You Can’t Be Serious(45)
My gross salary for Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle was the equivalent of what the US Census Bureau called median household income.6 After deducting the standard expenses—agent, manager, and lawyer fees; paying publicist salaries and taxes—what I was left with was good enough to live off of for about five months. To be clear, that’s a huge victory. I had a roof over my head just from acting—I was supporting myself with my art, which meant that by my count, I was finally living the dream.
Having a publicist took some getting used to. I briefly had one after Van Wilder, and as a newcomer, I found her to be helpful in navigating things like those press junkets. Since I was now playing a title character in a movie, my manager, Dan Spilo, recommended I hire a way more established PR rep. The new publicist was sort of ridiculous. In the several months that I worked with him, I can’t remember ever seeing his eyes blink. He always carried around an extra-large cup of coffee and popped either an Adderall or Xanax at spaced intervals depending on the time of day. If you met or talked with him before Adderall #1 kicked in, you’d know it because his eyelids would stay half-closed. He’d hold the side of his head with one hand, nurse the cup of coffee with the other, and tilt his neck slightly back so he could see you with the open part of his eyes. “Ugh. I just… I don’t know what it is with me. The bottle of red wine I had last night must have been spoiled.”
Once the pill took effect, his eyelids would fully retract, and you wouldn’t ever see them again until it wore off a few hours later. During this time he’d talk very fast, about anything that came into his mind, from food trends to workout routines to serendipitous life events that he was sure had to do with either magic crystals or the position of Mercury.
On the plus side, he was always super nice to me and had a reputation for being a stellar publicist. The goal of hiring him wasn’t to get my name out there for the sake of fame or attention, it was to get specific types of press that could lead to more acting work—articles in magazines and interviews on television that would make me more bankable in the eyes of casting directors and producers.
There were some immediate missteps. I naively followed his advice when he instructed me to “just make stuff up that you think sounds funny as your character” before an interview with Playboy. Days later I was horrified to read the piece laid out as if my made-up, improvisational riff was a real interview about my sex life.7
He would also leave me unbelievable voice mails ranging from “We need to partner you with a nonprofit. I can get magazines to publish pictures of you doing charity work,” to “I’m going to send you a list of actresses who are up-and-coming. Let me know who you want to have dinner with so I can call the paparazzi and get some photos of your date in the tabloids.” Was this how Hollywood publicity operated? I was always eager to invest in something that would get me more work, but this kind of stuff, what do you call it?—lying—wasn’t for me. I let the publicist go.
With no real press to get no real jobs, those five months of living expenses didn’t turn out to be much of a safety net, so I eventually needed to return to some temporary gigs. And I suddenly found that I couldn’t get the kinds of day jobs I had relied on before. Production houses were hesitant to hire a somewhat-recognizable actor in an assistant role, because they knew I’d leave as soon as I got more acting work. And the service and retail industries wouldn’t hire me in coffee shops, clothing stores, bars, or restaurants because they said I could potentially hold up business. “You won’t be able to take orders as quickly if a customer turns out to be a fan.” Apparently nobody wanted people’s lattes getting cold if I was stopped and asked which special effects were used to light my back on fire in Van Wilder.8
Most people would think, Harold & Kumar was a hit! Now it’s on to fame, fortune, and fancy cars! In real life, it was more like, “Harold & Kumar was a hit! Now you’re not allowed to work at Jamba Juice.”
That was real life: I was living the dream, but I was too recognizable to land a day job and too financially strapped to know if I would make rent in a few months. So, you can imagine my relief when Spilo told me I had an audition for the supporting best friend role in an upcoming Ashton Kutcher film called A Lot Like Love.
One of Ashton’s friends was initially set to play the part until a bigger part in another movie came along for him. With the role open, they thought of me for the audition because the casting director’s assistant happened to be my good friend Lauren Grey. Finally, nepotism opening the door in my favor!
Completing Harold & Kumar allowed me to skip the first round of auditions and go straight to meeting the producers and director. Lauren greeted me in the waiting room and introduced me to the team: her boss (the casting director), the producers, and the very affable British director Nigel Cole. As Lauren videotaped, I read the audition sides. Nigel gave me a few character notes, and I read it a second time. Things seemed to be going well. Until…
“Kal, we’d like to see you do it again… this time with an accent.”
It was Lauren’s boss.
“Oh… the character has an accent?”
This was totally unexpected. I was reading to play a guy named Jeeter, Ashton’s character’s friend and business partner, who sells a company in a massive deal, charms a woman on their flight home, and buys an expensive car. Nothing in Jeeter’s background indicated he might need to have an accent. The script was well written on its own.