(Bitter)Sweet Success

I got a good news/bad news kind of phone call from a certain relative (who shall go unnamed) yesterday. The good news is that he is going to a callback for a low-budget movie on Sunday; the bad news is that Sunday was the day he was supposed to leave for a trip that would bring him to Kansas for a visit. I'm sad that I'll have to wait longer to see him, but excited that he has a callback for a cool project. While the callback certainly isn't a guarantee that he'll get cast in the film, it's definitely a guarantee that he's doing something right in his auditions!

The funny thing is, there was more good news/bad news to our conversation. The other good news: this relative booked a new national commercial yesterday--an ad for a very big company that has the potential to run a lot. So here's the bad news: it's for a company that he loathes with every fiber of his being. I mean like he seriously despises and detests them. I mean like more than normal people. I mean like he was planning on telling his agent never to send him out to auditions for this particular corporation. I mean like if he calls me and I happen to be in this particular store (which isn't very often, I might add), I am embarrassed to tell him because I know he'll be disappointed. You guessed it: my relative is making a commercial for Wal-Mart.

I have to admit that I laughed pretty hard when he told me the bad news. The irony is just too much. This relative has always disliked Wal-Mart for their unfair wages and unethical practices in business, but after watching the documentary about Wal-Mart released in 2005, he became even more vehemently opposed to the largest company on earth than most normal people. I mean we try really hard not to shop there for a variety of reasons, but if my beloved Target doesn't have something we need, we've been known to hop across the street to Wally World. My relative would do no such thing. If you look at the facts behind the film, you might feel the same way.

Unfortunately, in the cut-throat world of professional acting, gigs are sometimes few and far between, and contacts are extremely important. The casting director for this commercial is someone with whom this relative had always wanted to work, so he couldn't very well back out after they'd offered him the job. It would have pretty much guaranteed that he'd never work for that casting director again! I know it was a hard decision for him, but taking the job was really the only logical choice, given the competitiveness of the industry.

It could be worse--he could be doing a commercial for valtrex or something! ;)