Heidi & I Hollywood Milieu ©2009
Written by Denny Dormody
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I’m watching the Oscars. The booming-voice announcer says “ Live from The Kodak Theater, located at Highland and Hollywood Blvd. in Los Angeles, It’s the 81st Annual Academy Awards.” Once again I’m not nominated. Not for Best Actor. Not for Best Supporting Actor. Not even for Best Dog Catcher. Doesn’t the Academy know who I am? I’ve appeared in over 100 movies and TV shows. What does the Academy of Arts and Sciences know anyway? My revenge is at hand. I’ve ordered a Little Caesar’s $5 pizza.
Will I always be on the wrong side of the red carpet? Why can’t the Academy show a clip from one of my pivotal roles as a background extra. This year, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is nominated for Best Picture. I worked on that show.
I’m seated in the theater audience as Brad Pitt sneaks in to watch Cate Blanchett’s New York ballet debut. Unfortunately, I was off-frame. About 30 feet off-frame. My whole life has been off-frame. Well, maybe next year. As another category is announced I reach for another slice of hot, drippy pizza. I wash it down with a can of icy cold Diet Coke.
It’s a cast of thousands in the audience and a cast of millions watching on TV and on-line. Movie goers from 180 countries are watching, estimated to be a viewing audience of 2 billion. In America alone, the audience is around 70 million.
Imagine appearing on the Oscars telecast. That would be my ultimate revenge. My ultimate payback to those bullies in grade school. To those bullies in high school. To those bullies in college. To those bullies in the military. To those bullies at my wedding.
I guess it’s time to move on. I reach for another slice of pizza. Revenge is at hand and I don’t even know it.
Across town super model and fashion icon Heidi Klum is probably also watching the Oscars. My date for the evening is Little Caesar’s Best. Heidi is probably watching the Academy telecast with 300 of her closest friends. Friends probably with names like Armani, Versace, Hugo Boss, Cucci, Canali, Prada and Ermenegildo Zegna. By now she has probably forgotten that she and I worked together a couple of months ago.
It was a soft drink commercial. It was just another blur in my Blackberry-rushed schedule of background extra gigs as we hustle around LA waiting for the suits to buy one of our comedy screenplays. It was somewhere between playing a convention goer on the second-to-the-last episode of Prison Break and playing a smiling cocktail party guest mingling with Rob Lowe and Sally Field on Brothers & Sisters. It was just another rent-paying gig for me. Yes, it was nice to work with a $100,000 an hour model like Heidi Klum. Yes, it was nicer to receive my $175 check.
Hail Caesar, I’m down to my last slice of pizza. The finals awards are waiting in the wings. Best Director. Best Picture. I’m gulping down the last few drops of my Diet Coke. Suddenly Heidi is strutting her stuff along a cat walk. I take a deep breath. Our soft drink commercial is now airing across America. On the Oscars telecast. This is it.
America, my revenge is at hand. Heidi is on a catwalk wearing a hip fashion outfit. Behind her is a regal old theater. Quickly she turns and is now performing on a modern catwalk. She now has on a new outfit and she looks great. I play a fashion reporter on the edge of the runway. Behind me the paparazzi flash their cameras. I close my eyes. I open one eye.
I’m off-frame. By about an inch. The commercial is still rolling as Heidi turns and walks off frame and near the fashion podium, grabs a can of sweaty Diet Coke. She joins a group of hot-looking women all dressed in red dresses, matching the red ribbon on the can of Diet Coke.
I’m crushed. I slump into my chair. My eyes stare straight ahead. The Oscars telecast, reflected in my eye glasses, announces the winner for Best Picture.
Heidi doesn’t know me or remember me from a bar of soap. I need to at least toast Heidi with a Diet Coke. As the Oscar show-credits roll on the TV screen in my humble apartment and across America, I forage through the fridge searching for a Diet Coke. I’m fresh out.
Denny Dormody is a Los Angeles Times Magazine published comedy writer and author of Riding the Hollywood Glacier. dennydormody@gmail.com
