Happy Accidents by Jane Lynch

Author:Jane Lynch
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Film & Video, Performing Arts, Entertainment & Performing Arts, General, Biography & Autobiography, Women
ISBN: 9781401342753
Publisher: Voice
Published: 2011-09-13T04:00:00+00:00

A smiling Jeannie pretending not to be planning her next meal.

Photo courtesy of Jeannie Elias

Chapter 8

Walk Like a Man

Standing on the edge of a sheer cliff in Monterey, looking down a hundred-foot drop into a raging ocean crashing against jagged rocks, I inched toward oblivion as a man with a beard and long, stringy hair screamed at me in a German accent, “Move closer to da edge! Closer to da edge!”

The reason I wasn’t yelling back something rather harsh of my own was because the guy yelling at me was the big-shot director of the commercial I was shooting. He was dressed in sun-spectrum colors—orange, yellow, red—that reflected his affiliation with a religious sect that I’d heard he’d joined because the sect’s guru was helping him keep his terrible temper in check. At this point, it didn’t seem to be working—he seemed utterly unconcerned that I was so close to plummeting to my death, and bellowed furiously at me. As he continued to yell at me to move closer to the edge, closer to da edge, I dutifully shuffled as far as I possibly could. I tried not to think about how far there was to fall and how sharp those rocks seemed as I looked into the camera swinging at me off a crane and calmly spoke my lines: “I . . . am every woman.”

Although shooting it was a rather bracing experience that I wouldn’t care to repeat, when it came out, this national commercial for Nexium paid me enough money to buy my first house. It almost killed me, but I loved the house.

There are many ways for actors to make money in Hollywood, and in the late nineties, I was doing most of them—voice-overs, guest spots on TV shows, and commercials. I had played everything from a guitar-strumming small businessperson for American Express to a Buick-driving mom on a camping trip. Commercials can be an easy way to make good money, as I found out promoting Nexium on the edge of that windblown cliff. But the biggest benefits aren’t necessarily monetary.

Although it might seem counterintuitive, sometimes acting in a commercial can put you closer to the work you really want to be doing, the work that would satisfy you artistically.

Case in point: I never would have thought that flacking Frosted Flakes could do so much for my career—not even when I went to a callback for a Frosted Flakes commercial and saw Christopher Guest listed as the director on the sign-in sheet.

A couple of years prior, while I was visiting New York, I had gone solo to the Angelika theater to see Christopher Guest’s film Waiting for Guffman on opening day. I sat next to a couple of gay guys who were apparently on their first date. The one sitting next to me loved the movie as much as I did, and we guffawed and elbowed each other all the whole way through, while the other guy sat there like he was at a wake. I doubt there was a second date.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.