Off the Turnip Truck

Jesse Crall
Jul 21, 2017 · 7 min read

I once harbored ambitions of becoming an Elliott Gould-type, a lanky character actor with hairy legs who ruined a shot at lasting stardom through sheer obnoxiousness. The best route to this creative valhalla lay in developing my craft through the intensive acting program set forth by noted coach Fredrick Roth*. A few months after finishing college, I laid down Roth’s unnervingly expensive down payment and began making twice-weekly drives to his studio in a déclassé section of Hollywood.

*All names besides Elliott Gould’s have been changed

Roth opened his 12-week workshop with a pointless riff on how he “wasn’t like all the other acting teachers,” those emotionally predatory types who demanded to know your darkest secrets and proceeded to use them against you in public spaces. Of course, Roth soon revealed himself to hold these exact same tendencies, licking his goatee at the mere mention of one’s emotional discord while immediately interrupting any student who dared say something pleasant about themselves.

Roth’s method of criticism didn’t prove any more endearing. Following a scene, a stage manager had to grab Roth’s easy chair and place it atop the stage so he could pontificate like a be-throned dauphin. At the end of his rap, Roth rose and returned to a regular theatre seat while the same stage manager took the chair back to its original locale. The whole process struck me as a bizarrely ostentatious display for someone whose living involved telling 20-something wannabes how to better tap into LaBute.

Roth thought little of me, a rare sentiment on which we both agreed. Following a performance, he would ask us to explain “what worked, what didn’t and why” during the scene. Since I was largely untrained, I’d offer honest self-assessments, such as “Nothing worked” or “Good god, nothing worked.” Roth took my pronouncements as evidence that I was “uncoachable,” in his words. Of course, when students would offer positive commentaries on their own work, Roth would cluck a little and go “Nooo” before launching into a dense examination of their dramatic failings. The scenario left no victors, an apt prelude to any of our attempts at showbiz careers.

The pressures of both class and El Lay living proved too acute for most of the other students. Of the 30 or so who began the Roth intensive, only 10 of us wound up completing the program before moving onto the next level. Many of us boasted egos reminiscent of blimps: swollen and easily punctured. I was fortunate enough to enjoy the requisite self-loathing to keep personal expectations limited; I graduated the class with ease despite my stiff performances and downbeat nature. But the tears flowed easy when actors presumed themselves gifted and couldn’t rectify any evidence to the contrary. In truth, successful actors aren’t often the flaky, tempestuous souls of fictional caricature. They’re driven, self-possessed individuals well-versed in the unceasing heartbreak and defeat of the creative life.

Lisa was from New Zealand. Her soft, attractive features and clipped American accent in performances gave her an alluring presence reminiscent of the drained and undersexed Kate Winslet from Revolutionary Road and Little Children. She called me “Magic Man” once, comparing me to Josh Hartnett’s character from The Virgin Suicides. You’d assume I’d run with such a sentiment. I did not. Once, when dressing a set in anticipation of a scene, I hung a poster of The Great Escape. Lisa noticed and said from the audience, “You know what’s funny? I watched that over the weekend.”

I replied, “Yeah, that’s hilarious” with all the charm of a Kodiak bear. I earned laughter from three or four guys nearby. You can always earn laughter from three of four guys nearby if you’re enough of an asshole. Did Lisa laugh? She did not. My shrink at the time chastised me for acting so smarmy. My shrink was correct.

Harris was a square-jawed problem child who looked rather like a young Josh Brolin. He was deeply insecure, often insulting other performers before turning on himself with twice the vitriol. On more than one occasion, he stopped a scene in the middle and asked to start over to the silent irritation of his acting partner and the expressed indignation of Roth. Harris’ grandfather had been the governor of South Carolina, a state of which I know very little.

Jefferson wasn’t much older than myself but he was already married. “We met online,” he told me with downcast eyes. Following a scene, Roth prepared to grill Jefferson with the usual improper probe into his personal life. Rather than reference the onset of sexual dysfunction or a childhood battle against a tropical disease, Jefferson began to speak of a moving conversation he had with his father a day earlier. Roth interrupted him, reviling the thought of having to hear someone tell an anecdote devoid of internal misery. Jefferson didn’t seem to mind; he was the sort of person who had moving conversations with his father.

