The Five Questions
“Who the hell is J David Moeller?”
An actor learns early on there are five questions that will mark his career path. As an unknown you will walk into the audition room, hand off the requisite picture and resume, hope the sweat stains under your arms don’t show too much and that you won’t say anything too doltish to blow it.
The first audition is, in your mind at least, the one and only audition of your career…the one that will launch you into the stratosphere of stardom, land you on the award program where you’ll forget to either thank your mother or spouse or the director and will firmly inscribe your name in the annals of entertainment history forever. You give it you all; and, if you’re lucky or have perky breasts or don’t pose a threat to the client’s manhood, or, believe it or not, actually good, you just might get the job and a few bucks and free lube job for your troubles.
But…you’re on your way.
I remember my first “talent fee” commercial. I was a staff announcer at KIXL-AM/FM in Dallas: my first radio gig (starting at a top ten market station is rumored to be the epitome of “talent”, grantedly debatable).
As part of my job I regularly voiced commercials for the station’s clients that aired only on our station. One afternoon a client liked my work so much he gave me a check for twenty-five dollars!
I was so excited I phoned my wife to tell her but my fingers shook so while trying to dial the phone I must have spoken with half of Dallas before I hit the right numbers and got through to my wife. “That’s nice”, she said.
“Get me J David Moeller!”
Suddenly, in many instances overnight (after years of dues-paying), an actor becomes known: sought after. In the commercial world, copy writers might have a particular performer in mind when they create their characters and they’re hired.
I received a call at 8pm one night when I was in Austin, Tex. and Bob Beckel, the man who ran Walter Mondale’s Presidential campaign, called. Could I come down to the studio to record some spots for Carole McClellan, the Candidate for Mayor?
He said, “I asked them for the best and they mentioned you!”
I told him I’d be there in half an hour.
I was being optimistic. I didn’t have a car and would have to hitchhike. Fortunately, Austin in the 70s was a thumb-friendly town and I arrived in plenty of time.
McClellan won, too.
“Get me a J David Moeller type!”
The now well known and respected actor has arrived. He’s so good, so hot, so perfect…but, well…not exactly on the nose for this particular project…but close. Real close.
In Houston I was working with some of the finest commercial talents in the state. When Houston opened its intercontinental airport in 1969 it paved the way for producers from the west coast to bypass Dallas completely. Before, they’d have to transfer their equipment and sundries to make it to Houston and the Austin-San Antonia area for their projects. Now they could fly direct.
As a result of this new interest in the area the talent pool got more and more work giving them the chance to fine tune their skills.
One such talent was the exceptional Kirk Sisco.
One day the usual suspects were called in for a commercial audition. I was there. Kirk was there. Maybe ten or fifteen other men and women crowded the lobby with pictures and resumes in hand, all going over the sides for the commercial.
Copied at the top of the men’s side was written, as an afterthought, “Kirk Sisco type”.
Now we have Kirk Sisco auditioning for a commercial calling for a “Kirk Sisco type”.
I never learned who got the part. But there was smiling and joking going on that afternoon in that lobby.
“Get me a young J David Moeller!”
The bane of all actors: age. We ain’t pretty anymore. Lines and sags and bulges, Oh My!
Today, that can be handled with varying degrees of surgical and aesthetic success, depending on the viewer, and the recipient’s ego’s point of view.Silicone made the burlesque/stripping world take notice.
Bored housewives discovered renewed spousal interest and improvements were made both at home and in the method and substance of implantations.
Credit cards made similar work available to the eager acting community as well.
Someone discovered the injection of botox, a botulism-like chemical, made improvements in the face’s structure…never mind the signpost of the human condition, would never again exhibit meaningful emotion.
The trick at this point in the career is to accept nature’s little follies and become an old character actor, or try to fool no one but one’s self and succumb to the knife and needle trade.
“Who the hell is J David Moeller?”
It is at this point I find now myself. After 50 or so years of trying with varying degrees of success to “make it big”, I find that few, if any, are even asking the question at all.
I have a habit of glancing over my shoulder from time to time, only to reaffirm what I already know: they’re not lining up around the block to book me for even a used car dealer’s commercial in North Zulch.
I, thus, write words in a blog no one read clinging nonetheless to the hope they might.
I load memorabilia into web pages as “proof” of my having had my foot in the door at least a few times.
I highlight the good parts of my reviews interspersed amongst the photographs to remind myself I really was “critically acclaimed”.
And, even I myself, often wonder, “Who the hell is J David Moeller?”
