Lights, Cameras, Outsiders!

“Do I have to do this?” I asked, dragging behind Susie. 

“Essie, it’s not that hard. You sit in a chair, you look at head shots, and stare at boys all day for a couple weeks. And you’re getting paid to do this,” she said, gripping my hand and pulling me to the warehouse’s backdoor. It was almost six in the morning, and it was still dark. 

“You’re just grumpy because I got you at five am,” she turned and said to me. I nodded and then smiled a little. 

“Look, don’t tell your parents I’m letting you help with casting people for a movie. They’ll flip,” she said. 

“I still don’t get why I’m out here.”

“They’re extremely overprotective, and once that happened, they sent you out here with me as if it’s boot camp or something,” Susie started to laugh.

Susie was my aunt. She had written The Outsiders a while back and when I read it, I loved it. And once she told me they wanted to pay her to make a movie out of it, she asked me to help. And of course, I said yes. But my parents sent me to live with Aunt Susie because I got drunk at some party and kissed some guy who hated me, and his parents told my parents… and long story short, I was out here in a week’s time with my lifes supply of books, clothes, and socks. 

“Look, what you did wasn’t even bad. They’re just ridiculous parents,” she said. 

“Sure.”

“Okay. Let’s go in,” she pushed the doors open to warehouse, and all I heard was the mumble of constant talking. It was loud though. There must’ve been… three hundred guys sitting along the border of the warehouse. They all sat criss cross applesauce and were talking and talking. Two men walked up. One had a dark bed of hair on his face and thick black hair slicked back and large glasses. One just had brown hair slicked over to the side. 

“Hi, Susie,” they shook her hand. 

“Hi. I’d like you to meet my niece.”

“Ah, yes, Essie, what a wonderful name. It’s nice to meet you. I’m Fred Roos and this is Francis Coppola. I hear you’ll be helping us today,” the man with brown hair slicked over said and shook my hand. I smiled. 

“Yes sir,” I said. 

“Great.” Francis and Fred walked near the front of the U of boys was seated. There was a table at the other end of the warehouse. A kitchen table. And a couple rows of chairs. And a sheet attached to the back wall with two chairs sitting in front of there. Across from all those places was a long white lean table with four chairs and stacks of file folders. 

“LISTEN UP!” Francis said. The talking ceased. 

“This is how it’s gonna work. We’ll call you up to do a scene, you do the scene. We like you, we’ll keep you doing more scenes. We don’t, you’re out, you go sit back down or you leave. Okay? Cool. So can I have Mickey Rourke, Val Kilmer, and Anthony Edwards up here to the kitchen table?” Francis yelled. He started to lead us away from the group of boys. We each took a seat, and thank God I sat next to Susie. 

“Now, I want you to go through these head shots and filmography and tell me who looks good and qualified and who’s not,” Fred said, pushing over a stack of files. One of the guys that was up at the table winked at me. This wasn’t going to be so bad after all.