Conference Calls and Meet-and-Greets

“Goddammit!” Cedric shouted at his assistant, “I lost them. Get them back.”

We were on a conference call to the our potential director for DOWN BOY! who
was on the Isle of Man off the coast of England, working on a movie for Harvey Weinstein, and Shawn, who was in the middle of producing a job on the Warner Brothers lot. Cedric had pushed the speaker phone at me and disconnected everyone.

“So, Jillian, how’s your acting career going?” Cedric asked, trying to make small talk while his beleagured asssistant frantically tried to salvage the conference call. Before I had the chance to tell him that the high-powered manager I had wanted to sign with passed after looking at my reel -- didn’t he see the great scene I did with John Shea? -- everyone was back on the line.

The director started talking about his take on DOWN BOY!. He said we should have not one woman, but three woman, training men like dogs.

“We can use the material from the book better,” he said. “We can have more breeds that way.”

Cedric frowned and hijacked the conversation away from the director’s creative vision, demanding to know: “So, what are you doing on the Isle of Man?”

“There is nothing to do here,” the director sighed. “Thank God I’m working. You can’t get a decent bottle of wine and the food is crap. Our caterer is from London so at least we’ll have one square meal a day.”

I’m not sure if I liked the director’s ideas as much as I was charmed by his English accent, which made everything sound tasteful and artistic.

Cedric wrapped up the call. “We know where to find you. Just wanted you to have a chance to meet the girls. We’ll be in touch soon.

Cedric apparently forgot that he had invited me to lunch at The Farm and instead rushed off to play golf at Hillcrest.

I stopped at Koo-Koo-Roo for a skinless chicken breast.