Continued from Part IV:

I met up with Client at Hollywood & Highland, and we decided to have dinner al fresco at Trastevere. He caught me up on the "rehearsal" experience, and we had a good laugh over how he'd dodged a bullet.

He decided he wouldn't be going back, and would call in the morning to let L&L know.

"Why not just email them? That way you can't get sucked in, and Leech seems all about sucking people in," I reasoned.

"I don't want to be like that," Client answered. "I don't want to be a jerk. I'll just keep it short."

After dinner I dropped him off at his place, and when I got home I immediately wrote him a few notes for his call – responses he could use if Leech tried to give him guilt. I'm a big fan of Miss Manners's all-purpose response, "I'm sorry, it's just not possible," and nothing more.

Turns out we needn't have worried, as the call went straight to voice mail. Client left a polite but firm message, and that was that.

Almost. Not everybody got the word. He got this email later that morning:

[Client's name],

Here is the costume and plot logs, a script, and scores of a few old vaudeville songs.

Rehearsal today is at 2 at [address]. Bring a chair; it's an empty apt. A small CHEAP potluck dish would also be appreciated.

[Lurch]

Continued from Part III:

I'll let Client tell you what happened next, as I wasn't there for most of it:

My Manager came around the corner with a confident smile. I knew what that look meant. It's the look she usually gets when one of us is thrown into a potentially dangerous situation and she is able to talk some sense into whoever is causing the problem. I'd seen it loads of times at school. And I know I'd be seeing it plenty times again, until people finally learned that she wins every time.

"What'd they say?" I asked.

"They're writing you a part." She came to a stop next to me and continued. "Told them about your YouTube series. They want you to be a narrator, so you can be seen and we can let agents and casting directors know. These guys need you more then we need them."

Continued from Part II:

I returned to the theatre, leaving Client to wait impatiently around the corner of the building. I sat in the first row, two seats from Leech. As I sat down my foot knocked over a clear plastic cup next to Leech's stack of notebooks and headshots. The cup contained a few drops of purple liquid – wine? I set it upright again.

I leaned toward Leech and asked, "May I have a word with you privately before rehearsal begins?"

"Sure, sure," he said.

Continued from Part I:

After having the other actors read a scene together, Leech said, "Ya know, we've already lost two leads for this show. Yesterday our guy said he had to drop out due to a family emergency. If you say your grandmother died, I believe your grandmother died. If someone says it's a family emergency? Well, you know what that means. He's just not dedicated, right?" We all nodded, recognizing that this was how Leech saw the world.

He and Lurch led us into the cramped theatre, and then had the other two actors read the scene again with rudimentary blocking as Client and I watched from the second row. It went about as well as a second read can be expected to go.

"Great!", said Leech from his seat in the front row next to Lurch. To the taller actor, he said, "You're about the best natural actor I've ever seen. Wanna be the lead?"

So at this point, Leech is offering the lead to an actor without establishing for certain whether he can do the required singing, dancing, or piano-playing. And he hasn't asked Client to read. But I held my tongue.

I first met Client (as we'll call him for now) three years ago, when we were in film school. As I got to know him I realized he's not just monumentally talented, smart, and funny, but a genuinely good soul. He's the kind of person who is like glue, gathering small cliques into a huge posse. Not his posse, but without him the cliques scatter again.

We became good friends and worked on the same student projects when we could. Other students would ask him to act in their projects, and I often heard our classmates ask what he was working on, and whether he needed any help. And in this business, there's no greater compliment.

After graduation he went back to his hometown for awhile, and finally moved to Los Angeles a few months ago, where I've been living for almost two years.

Last Fall he began working on a web series, TheJokerBlogs. It's had about 300,000 views on YouTube and just reached 4000 subscribers, plus the almost 900 fans on Facebook. There's even a slightly alarming fangirl page. [Update: That page has been taken down, but included words like "stalk" and "RAEP". Nevertheless, we believe the fangirls to be harmless.]

So with the success of TJB still building, he's embarking on an acting career. I offered to serve as his manager – and in fact I'd be doing this stuff for him as a friend anyway. He gladly accepted my offer, and I find myself in the roles of friend, assistant, sounding board, creative partner, chauffeur, ambassador, interior designer, protective big sis, and occasionally boss. And away we go...