You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy. ™
Andy “Life’s Crazy” Cordan acting in a full length motion picture with bona-a-fide movie stars.
With the full length movie; Country Strong, all ready in theaters in selected cities. And with so many of you asking me what it was like to be in a movie and actually make it on screen with a speaking part, I decided to reprise my 3 part series, WHAT ABOUT DALLAS. For the next three days, sit back and enjoy Andy Cordan’s crazy perspective on the fringe of stardom peering in…
Without further ado, I give you What about Dallas Part I
What about Dallas?
Andy in a movie? Is Andy smoking sofa lint again? Maybe, but that is beside the point.
Saturday February 13th, I spent 6 hours in the Union Station Hotel shouting at Gwynth Paltrow, Tim McGraw and another up and coming movie star who looks pretty damn hot in a baby doll dress and cowboy boots.
I was playing the role of a reporter, affectionately known as interviewer number 4.
I can’t disclose what the movie is about. I can’t tell you what the actors said. I cannot disclose anything more than has all ready been reported, that a major motion picture is being shot in and around Nasvhille starring some heavy Hollywood hitters. Why can’t I tell you; because I signed a bunch of paperwork that promises to take my first born and at least one testicle should I say anything that gives the movie away.
But, I feel like I owe you Crazy Readers a little something, so let’s just start with the line of the day:
WHAT ABOUT DALLAS?
What about Dallas?
Yes. What about Dallas? I can’t tell you why I asked what about Dallas? I can’t tell you if Dallas is a city or a person’s name? I can’t tell you if I am in Dallas, Watching the 80’s tv series Dallas, or talking about Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.
What I can tell you is that I said “What about Dallas?” about 50 times.
Why did I say this? I can’t tell you, except that was one of my lines in the script. I can also tell you that I said this line over and over and over to a very special person. How special? How bout Gwynth Paltrow special?
Got your attention now, huh?
And every time I said, “What about Dallas? Ms. Paltrow paused, grew weepy eyed, and emoted her part with such convincing power that I found myself spell bound. Wow. The affect I have on super-model Ultra Sleek Hollywood starlets!
More than a dozen times I stood in awe, some 10 feet from this tall and stunning woman and watched as she summoned emotions from deep within to dramatically and passionately answer my made up question, “What about Dallas?”
Despite a hundred people in the room, including burly armed grips and 50-dollar-a-day extras staring at her like she was the rubber man in the circus, the tall and angular star gathered herself, choked back theatrical tears, and delivered her lines with passion.
It was a surreal day I will not soon forget. It is a memory that will always begin and end with this shimmering blond standing at the podium in a tight fitting black mini skirt and knee high boots, gazing not just into my eyes, but into my soul.
For 2 hours, Gwenyth Paltrow, standing on a media riser, not more than 10 feet from me, stared at me, and I stared at her. It was so unreal, so surreal, that it still seems like a dream. We did this scene so many times, that after a while, unreal became real and surreal became almost comfortably normal.
Acting? Don’t ask me.
As she answered my question over and over and over, I began to ask myself, what the hell am I doing here?
You want to talk surreal? Shouting “What about Dallas?” at Gwynth Paltrow over and over and over is the definition of surreal. Having this effervescent, larger than life, starlet react to my words was strangely insane.
Perhaps you are wondering how the hell I got a role in a major motion picture.
“Andy you can’t act,” I hear you saying.
You’re right, I cannot act, not at all. I can extemporaneously talk for 2 straight hours on live TV while getting shot at, at a bank robbery. I can win a damn local Emmy for that, but remembering a few lines, it’s just not my thing. My brain doesn’t like confinement and that is what someone else’s words on paper are to me. They are boundaries, like a printed jail cell, that actually make me nervous. As most of you know by now, I need a flashing cursor and lots of white to stream my thoughts at a million keyboard clicks a second to fully satisfy my frontal lobe.
Back to your question. How the hell did I end up in a movie that is going to be a major theatrical release in the not too distant future?
Well, It all started when I got a call out of the blue from a local casting director, asking if I would like to try out for the movie. My initial thought was; No, I really would not like to try out for a movie. I’m a TV guy, and I am happy with that.
To be honest, I said OK, just to buy myself some time, thinking I can bail on this idiocy later.
Just so you know, I didn’t submit myself for this role. I don’t have an agent. I didn’t even know they were shooting a movie here in Nashville. Just so you know, most people are submitted by an agent to a casting director just for the opportunity to try out for such a role. Even if you are granted the opportunity to try out, you have to be approved by the director, and many people are sent home with a thanks for coming handshake.
So when I tell you that I was personally invited to “try out” that is somewhat of a compliment right there. I am told that the casting agent is a Nashvillian who watches me regularly and figured if I can shout questions in real life, why not on the silver screen.
So it is with this back drop that I show up at an old warehouse in North Nashville to “read” for the part of Interviewer #4.
I entered a room with a bunch of people all seated nervously, reading script pages in their hands.
