🎬 Actor – Amateur Hour

I did it.

The Spanish VHS jacket for I Was a Teenage T.V. Terrorist.

The character was Paul Pierce. “Irreverent” the Backstage advertisement read. The film was called Amateur Hour, later to be retitled I Was a Teenage T.V. Terrorist.

It was my first audition, for a lead role no less. The word “irreverent” jumped out in the character description. Irreverent I could do. Irreverence was a sweet spot.

I didn’t have a monologue prepared, and I wouldn’t have known where to find one on such short notice. So I wrote mine. Then, typewritten script in hand, I paced back and forth in the fraternity basement, jumping onto and off a collapsed sofa memorizing it, acting it out. I stopped cold from time to time listening for footsteps that might be coming down to the basement to figure out what the hell all the drama was about.

My monologue certainly fit the bill for “irreverent.” I covered clever graffiti in university bathroom stalls, leather jackets for reasons that now escape me, cigarettes on toilet paper d…