Monique was Lebanese. She was crazy. Those two attributes are unrelated, I think. She was a pouty-lipped knockout whose personal website made the obvious comparison to Angelina Jolie. Any discussion with Monique soon led to her laying out the benefits of daily marijuana use. Monique was a visionary, you see. She slammed doors in scenes, screamed, wept…her performances contained the bipolar cliches of renegade scenery chewing and she didn’t take criticism well. Roth dismissed her from class eight weeks in.

Paula was Brazilian. She had a great ass. Those two attributes are related, I think. She once spoke of her coke-addled days as a model in New York City. I said “Gee, golly, how the heck could you afford cocaine? Isn’t it expensive?” I didn’t really say “gee, golly” but I did have a piece of hay in my mouth and a straw hat atop my head. Paula replied in the slow voice a teacher uses on a child fond of eating paste: “I was a model…in my 20s…surrounded by guys…” She also told me that a recent date picked her up in a Mini Cooper and she could thus never get turned on by him. “It’s a chick car,” she said. I do not own a Mini Cooper.

Nick was English. He was about my size, with the same swart complexion and dark, wavy hair. I hated him. Nick enjoyed littering conversations with references to some wayward past that saw him star on London’s West End, enjoy a long-term sexual congress with a fetching older woman, burn out on drugs and blow his chance at a major studio script sale because he demanded to direct his own work. Since Nick never asked me about myself, he missed hearing of all my riveting adventures with various childhood cats. He had the masks of comedy and drama tattooed on his back. His girlfriend, Sophia, was also in the class. Sophia wore scoop-neck tops and boasted the evident talent Nick surely craved for himself. I looked Nick up and saw no references to West End triumphs. I said Nick was about my size. Actually, I’m more than an inch taller. No, I’m not bitter.

In a subsequent scene study class at the Roth Studio, I overheard Nick complain to a different coach about working through a scene opposite Spence, our affable stage manager. The coach nodded sympathetically, as though three minutes of Neil Simon with Spence marked some laborious hurdle to be overcome through titanic efforts. I found such whining distasteful and naturally assumed Nick would make similar comments about me to someone in the future. A few years later, Spence got loaded and plowed his car into a Massachusetts highway worker, killing him. To my knowledge, Nick hasn’t killed anyone.

John was my age, from Maine. Every unit in his West Hollywood apartment building seemed to house 17 different blonde women who lived in their bikinis. John enjoyed discussing his sexual conquests unprompted, painting every woman who screwed him as a slut or a moron or a drunk. He wasn’t my favorite.

Olive came from a town in Minnesota whose General Mills factory made everything smell of cereal. You could do a lot worse. Olive was small and very sweet, delivering one of my favorite class performances when she played Sunny the Hooker in a scene from Catcher in the Rye. Over the time I knew her, Olive dedicated herself to the sort of fitness program that would leave Mike Trout winded. I never asked Olive about her routines but she was always happy to tell me about them. When someone in class remarked upon the mistreatment of Mitt Romney’s dog, Seamus, Olive looked stricken. She really loved Mitt Romney.

My perpetually dormant acting career hit an abrupt end when my boutique (i.e. powerless) agency emailed me about an audition for an Internet ad in Santa Monica. It marked the first time in four months as a client that they were sending me out. I realized that I had no interest in wasting three hours of my life on the one-in-one hundred chance that I could book an Internet ad. I wasn’t cut out for The Business and when I dropped my agency, Hollywood’s innumerable tears failed to sway me. Elliott Gould still awaits his successor.

There were three dozen other actors at the Roth studio with whom I performed, their anecdotes and characteristics far too legion for so brief an article. As of this piece, none of us have enjoyed any modicum of success.

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Jesse Crall

Written by

Always wrong, never uncertain.

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