Thread by @mountain_goats

I have a really stupid story to tell

https://twitter.com/seph_lawless/status/1330192380058865669

It's 1978. I'm eleven years old, and I read the @latimes voraciously on Sundays. Can't get enough of the Calendar section. (I want to love the book review at this time, but most of the books they're writing about are over my head.)

One Sunday there's a full page ad. Calling all parents of children ages something through something. We're remaking a Wallace Beery vehicle called "The Champ," we want a kid who's really a kid, open auditions.

I don't remember if it was my mom's idea or mine but we end up going to the casting call.

It's a whole big scene on one of these big L.A. production lots, I'm not sure which one, Wikipedia say the picture was UA, do they have their own lot? I remember the feeling of being in a whole different world than the one I lived in out in Claremont

There were just bunches of kids. All of them in nice clothes. I'm sure I was dressed up a little but iirc the only dress clothes I really have in '78 are my state examiner piano recital clothes, we haven't been to church since the divorce in '72

(I still do go to church during my summer weeks with my Dad, he's a Methodist at this point, I don't know how he would have dressed me though this would have been important to him but I do remember having to get my hair combed intensely, different story)

We park on the lot someplace, it's me and my Mom navigating this unfamiliar-to-me environment, some of which would have been known by my grandmother who'd been pals with some EARLY L.A. film scene luminaries -- W.C. Fields whom she referred to as "Bill," for example

Anyway I can see in the waiting rooms these kids are from a whole different world than me. It's just glaringly obvious. I can't, at that point, say what the difference is, but these are not the kids I go to school with.

The audition/interview happens, we don't read a script or anything, they do three of us at a time and they ask us to cry.

In my group of three everybody looks nervous. I can't stand awkward silences (this is still true) so I speak up, I tell them I can't really cry right now because I'm too happy. (I'm eight years old, give me a break.)

The other two kids copy my answer. They say the exact same thing as me, they look very relieved to have been given an answer, and then we're all dismissed with thanks and told they'll be in touch if they need us. I forget about the whole thing.

A year later the press push for the movie starts and the stories all talk about the talent search and the kid who landed the role, and it's "Ricky" Schroder, whose Mom has been taking him to photo shoots since he was three months old.

Three months old.

By the time he's six he's been in 60 advertisements. He does not come from money, don't get me wrong, his family and the little kid they believed could be a star evidently from the moment of his birth surely worked their asses off to get him there.

But by the time "The Champ" has auditions, he's a vet compared to all the people from the outlying towns who drove their kids into L.A. to see if they can't catch a sweet studio contract.

My stepfather was a lot of things, but one of the good things he was was an acutely class conscious guy. He saw the news about this kid getting the part & explained that the fix was in, the whole thing had been for publicity and probably tax write-offs, and he was surely right

I forget if we went to see the movie though I do remember seeing it at some point and noting that the dude put in his work, he cried his ass off in that last scene

but

I, after years of being a severe disappointment at best to many people who believed in me, ended up being a guy who tries to do his best and who thinks police shouldn't murder people and that people have the right to protest without being shot at

whereas the guy who beat me for the part turns out to be a complete asshole who digs nazis

so while Ricky Schroder beat me for that part and has, I'm sure, has more money than me

I'm still notching the W in 2020 and you're stewing in your own juices wondering why you're mad all the time

lol @ you, guy who can cry on cue

/thread.