By Neal Wooten
My acting career consists of only two credits: I played a wealthy museum donor in a Danny Trejo movie titled Snapshot and I played the Mayor of Mouseville in our first-grade play. Neither endeavor went smoothly.
During the first-grade play, right before my first scene, as I was ascending the steps to the stage, Paul Marshall stepped on my tail – intentionally – causing the threads to pull loose and the tail to rip completely away. Our teacher, Delight Garmany, quickly stuck it back on with a safety pin. Whew.
In my big scene, I was supposed to give my secretary, played by Rhonda McCurdy, a handkerchief when she starts crying. Since I had no back pocket, I had sat on the handkerchief before the curtain opened. When the time came, however, I reached back and nada. It was gone. I jumped up and looked all around as the audience laughed. So, I improvised and handed her my tail, which came off again.
I suspect in the next life, we will get to ask one question as to understand the great mysteries of existence. While most people will use that opportunity to inquire about the meaning of life, the complexities of the universe, the vastness of space, the divineness of God, etc., I’m going to stand there and ask, “What the heck happened to my handkerchief that day?”
The filming for the Danny Trejo movie didn’t go any better. We were only in three scenes, and they provided the men tall glasses of champagne and the women huge glasses of red wine. My ex-wife kept forgetting they were part of the movie and kept drinking them. By the time we filmed the first scene, she was sloshed.
If anyone sees that scene, they’re going to think, “Wow, that’s a great actress pretending to be drunk.” No, she’s wasn’t pretending anything. She kept messing up her lines. The reason I know this is because she didn’t have any lines, but she sure thought she did. After having to yell “Cut!” several times, the director asked what was going on. We all pointed to Maggie and said, “She keeps drinking her props.”
The director finally decided that having an inebriated person in the scene might add some depth and let Maggie do whatever she wanted. He never yelled “Cut!” again and simply kept rolling. There have been some legal problems as to why the movie hasn’t yet been released, but hopefully, it will be soon.
When it comes out, I’ll email Maggie and tell her she’s in a movie because I seriously doubt she remembers anything about that day. As for me, I think I’ll stick to writing and telling jokes.
