👻 Saying No to the Ghost of a Former Self, Part One
+ Hollywood’s Seat-Filling Side Hustle 📸
“In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.”
—Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls
I rubbed my eyes: what is that in the distance? It was a foreign object above the hill I visit with Ryder—a large white bag, awkwardly filled, lumpy.
Is it just a bag of dried leaves? But why would a single white bag of leaves just be sitting there?
What if it’s a dismembered body left behind for the parks department to clean up?! I shuddered. Damn those true crime shows.
You learn all kinds of things about Hollywood when attending school in Los Angeles.
During my sophomore year at UCLA, I lived in a sorority house on the sloping hill of Hilgard Avenue abutting Beverly Hills. Lush, fragrant flowers and well-manicured hedges adorned every patio of the storied mansions lining sorority row.
Every Monday night we would cram into the front room, most of us sitting cross-legged on the floor, to entertain “row walks.” It was a weekly parade of industry representatives and campus organizations stopping by for five to ten minutes each, delivering IRL infomercials and opportunities for upcoming events.
Sometimes it was for a themed fraternity party (ugh), and other times producers would pass around a clipboard to solicit interest in auditioning for burgeoning reality shows, like MTV’s ill-fated Next or ABC’s The Bachelor. Sometimes, they were for quirkier gig work, like recruiting pretty young things to be seat-fillers at the Oscars.1
Did you know that when a celebrity goes to the bathroom at an awards show, an attractive person is quickly ushered into their seat so that if the camera pans across the audience, the auditorium won’t look empty at inopportune moments? I didn’t.
Deadline describes it well:
Seat-fillers are traditional jobs at every televised awards show, including the Oscars, where non-famous people are rushed into visible empty seats that may have been temporarily vacated for various reasons by those who have the real tickets. This especially includes seats for nominees, winners, presenters and just about any important attendee with ace seats that can be seen on television. The job usually goes to volunteers who like the idea of sitting in the spotlight, no matter how long, before they get booted out when the person who really belongs in the seat comes back.
I never did sign up for this, but I had friends who would get all dolled up in hair, makeup, and sparkling dresses—glam is now a verb thanks to the Kardashians—then once at the venue, they would wait for hours in a long snaking line outside (far from the red carpet), or inside a boring industrial-looking hallway, just hoping to be called upon. You never know, you might end up sitting next to Brad Pitt for five glorious minutes!
At that time, my preferred side hustles were getting paid to take lecture notes and being a test subject for allergy and acne medicines—they paid better and took less time. Once, I remember sitting in a room full of cats (I’m allergic), and somebody with a clipboard tallied how many times I sneezed. Glam never really was my vibe.
I mention all this because the other day, another invitation landed in my inbox that gave me a flash of excitement before I realized what it really said.
