Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [92]
“It’s all just one big so what,” Greer says bitterly.
Once we’re on the set, I locate the M&M and potato chip table. It’s next to the director’s chairs where the agency is supposed to sit. Greer and I toss our stuff on one of the chairs and each grab of handful of corn chips.
“Ho hum,” Greer says. “Isn’t advertising exciting and glamorous?”
“It’s better than manual labor,” I point out. “The least amount of work for the maximum amount of money.”
“I guess,” she says, crunching a chip. “If you don’t mind handing over your dignity.”
“I don’t have any dignity,” I tell her. “I never have. That’s why I’m in it.” I eat some M&Ms. “Besides, I was drunk for so many years, I didn’t really even realize I was in advertising.”
“I was painfully aware of it,” she says, glaring at me.
After we nod our heads at the costumes, speak to the director for five minutes and choose a glass for the product shot, it’s time to go back to the hotel. Only two hours of actual work, yet it’s drained us completely.
“I’m just going to sink into the whirlpool,” Greer says, her head against the window of the minivan.
“I’m gonna order a salad and watch TV and then crash,” I say, hardly able to keep my eyes open.
Although it’s only six P.M., we seem to have contracted some sort of brain-numbing disease. The threat of tomorrow has made us drowsy.
“Normal people in America don’t realize how stressful commercial productions are. They just think advertising must be really fun. They don’t realize it’s hell,” Greer says, absently twisting her diamond tennis bracelet.
Belinda is unconscious on the daybed in her trailer. Belinda is the model we hired to wear the silver swimsuit and dance on top of a giant beer cap. Unfortunately, Belinda suffers from an eating disorder and after bingeing on forty or fifty Mint Milanos, she collapsed near the toilet in the dressing room.
“Just our luck,” Greer says, plucking lint off her sleeve. “The first day of the shoot and already there’s a problem with the talent.”
We’re guarding the snack table. Elenor and Rick are sitting with the Nazi, distracting him with a spreadsheet program on Elenor’s computer.
“This is great. Just what we need. More down time,” I say, stuffing a handful of party mix into my mouth.
Greer paces like an anxious ferret. “Never work with children, puppies or bulimics,” she says.
The director walks over. “This sucks.” He folds his muscular, tattooed arms across his chest. “She threw up all over her hair, so we have to re-do her.”
“Oh, that’s just grand,” Greer says. “Thank you Anna Wintour for ruining the female body image.”
I say, “Did she wake up yet?”
“Yeah, she’s awake now. But she says she’s really dizzy. She’s afraid to get back on the bottle cap. Afraid she’ll fall off.”
Greer narrows her eyes. “Bribe her with a slice of cheesecake and some Ex-Lax.”
Watching the playback monitor, it’s immediately clear that this will be one of the worst commercials Greer and I have ever shot. The Nazi is not ranting or grinding his teeth, so we know he is happy. And this means the commercial is an abortion of the worst kind.
Greer sits with her legs crossed, foot tapping at the air.
Elenor is hunched over her computer.
Rick wonders out loud whether or not one particularly handsome assistant producer “is a fruit.” Truly, he can’t take his eyes off him.
And I am trying to see if I can remember how a martini tastes. It’s like trying to picture a dead relative in my mind, trying to see their face, their smile.
All the while, Belinda writhes on the bottle cap, looking gaunt and vaguely unsteady.
“Don’t worry, we can add some color to her skin in postproduction,” somebody comments.
On the plane home, I decide to do my expense report. Greer is writing an angry letter to the company that makes her alphahydroxy face cream because she says it burned her skin. I ask her for a pen.
“How do you spell ‘catastrophic’?” she asks.
I spell it for her and unfold my bill from