The Aristocrats starts in Tallahassee this Friday, so I'm convinced there's still justice out there in the world.
Unlike many I know, I was aware of The Aristocrats long before it became its own little documentary firestorm. I knew it simply as "the joke" that never ever gets told in public, partly because it doesn't go over with lowest common denominator audiences, but also because on some levels, the shock value (most of the punch) isn't as big a deal as it once was in the days you couldn't tell it on stage and not end up in jail.
I've recently come into more personal contact with "the joke", which I prefer, since that's name by which I've always known it. Now that "everyone" so to speak knows the trick/secret/gimmick, it doesn't have as powerful shock value as it once did.
Tallahassee, as I've noted in the past, is often behind the curve by weeks or months to the rest of the arthouse moviegoing public, and it coldn't be more true than with The Aristocrats. The really savvy already know about it and can't wait for it to come to town, but the general arthouse crowd is still catching onto it.
I could think of no better reason to use it as an audition selection.
This fall would be the last General Audition I would do at the FSU School of Theatre, so I not only wanted to challenge myself, but I dearly wanted to get cast in one show in particular, Amadeus. Peter Shaffer's masterwork has been frequently revised and recomposed since its original production on Broadway; moreover, the Milos Forman film deviates greatly from all versions of the stage play, though Shaffer had a direct role in the adaptation.
One thing that is no different in all permutations of the epic is Mozart's filthy, filthy mouth.
"What would most people auditioning do?" I asked myself.
The answer, which proved to be entirely true: "something inoffensive and safe".
I had misgivings leading up to, during as well as after the 90 seconds I had on the stage. FSU's auditions provide you with 90 seconds to do whatever you want: sing, dance, a monologue, you name it. I had a "safe choice" backup all the way until I was escorted backstage to wait, but I instead did what I can safely say was the most ballsy thing I've ever done at an audition.
As a joke, The Aristocrats is completely malleable to one's audience, style, and needs as a performer, so I left it rude and coarse, but not as much as I could have. I've told "the joke" to friends who were curious in the past, or who started dirty joke contests, but I usually go on for a few minutes, so this was all a bit challenging.
I also had to trim it to a minute and a half. I would reprint it as composed in its entirety, but that would betray the precision of it, as I ended up improvising a couple pieces of it even from the version I'd composed.
Briefly though, it involved a mother, father, and son, with sodomy, incest, and shit-flinging involved, with a furious agent screaming "you'll never work in this town again, you depraved idiots! What do you call yourselves?" at the end.
There were a good deal of students watching in addition to the faculty, some of whom were only watching, and others who were actually casting shows. Even though I was in the heat (pun intended) of the piece, I caught some wonderful reactions:
1) a girl in the back row covering her ears and seeming to silently scream in disgust
2) music theatre guys with their mouths gaping further open than I've seen them while performing onstage in Oklahoma or Evita
3) absolute dead silence after the first act of anal rape, followed by an embarrassed set of chuckles after the son takes over for dad, followed again by silence
4) the break in the silence five seconds after I left the stage, as the girl doing introductions broke out laughing, then followed by the rest of the auditorium for a good 30 seconds to minute and a half
I'm sure part of my motivation came from wanting to be the first exposure many of those people had to "the joke" before the movie hit on Friday.
As an Anthropology major, I find the phenomena of "Media Latching" rather striking, where in the instance of a popular film, people immediately co-opt the gimmick of the movie in question and act as if they were "in on the joke" the whole time. I have to say I'd be equally furious and delighted to be the production design team on Napoleon Dynamite. Look at everything from websites to school supplies to commercials, and Napoleonism is all over the place.
I was on the bandwagon with "the joke" for a while before the documentary even showed up on the radar, so I was either striking while the iron was hot or giving "the joke" its Tallahassee wake.
I'll be curious to see how many comics start putting the joke in their routines, or non-comics who co-opt it for cool points.
Either way, I didn't get a callback.
The terrible thing about being an actor is that you can never be entirely sure what that means. Odds are, with a "safe" choice, the result could have been the exact same.
I'll never know what I could have done differently; however, I will be the guy who did "the joke" at that audition for the rest of my life, and regardless of the result it felt better than I could have imagined.