Camera.....

So, like I said, thanks to William, we met our manager, Cinda Snow. Cinda had met the other two boys and I had told her how Brock always wanted to be an actor, but being disabled, we weren’t sure how that would work. It’s hard enough in that business for someone who’s able bodied. So instead, we had talked to him about being a director and he liked to play with our video camera making movies of him and his brothers.

Then, one Friday in March, Cinda called me and told me that NBC was looking for a boy in a wheelchair Brock’s age. She wanted to know if we would let him audition. At first, we weren't sure. Would Brock understand if he didn’t get picked that it wasn’t personal? With his comprehension delay, we didn’t know. Cinda sent us the character breakdown, and as soon as we read it, we knew it was perfect for him.

We told her to go ahead with the submission, and they called him in for an audition that Monday. Then Cinda called an asked if we had a headshot.  A headshot?  Oh yeah, sure.  Every parent just has those lying around!  I told her I'd see what I could find.  It's not that easy!  He had to be by himself in the picture, preferably in his wheelchair (which he only uses part time so a lot of the pictures we have are without it), reasonably recent, not wearing white, black, or anything that has writing, logos, or characters on it, no baseball hats or sunglasses, and oh yeah, it has to be a close up. So I dug through some recent photos and I found one that would work.  It wasn't exactly perfect.  It was taken at the San Diego Wild Animal Park a few months before.  He did have 2 parrots on him in the photo, but he looked great and it really showed off his blue eyes.  I sent it over and I guess it worked fine.  After all that, he was so sick all weekend and I was so afraid he was going to miss the audition, but by Monday morning, he was feeling much better. He even learned all his lines – 8 pages!

We drove down to the Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank and as soon as I turned onto the studio lot, I was nervous for him. He wasn’t nervous at all! He was SO excited! This was his dream come true! He practiced his lines with Cinda for a few minutes before we went into the audition. There were several boys there with their parents and/or agents for both the same part as Brock, as well as another part.

We waited about an hour for our turn. Cinda had told Brock that there would probably be one person in the room with a video camera to do the lines with him. He was very excited and couldn’t wait to get in there. When they finally called him in, Cinda peeked around the corner into the room and saw 6 people in there. She was shocked and said, “I hope he’s not nervous. I didn’t prepare him to read in front of that many people.” I wasn’t worried about that at all! He’s our social butterfly so I knew a room full of people wouldn’t make him nervous.

I was nervous for a completely different reason!