“You here for the movie?” a woman at a desk asks me.
“Yes mam.”
“Take a seat over there,” she says, “And we’ll call you.”
I sit down and glance over the paper in my hand. The scene calls for me to say a few lines that start with: “AND WHAT ABOUT DALLAS?”
Strange question I think to myself.
After 15 minutes I am told to enter a small room that has terrible lighting and worse acoustics. I meet the casting director who thought I might be perfect for this role. She was warm and friendly, but this was business and I suddenly realized that I was going to have to earn this.
She asked me to stand in front of a small camcorder and tell her a little bit about myself. I have no problem talking so off I went. The excitement that is my job, the hair on fire lifestyle I try and maintain.
She laughed and then said, now can you read the part.
This was uncharted territory for me. I never acted in school. I never acted in life. Some people say that what I do every day is an act, but those who know me know what you see is how I really am. I am an extemporaneous thinker who conjures up words on command. But reading other people’s words, that is not my strong suit.
But the lines were simple and I gave it a shot. WHAT ABOUT DALLAS?
OK, she says. Now read it softer.
What about Dallas?
OK, she says, now read it like you are sympathetic to the character.
“What about Dallas?”
and so it went. After take 6, I was wondering how many ways can you say, What about Dallas?
The casting agent who hand picked me for the assignment suddenly turns off the camera and shakes my hand.
“Thanks for coming,” she says.
And that’s it.
I knew I hadn’t done well, so I laugh it off, remind her I’m not an actor, and thank her for the chance to have a new experience.
I hear her summon the next candidate for announcer #4.
As I drove away from the Warehouse, I realized I didn’t get the part, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I hate failing, but I also was not that excited about being in the movie anyway.
I decided it was an honor just to be invited to read for the part, and I quickly pushed the ideas of being in a movie out of my brain.
Weeks go by and suddenly I get a call from another man I don’t know telling me that I got the role of Interviewer number 4. The man acts as if there is no time to spare and I have to sign papers immediately or else.
“Hold on buddy boy. I got the part?”
“Yes,” the man says with astonishment on the other end. “Nobody told you?”
Well of course nobody told me, I am thinking to myself. Who is going to tell me. It’s not like I have an agent.
The man tells me that I have to sign a SAG agreement and he asks me what size my inseam is, my shirt size, what color are my eyes.
It’s all so strange, but I comply. He tells me that someone in the not too distant future will need to call me and ask me a million more questions but for now, that was it.
I put the idea on the back burner of my brain while trying to rationalize that I had actually just been asked to be in a real life Hollywood Movie.
Life’s Crazy™ huh?
The man also let me know that the stars were on board and there were some pretty heavy hitters including Gwenyth Paltrow and country music superstar Tim McGraw.
Again, all of this was a nice cocktail conversation for me, but I wasn’t sitting around thinking about it day and night.
Weeks after the announcement, I received a copy of the script. Suddenly it got real again. Like any good actor, I skipped ahead and found my lines. There were those words again: WHAT ABOUT DALLAS?
What about Dallas became a running joke at my house. At dinner I would suddenly shout out WHAT ABOUT DALLAS. I would say it quietly, then scream it. I would say it with meaning and then like I was starring in a road runner cartoon. I would scream What about Dallas over my mash potatoes and across the salad bowl. After a few weeks of this insanity my kids hated the line WHAT ABOUT DALLAS. They would scream back at me, “I don’t know dad, what about Dallas?” And then I would yell like an opera singer “WHAT ABOUT DALLAS!!!!!”
My 15 year old daughter especially tired of my nonsense. Each time I asked What about Dallas? she would roll her eyes. I could see her brain thinking; “my dad is an idiot.”
And this is how it went for about a month. What about Dallas this? What about Dallas that?
One Sunday, while sitting at another laborious soccer practice, I decided to read the script. Suddenly the poignancy of WHAT ABOUT DALLAS? made sense. What was a joke at my dinner table was actually a very important question that needs to be asked in the plot line. That’s when I began to seriously ask myself the question; “Why are they having me say this?” This is an important moment in the film.Wouldn’t a real live actor be better suited for such an important moment?
Weeks went by and I wondered if the movie had been cancelled. I had heard nothing. No one called to ask me about my inseam size or whether I still wanted to say: What about Dallas? Out of sight out of mind they say, so I dismissed the entire project from my thoughts.
Suddenly, the phone rings. It’s that man again. “Your shoot is on”, he says in his very hurried and frantic way. “Has anyone called you?” I laugh out loud. Is this guy an idiot? “No. Nobody has called me.”
“You have to be on the set Saturday morning at 7:30am. You can be there, right?” He is freaking out, breathing nervously, foot patting the floor.
“Sure, I don’t have much going on Saturday at 7:30am. I’ll be there.”
He hangs up and then it dawns on me.
Holy Crap! I’m going to be in a movie.
That’s when the butterflies start churning.
Part II tomorrow…..