the counter painkillers and sleepaids in various South Asian countries. Right away I knew that I was in the big leagues – the magazines in the waiting room at my dentist’s office in Southwest Portland are full of ads for cheap mulch and knockoff erectile dysfunction pills.
In order to document this moment, I pulled out my phone to take a picture of the Learjet ad, but had to self consciously tuck it away a moment later when I heard someone coming down the hall. I would hate for my first impression with the writers at Brothers and Sisters to be that of the small town yokel so thrilled to be in LA that he’s photographing the magazines.
The interview went really well. The people interviewing me were arguably the four most beautiful individuals I’ve ever seen, like four Pygmalion-style Greek statues come to life, yet at the same time blessed with a sort of worldly knowledge that I could only hope to one day attain. On an unrelated note, they mentioned during the interview that they read my blog.
When they asked why I wanted to fetch coffee for TV writers, I explained that at this point in my life my only other option is to fetch coffee for journalists, which doesn’t sound nearly as fun.
After the interview my cousin Gene, who has been kind enough to let me invade his home during my time in LA, drove* us up to the Universal backlot to visit his incredibly nice friend Amanda, who works in the costume department at Desperate Housewives. She rolled up in a golf cart and gave us an impromptu backstage tour as we made our way to the set.
*Gene has a farm truck that is roughly 8000 years old and has no shocks whatsoever, which gives every pothole and speedbump a jolt similar to massive turbulence in an airplane. This would ordinarily be kind of scary, but the truck feels really heavy and solidly put together, as though it’s made out of Kevlar and melted down Terminators.
Golf carts might be one of the most dangerous modes of transportation, but nobody at Universal seems to know or care. Sure, they only go about 15 miles per hour, but they’re doorless vehicles with no seatbelts or shocks, so all it takes is one bump on a steep incline to send you tumbling out and down a hill into the shark tank from Jaws.
Cruising the Universal backlot was particularly fun because we got to see the Universal Studios tour groups go through in their big carts, seeing all the same cheesy attractions while we trotted off to a legitimate TV shoot. Once, while waiting behind one of these trucks, a bunch of overweight tourists near the back of the tram started excitedly taking pictures of our golf cart because it had “DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES” emblazoned across the front. I am now no doubt plastered all over some Midwestern Desperate Housewives aficionado’s Facebook page – “Is that Kyle McLachlan in the golf cart? Man, his complexion looks really bad in person!”
In the scene they were shooting, Eva Longoria confronts her husband while wearing some skimpy nightgown. However, they were shooting the scene inside the house and we were outside watching monitors, and all of the cameras were pointed at the husband for his reactions as they’d already shot Eva, so all I could see on the monitors was some middle aged guy making aroused faces and talking about how sexy his wife looked, which my Dad does basically all the time anyway.
However, as soon as the scene was finished, everybody poured out of the house, Eva Longoria among them, wearing an open robe over the absolutely tiny costume gown. She flounced down the stairs of the house and across the lawn to where all the crew, Gene, Amanda, and myself among them, had gathered by the monitors. She waved at Amanda, who she clearly knew from the costuming process.
“Hey, Eva,” Amanda said. “Have you met my friend Truman?”
Eva Longoria, #14 on FHM’s 2008 list of the sexiest women, shook her head and turned to face me. I scrambled out of the canvas chair I was sitting in, breaking the footrest in the process.
She had a Blackberry in one hand and her script in the other, but she extended the index finger of her Blackberry hand, which I gently shook. (I later realized how great it would be if she said, ‘pull my finger’).
“Hi.” She said.
This is your chance! I thought to myself. She doesn’t know you’re in the marching band! She doesn’t know that you have a Battlestar Galactica poster in your room! Make Eva Longoria think you’re cool!
And the best I could do was, “Hello, Ms. Longoria.”
“Eva.” She corrected me, before jogging off to a white van that took her back up the hill to her trailer. I got the distinct impression that she had forgotten me even before she met me.
So, first name basis with Eva Longoria. Blow it out your ass, Frankie!
Truman Capps also saw Ms. Piggy and Chris Rock that day, but that update is going to have to come later.
I saw my interview for an internship on the TV show Brothers and Sisters as the first step on the long road to the awards show acceptance speech where I go up to the microphone, hold up my award, and say, “Blow it out your ass, Frankie.”
