The Dead and the Naked
How I Never Made it in Hollywood
“You would be the dead girl,” the director said. I could do dead. A low-budget independent film was a step up from the student films I’d been doing. At least there would be pay.
The director had graduated from USC film school and made sure to insert this impressive bit of his resume into our conversation. A framed diploma hung from a nail behind his desk. He didn’t want to drop names, he said, but he had an uncle in the business that would set him up with something bigger if this project went well.
Maybe his uncle had rented this office for him. The two-room suite was on the corner of Hollywood and Cahuenga in a partially vacant bank building, and the metal desk and filing cabinet looked like survivors of a moving van accident. You could see the Hollywood sign if you pressed your face against the grimy window and looked north.
In the adjoining room four blond girls, who’d been called back for the lead,sat on cockeyed folding chairs. The director was going on about how my part was really the most interesting one. “There’s a lot of meat in the two scenes you have before you die,” he said.
“We’ll need you to fill this out for us,” his assistant said, handing me a clipboard. “And there’s no problem with the nudity, right?”
