Jordan and Cullen saw an ad on the Disney Channel to audition for commercials and TV sitcom roles and got it in their heads that they wanted to do it. They made me phone the 1-800 number and I got the audition details for them.
The agency emailed a short script for the boys to memorize and so we did that for a week before the audition. I went to the thrift stores and found 2 decent shirts for the boys to wear to the audition and had to take profile and full body photos of them.
The auditions were on a Sunday evening and we had to go a hotel downtown. We had a specific time slot for our audition and we thought it would take about an hour to get through. Well we waited in the conference room along with about 200 other people who'd all been allotted the same time slot as us. We had to sit through a 'rah-rah' presentation by some pompous gay man and then a 'no nonsense-this is business' talk by one of the top agents in the business who obviously didn't have children but was clearly from L.A.
The aim of the audition was to find sucker parents to fly their kids to Florida to enter a contest run by the agency. The kid who made it to the top was then awarded a contract with the agency who would only THEN go and find work in commercials and TV sitcoms.
When it was the boys turn to finally get interviewed by a scout, we got the L.A. lady who scrutinized my boys from head to toe and then turned her beady eyes on Warren and I (all the parents were asked to dress as if they were going to a nice dinner). We realized that they'd asked the parents to dress up so they could see how well off or not they were and thereby figure out which kids they'd 'call back' the following day. Why bother with the poor people, right? They'd never be able to fly their kids to Florida & pay thousands to enter the competition.
After the interview, the boys said their little commercial talk into a camera which lasted all of 15 seconds and then we were allowed to go. The process from start to finish was 3 hours and even though Jordan got a 'call back' from the L.A. lady, we didn't buy into their scheme.
It was a great experience for the boys, learning to overcome their fear in front of people and the L.A. lady but I'll never waste time like that again!