The magazines outside my interview at ABC had advertisements for Learjets and listings of what were the best over the counter painkillers and sleepaids in various South Asian countries. Right away I knew that I was in the big leagues – the magazines in the waiting room at my dentist’s office in Southwest Portland are full of ads for cheap mulch and knockoff erectile dysfunction pills.
In order to document this moment, I pulled out my phone to take a picture of the Learjet ad, but had to self consciously tuck it away a moment later when I heard someone coming down the hall. I would hate for my first impression with the writers at Brothers and Sisters to be that of the small town yokel so thrilled to be in LA that he’s photographing the magazines.
The interview went really well. The people interviewing me were arguably the four most beautiful individuals I’ve ever seen, like four Pygmalion-style Greek statues come to life, yet at the same time blessed with a sort of worldly knowledge that I could only hope to one day attain. On an unrelated note, they mentioned during the interview that they read my blog.
When they asked why I wanted to fetch coffee for TV writers, I explained that at this point in my life my only other option is to fetch coffee for journalists, which doesn’t sound nearly as fun.
After the interview my cousin Gene, who has been kind enough to let me invade his home during my time in LA, drove* us up to the Universal backlot to visit his incredibly nice friend Amanda, who works in the costume department at Desperate Housewives. She rolled up in a golf cart and gave us an impromptu backstage tour as we made our way to the set.
*Gene has a farm truck that is roughly 8000 years old and has no shocks whatsoever, which gives every pothole and speedbump a jolt similar to massive turbulence in an airplane. This would ordinarily be kind of scary, but the truck feels really heavy and solidly put together, as though it’s made out of Kevlar and melted down Terminators.
Golf carts might be one of the most dangerous modes of transportation, but nobody at Universal seems to know or care. Sure, they only go about 15 miles per hour, but they’re doorless vehicles with no seatbelts or shocks, so all it takes is one bump on a steep incline to send you tumbling out and down a hill into the shark tank from Jaws.
Cruising the Universal backlot was particularly fun because we got to see the Universal Studios tour groups go through in their big carts, seeing all the same cheesy attractions while we trotted off to a legitimate TV shoot. Once, while waiting behind one of these trucks, a bunch of overweight tourists near the back of the tram started excitedly taking pictures of our golf cart because it had “DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES” emblazoned across the front. I am now no doubt plastered all over some Midwestern Desperate Housewives aficionado’s Facebook page – “Is that Kyle McLachlan in the golf cart? Man, his complexion looks really bad in person!”
In the scene they were shooting, Eva Longoria confronts her husband while wearing some skimpy nightgown. However, they were shooting the scene inside the house and we were outside watching monitors, and all of the cameras were pointed at the husband for his reactions as they’d already shot Eva, so all I could see on the monitors was some middle aged guy making aroused faces and talking about how sexy his wife looked, which my Dad does basically all the time anyway.
However, as soon as the scene was finished, everybody poured out of the house, Eva Longoria among them, wearing an open robe over the absolutely tiny costume gown. She flounced down the stairs of the house and across the lawn to where all the crew, Gene, Amanda, and myself among them, had gathered by the monitors. She waved at Amanda, who she clearly knew from the costuming process.
“Hey, Eva,” Amanda said. “Have you met my friend Truman?”
Eva Longoria, #14 on FHM’s 2008 list of the sexiest women, shook her head and turned to face me. I scrambled out of the canvas chair I was sitting in, breaking the footrest in the process.
She had a Blackberry in one hand and her script in the other, but she extended the index finger of her Blackberry hand, which I gently shook. (I later realized how great it would be if she said, ‘pull my finger’).
“Hi.” She said.
This is your chance! I thought to myself. She doesn’t know you’re in the marching band! She doesn’t know that you have a Battlestar Galactica poster in your room! Make Eva Longoria think you’re cool!
And the best I could do was, “Hello, Ms. Longoria.”
“Eva.” She corrected me, before jogging off to a white van that took her back up the hill to her trailer. I got the distinct impression that she had forgotten me even before she met me.
So, first name basis with Eva Longoria. Blow it out your ass, Frankie!
Truman Capps also saw Ms. Piggy and Chris Rock that day, but that update is going to have to come later.