Party of One: A Memoir in 21 Songs - Dave Holmes Page 0,85
the show I was perfect for.
The show was Average Joe, a Bachelorette-style reality dating show in which a beautiful young single gal shows up at a Calabasas mansion to choose a mate out of a cast of hunks, except the shocking twist is that…
Oh, no.
The shocking twist was that the guys were actually all kind of homely. They were all dumpy or overweight or aggressively hairy or just generally average, and the twist was that our bachelorette would have to pick a suitable mate out of a bunch of ugly guys.
And I possessed a quality that was right in line with this shocking twist.
It hit me, right there in my living room, ham sandwich in one hand, remote in the other: NBC did not think I was funny. NBC thought I was ugly.
Oh.
I turned away from the television and walked to my window to feel the California sun on my face, to tell myself that no matter what this industry thought of me, I was going to succeed. I might have to work a little harder, I might have to be a little smarter, but I’m going to make it fucking work, dammit. I will.
I got to my window just in time to watch my Jeep Liberty get towed away for unpaid parking tickets.
Having just come out publicly, I got a few auditions to play the gay best friend in romantic comedies and Lifetime original series. I got many, many opportunities to call the lead character “girlfriend” and tell her to do herself. These characters spoke entirely in catch phrases and had no emotional life of their own. They were to the aughts what the token black character was to the ’80s and ’90s. Once in particular, I went in for a sassy best friend role in an independent movie. My audition monologue was a speech the gay guy delivered to the main character about embracing her inner diva and getting fierce. The scene was to take place in the women’s bathroom of a restaurant, just after the lead character saw the boy she liked having dinner with her rival. In the middle of this sassy tirade, another woman walked into her gender-appropriate bathroom—to use it, like a human being might—and my character said to this woman: “Excuse me, girlfriend, but we’re on official business here,” and then shooed her out. Like: The ladies’ room is for troubled women and their neutered friends only; deal with your natural bodily functions somewhere else. Hateful.
I showed up to this audition, and it was a sea of skinny guys in vests and bow ties. It was a crowd I could not out-queen. I would have to change up my approach. I went in, I told the camera who I was and what role I’d be reading for, and when it came time in the script for the hapless woman to make the error of using the bathroom to void her bladder, I said “EXCUSE ME GIRLFRIEND, WE’RE ON OFFICIAL BUSINESS HERE!” in a blind rage. A deafening, terrifying, Vincent D’Onofrio in Full Metal Jacket conniption. Listen, you have to make choices as an actor. I didn’t get a callback on that one, but I still think a sassy gay friend who goes into rage blackouts when women want to use their own bathroom for its intended purpose is a character in search of a movie.
Eventually I got a semi-regular gig playing a gay stereotype on Comedy Central’s Reno 911!, and just before cameras rolled on my first day of shooting, Thomas Lennon—in mustache and tiny khaki shorts—assuaged my fear about playing such a character: “Just remember, Dave, we are all playing terrible, terrible people.” It is the most freeing thing I have ever heard on a set, bar none.
The audition process for Reno 911! was, without a doubt, the most fun you could have in an audition, which I understand is not saying much. I begged my manager to get me in the room, and he did, and I prepared a character and a situation, as the casting director told me to do. When I arrived, the person at the desk asked me only one question: “Did you call the police, or did the police call you?” Are you a perp or a victim? was all they needed to know. I told her—victim—and she told them. And then I went into the room, in character, and the entire cast was there, in character, and we improvised a half-hour-long scene. It was a dream.