An American Idol Epilogue, Part 4
0 Comments Published by ginny on Sunday, September 14, 2003 at 10:56 PM.
Section 9: In which I begin to understand some of the torments of Purgatory
We cheered wildly, with all the nervousness of a group of young people who know this could be it -- the Big Chance – as the first row (the only row before my row) filed into the elevator and disappeared upstairs. To me, it kind of seemed as if this were truly a point of no return. At the Dome, you'd been able to see all the people before you file up to their associate producers; at the second round auditions, the door to the waiting room had been right there (and there had been many more people before me – here there were only seventeen); but now – it was as if those ten beautiful, hopeful young bodies had actually been carried to the heavens for an audience with – well, not gods or angels, obviously, but some sort of otherworldly judgment anyway. The fates, maybe. (Well, there are three of them. Simon is obviously the Crone Aspect, don’t you think?)
The waiting became even more tense. As I'd expected, I was completely unable to sit still. Actually, I think Nigel Lythgoe had noticed my fidgeting and dancing in my seat earlier: he made a comment when he was talking to us about not using up all our energy before we even got to the audition – and looked pointedly in my direction. But, you see, if I'd let the energy lapse I never would have been able to get it back! I had to keep moving or else.
Time passed. "Are they ever going to come back down?" I whispered to Lothario. "What's happening up there?" We knew that eventually we'd have to know something -- either someone would come back down after having been rejected (some people had left their stuff, others had taken it), or there would be some wild cheering as someone made it, or something.
But for the longest time there was simply nothing. It was as if the judges' decisions were so absolute that they actually deposited you in another world to which we, the waiting, had no access. I imagined a golden chute of some kind, through some people would be dumped back on the street outside the building, never to be seen again, and others would be whisked immediately to Hollywood, where no ordinary mortals would be able to come in contact with them.
Finally, a producer came back down the elevator and spoke to head crewmember. Something was going to happen. Someone else was needed. Head crewmember looked out at the group. He gestured for…..the Klingons.
Ah – the Klingons. I haven't told you about them yet, have I? Now, the preceding afternoon, when I'd realized that we'd landed in town the same weekend as DragonCon, I said to myself "Oh, lord, they are so going to get somebody in costume to come audition! They have to." I mean, the opportunity was so incredibly, lusciously obvious. Simon judging an actual costumed geek?. Now that's good television.
So I felt a certain amount of pride when, as my interview group went over to our waiting area, we walked past a man and a woman dressed as Klingons – I'd known it! These had to be the convention auditionees. Sure enough, they soon reappeared downstairs with numbers on their chests like the rest of us. (Actually, they were obviously way too old for AI, but they'll be a good comedy bit anyway.) One had a goblet for Blood Wine. As I passed them on my way down from the interview, I said "Kaplaa!" to the male Klingon. He said Kaplaa back.
When Ryan was down talking to us, the Klingons were in the contestant seating already, and he did a bit with them too – Ryan asked where they'd come from, and the man roared "I have won Klingon Idol, and now I will win American Idol as well!"
So now the producer came back and summoned them – it seemed they were going to do the Klingons first, and then get to the actual auditionees. So there was more waiting. And more waiting. And more waiting. I thought, by this time, I might die simply of suspense. What on earth was going on up there? Had anyone even gone in? If they had, why hadn't we heard anything? And why hadn't anyone come down again?
I was about to ask my neighbors "Do you think anything's happening?" for about the sixteen hundredth time, when finally, something happened: Joe the crewbie came down the elevator and talked to the head crewmember, who looked up and said "Row 2 – this way!"
Section 10: In which I ascend to the heavens
I wasn't ready. I mean, I'd been waiting so tensely, but I hadn't expected to be taken up before we even saw anybody from the first row come down! But apparently, up we went, ready or not.
We assembled ourselves in the elevator – somewhat charmingly, I thought, in a semicircle. "Are there cameras at the top?" someone asked, as we watched the marble floor zoom away from us.
"Sometimes," Joe said. "You never know where they're going to be."
"Oh! I said, "If they're there we should jump out like Charlie's Angels." We agreed that this was a good idea, and assembled ourselves accordingly. The elevator got to the top, and we jumped out – but there were no cameras. No matter. We were here. The heavens. The seventh floor. The threshold to stardom.
Joe led us over to a long row of chairs, and we sat in order. We were just around the corner from the room in which we'd interviewed before, but this area of the floor was much, much nicer. The chairs snaked around the balcony from a point three feet from the elevator to the wall opposite the audition room, making there room for about thirty auditionees to be waiting at one time. All of the row before us were still there – none of them had even gone in yet! – but once we did begin to move, we each moved up a seat as the person at the head of the line went in.
