Cleaning out – well, attempting to clean out – my e-mail inbox, I found one with the subject line “your audition time.”
I can’t quite bring myself to delete it, not when I get to thinking of what might have been. Imagine this: Instead of hauling my second-grader to family math night at his school this week, I could have been along for the ride in Australia.
I’d be in Melbourne, lounging poolside while a tutor helped my kid with arithmetic. My son would earn a paycheck, display his rare talents, and hang out with Maurice Sendak and Tom Hanks, while I basked in the 80-degree warmth of a summer Down Under.
That’s how I picture it, anyway. Here’s how my wild Aussie fantasy began:
Last spring, a friend sent me an e-mail about a casting call in Seattle. Tryouts were being held for boys ages 7 to 11. The coveted role? It was Max, the tantrum-throwing boy hero of Sendak’s classic children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are.”
There’s hardly a bedtime-story reader alive who doesn’t know it by heart, and not a kid who hasn’t loved it.
As I write this, the story that begins “The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another” is being made into a Warner Bros. Pictures movie. Blending live action and computer animation, “Where the Wild Things Are” is directed by Spike Jonze and produced by Hanks and Sendak. We’ll likely see Max on the big screen in 2008.
I no longer have that first e-mail, but I haven’t forgotten it. Rather than polished acting skills or model-perfect looks, the casting crew wanted a kid with attitude. Attitude – that’s my youngest child in a nutshell.
“Where the Wild Things Are” casting folks also asked for a photograph. My friend who’d sent the casting call notice had also e-mailed pictures of our kids at a birthday party. On a lark, I sent off a picture and brief description of my boy. I then forgot about the whole thing.
A couple weeks later, this showed up: “your audition time.”
It was addressed directly to my then-7-year-old, “Dear John,” and instructed him to be in a suite on Seattle’s Dexter Avenue at 10:30 a.m. on a certain Saturday. Attached were some of Max’s lines and instructions to “become comfortable with the dialogue.”
It asked for confirmation that my son would keep the appointment, and added, “As you can imagine, there are a lot of kids wanting to audition for this movie.”
Whoa, whoa, wait a minute, what? Go off to Australia for three months with a bunch of movie people? (The cast, for voices, includes James Gandolfini, Catherine Keener, Benicio Del Toro, Forest Whitaker and Catherine O’Hara, with Max remaining a mystery.)
My son? No – that was my first and only reaction to “your audition time.” Promptly, I sent a reply asking that his time slot be given to another child.
Clearing out e-mail, I’m reminded of what I instinctively tossed aside. Faced with the very slimmest chance of becoming the mom of a Hollywood kid, I had the snap reaction of somebody stuck with a hot potato.
In the instant I decided my boy wouldn’t be there to say Max’s lines, I saw danger, not a wonderful opportunity.
It wouldn’t have happened anyway, that’s what I tell myself now. His baby teeth are gone, replaced by a second-grade grin. He’s getting tall. His hair is much lighter than Max’s in the book, not that they wouldn’t darken it. He has no acting experience.
Currently, his talents are playing drums, cracking jokes and drawing funny pictures, all 8-year-old boy stuff. By the time “Where the Wild Things Are” hits theaters, he might be too old to enjoy it. I’ll probably end up telling him someday about that audition he missed.
Besides news, I don’t watch much TV. Still, a day hardly goes by without hearing of Britney Spears’ scandalous photos or the bad behavior of some other young star. Thursday, I heard on the radio that 20-year-old actress Lindsay Lohan had checked into a rehab center.
All these skinny, rich, troubled, hard-partying celebrities were children once, before they went off to where the wild things are.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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