Maxwell House Commercial
What a crazy week. Three weeks ago, I entered the commercial industry world again as an actor slash dancer and I signed with Bloc Agency. I never gave myself a chance in this industry and now I am full-force with a desire to give it my all. So I am.
My first audition was for this Maxwell House Commercial. The first casting called for a business man that could do the worm and of course “poplock.” “WOOHOOO” I thought to myself, I can certainly “poplock and drop it.” My agent felt the same way as she had just finished watching my How to do the Worm tutorial on the youtube.
I entered the casting room with three others, 2 of which were dressed like hip hop dancers. The casting lady asked them, “so you guys are dancers right?” They responded, “yeah we dance.” She looked at me and said, “you’re not a dancer right?” To which I replied, “On the contrary.” Sure enough I did the robot, some “poplocking,” and the worm and the shock factor was definitely in effect. The two supposed dancers were not dancers, but actors posing as dancers.
Good news came as I received the first callback. I was told they wanted me to play the part of the pilot. Well, if you know me at all, I have this major thing for costumes, like I FREAKING LOVE THEM. So I marched my ass to the costume shop on Venice across from Mitsuwa and rented a full Pilot’s outfit. It looked great aside from the extremely large hat. The casting peeps thanked me for putting the effort in and once again had me robot and pop the lock.
So a few more auditions and a couple weeks later, I get a call that I am now on “avail.” Hurray! Although I am quickly reminded of the Target Commercial I was put on a avail for and never booked. Needless to say this was amazing considering my first audition back in the game. Another day passes and now I am starting to get real anxious. Then I get two more friggin calls. The first early in the day: I am placed on hold for the dates which I found out essentially means you are booked. The second: Mid day the phone rings and it’s my agent so I pull over cause I haven’t purchased bluetooth yet. She tells me the official news that I am booked. I screamed like a madman at the gas station.
Skip forward past the rehearsal and wardrobe fitting to Wed night. I arrive in Ontario, where I stay with two of the actors, one of which was a guy by the name of Jason Sugars. I come to find out this dooood has been in like 10 music videos from the 90s. Like ALLL NEW JACK SWING. So of course, I can’t sleep at all because we stay up watching youtube clips of NewJack vids. More on him and that later.
Next morning, call time is 7am. NICE! I struggled to eat the “complimentary” breakfast at our hotel which tasted about as good as Nato beans for the first time. We then proceeded to the shoot location where I find my trailer waiting for me as well as real deal KICK ASS Kraft Services. So I vomit up my hotel breakfast and have the chef make me a real breakfast. Just kidding on the regurgitation part.
I make my way to wardrobe and makeup and in just under an hour its, “hello ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.” (post a picture here). We walk on to the set where they have taken over a whole gate at Ontario Airport. Even parked an airplane outside for added affect. We do a run through and they send us back to hang out while they fix all the lighting.
So the scene is as follows:
Picture a airport scene on a normal day. Two couples are filling out their immigration forms. One of them messes up and bunches up the paper tossing it at the trash near the security guard. He misses and it lands on the security guards foot. He gets angry but then sips his Maxwell House Coffee, smiles ear to ear, and begins dancing with the wad of paper. At this point everyone starts watching and dancing. I exit the airplane into the terminal and enter the scene of everyone dancing. The wad of trash (WOT) passes from the security guard to a girl being checked by a TSA agent. She does the wave and the WOT then flies to another guy who’s luggage is being checked yet another TSA agent (Jason Sugars). At this point I am center in the scene and watching with a growing smile. The camera follows me and the TSA agent tosses the WOT to me. I tap it and catch it in my left hand and “turn into” a robot dancer. I proceed to do the robot with the WOT and then do a robot fall, get up and toss the WOT to a bboy who does a one arm front handspring. He knocks the WOT back to the two couples. They dance with the WOT for a sec and then one of them (another bboy) tosses the WOT in the trash. End Scene. We then have a little scene of us at the end all huddled at the security desk lovingly enjoying our Maxwell House Coffee. Good to the last drop.
AND NOW the buzz kill:
At about the 10 hour mark (around 5pm), we are shooting me doing repeated robot falls. For clarity a robot fall is when you fall to the ground well like a robot so quite stiff and it requires good technique to break your fall.
So the floor is cement with these weird raised circular bumps. In other words not the smoothest for falling or bboying. My shoulder is starting to take a beating so I figure I’ll do just a few more and then tell them I am done with the falling. Too bad I didn’t stop right then! The director started to change things. He started asking me to do it with different movements. Then he asked me to try and smile as a robot. It was during this take that I really got distracted. I shifted my focus to my facials and not my FALLING! Instead of rolling on to my shoulder like I had been for the past three days, I instead came right down on top of my shoulder and bam felt it shift out of place. FUCK!
It didn’t hurt at first but I knew something was really really wrong. I couldn’t really move my arm at this point past about 45 degrees. In my gut I knew it wasn’t dislocated but I was like what the hell is this feeling then. I told the director I am hurt, I cannot do any more falls so we’ll just shoot it regular. I did another take. Suddenly, I felt nauseous. The pain kicked in and it shot through my arm. I was about to start another take when I freaked out a bit. Felt like I was gonna either hurl or pass out. Thoughts of my future as a dancer came rushing in: How am I going to make money? OH FUCK, How am I going to shoot my instructional videos, How am I going to work and survive. The realization of how much I have put into dance slapped me hard and at that moment it was difficult to maintain composure with 60+ extras watching you on top of a whole production crew. I had to stop and it was near the end of shoot day anyways.
The pain began to increase as did the swelling and I was absolutely baffled about what just happened. I absolutely could not figure out what I had done to myself. I knew that my shoulder was in place. I knew that my collar bone wasn’t broken but maybe it was cracked? But then I thought the pain would be much much worse than this. WHAT THE FUCK?
I kept myself in good spirits until I got to the emergency room. I kept reminding myself about how far I had come in just a month. On my list of goals, I had already accomplished four major objectives. 1) Purchase a Car - as a reminder it had been almost a year since I had a vehicle 2) Win a major dance battle - although twas not “major,” twaz a battle nonetheless and I won it. 3) Book a commercial gig in Los Angeles - here I was shooting it. 4) Have my own dance class.
After about 5 hours at the emergency room, the doctor’s ASSISTANT moved my arm in two simple directions. She took x-rays and then another 2 hours past. Then the nurse came in and said, “the doc would like you have this shot.” I was like, “WHAT?? Why, is something wrong, does a bone need to be set, is something out of place?” She says, ” oh no no we don’t know yet but we thought you might be in pain and this will help.” I declined.
A few more timeless moments passed before the wanna be doctor came back in and told me I have a simple shoulder sprain and I should be fine in 6 weeks. She gave me a prescription for Vicodin and I was on my way. I managed to make it through another whole day of shooting with the narcotics I was given. The production crew was really appreciative and I was felt good about doing the job I was hired to do. However, something did NOT sit right with me about my shoulder. It just did not feel right.