Beside the chairs, and directly across from the audition room doors, was an area where the crowd of family and friends of the auditionees were assembled. There were quite a bunch of them – some people had brought six or seven supporters with them! One family even had signs for their kid, which I thought was sweet.
In front of them were some cameras, and then a small interview area – a tiny couch, a couple of chairs, some plants, a carpet, where Ryan Seacrest was interviewing contestants and their families before they went in. (He didn't talk to everybody, just some people.)
And then, in front of that, flanked by one grey chair (the Standby Chair, where the very next person to go in sat) and a table with a monitor and headphones on it (Ryan could sit there and see and hear what was happening in the audition room, though he never alludes to that knowledge in the exit interviews), were The Doors.
And behind them were Randy, Paula, and Simon.
Of course, we couldn't see them. We didn't even know for sure they were in there. We just knew that they must be (actually, I don't even know how they got in – helicopter, perhaps, since Ryan also appeared from above instead of from below), since we'd been brought up. And as we arranged ourselves, Ryan finished interviewing the first contestant, a boy, and the crew directed him, and….he went in, behind the doors.
Ryan began interviewing someone else, and we waited, looking at the door, at the cameras, at the waiting families, over the balcony at the other contestants still downstairs, now tiny, light glinting off their perfectly groomed hair and sparkling off their vinyl and glitter and gold.
About two or three minutes passed. And finally, the doors opened – the boy came out. Had he made it? No. He was shaking his head sadly, and his hands were empty. He hadn't made it. "They said my voice is almost there," he said disappointedly to Ryan (sometimes, if contestants spoke loudly you could hear what they said in their exit interviews, but a lot of the time not) "but not quite good enough. They said I need to work on it." Ryan asked him a few questions and shook his hand, and the boy walked down the hall to the cameras. (You had to interview three times – once with Ryan, once for cameras in the hall, and once with Patrick's camera in the interview room.) We applauded him anyway, and he waved.
The next girl went in, and so it proceeded. Thirty minutes passed, and contestant after contestant went in and came out again, not a one with a pink sheet or the radiance of success. "I'm not good enough," they said "Well, they didn't like my style," they said "They told me I should go to Las Vegas, but I'm not right for this show," they said.
Each audition was taking between two and three minutes, far longer than either the first or second round auditions had. I wasn't sure whether to be reassured by this – more time to show them everything good about me – or frightened by it – more time to screw up – but either way, it meant that, as we inched closer and closer to the first chairs, a lot of time passed. Now, I hadn't been annoyed, really, by any of the contestants near me up to this point, but as tensions rose, certain behaviors seemed to be making it, well, more tense.
The frat-boy handsome guy who had made it to California last season, for instance, wouldn't stop pestering the girl who'd made her own clothes. It was obvious he thought she was attractive and a good match for him, but really, this was not the time. I mean, she was nervous and trying to prepare herself, and he would not let her alone. Though she was really nice to him, I could see that she neither found him attractive nor welcomed his (cocky) overtures, and I was really annoyed for her by proxy. (So was Treyvon, who whispered to no one in particular at one point "For God's sake, dude, shut up and leave her alone.")
Also, the boy next to him, who was nice enough but a little over-confident-seeming, kept clearing his throat really loudly, which was kind of distracting. Plus which, singers really shouldn't clear their throats very much. It's not good for you. Some people, also, wouldn't stop singing and talking loudly, even though they repeatedly asked us to be terrifically quiet so that the cameras focused on Ryan and the interview area wouldn't pick up the sound.
Anyway, though, the time passed. And we got closer and closer. The girl who'd been directly in front of me in the first row, the long-haired Kim-Locke-like Hispanic girl, went in. And came out, and screamed – she'd made it! I think we were almost as excited as she was, since up to that point no one had made it at all, and I, at least, was starting to wonder if anyone would.
And now people from our row started to go in. Tiny fashion designer interviewed with Ryan, gave the waiting crowd the thumbs up sign, and entered the room. Two minutes later she came out – with no pink sheet. "They said my voice just wasn't what they were looking for," she said, almost crying but not quite.
In went throat-clearing boy – and out he came again, disappointed. "I do impressions really well," he told Ryan disappointedly, "and they liked that, but they didn’t like my singing very much."
Frat-boy from last year went in. "Surely he'll make it," I thought, "since he did last year." But out he came again, a look of confusion and maybe a little anger on his face. "I don't know, man," he told Ryan. "I know I'm good – but not this year, I guess."
Almost time. Almost time. It was by now as if the nervousness had turned into something else –a kind of light-headed floatiness that made the whole scene seem less than real, which of course, in a way, it was.
"Up here," a producer beckoned irritatedly, and it was almost as if I could watch myself stand up and take Lothario and Treyvon's outstretched hands and hold them while we walked up to the interview area, and the threshold of the audition.
Off to see the wizard! Go to Part 5
Labels: american idol, celebrity, trips, tv
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