Smash = A Mirror

At my going away party in NY,
before I moved to LA.

Did you watch Smash last night?  We did.  And we had to keep pausing and looking at each other and saying, "What?" "Really?" "Stop it."  That was basically the conversation between me and my husband.  The show hit really close to home.  From the first audition we see Katherine McPhee's character at where the director takes the call in the middle of her singing to the dinner she has with her boyfriend and her parents to the shot of her singing along to the leaked Youtube video, it was like someone had sneaked in and leaked video of my life.  My life now and my life in New York.  Watching the show made me feel nostalgic for my time in New York and my youth.  I know, I know, I'm still young.  But I was in my twenties.  I was just out of college.  I was pursuing this dream that seemed so possible, so fresh, so exciting.  And yet it was so obvious that it wasn't going to be easy.  It was never going to be easy.  So there was that part of the show that felt ripped from my own headlines.  And even now, the show hit close.  Yesterday I found out that I needed to record a clip of me singing to upload to the casting sites.  There are a lot of pilots being cast that need real singers and I need to show them that I can. So I sat here yesterday, going through the possible songs I could sing, singing along and testing them out.  This was before we watched the show.  And today I'll tape it and hope that the right person sees it.  And so the cycle goes.  

I think the most sobering part of the show is that I am not unique in feeling like it was a slice of my life.  There is a reason the writing felt so close to home - because it is a cliche.  And cliches are true. This is what we all go through in this business.  All of us pursuing this dream get that rude audition or that conversation that tells you to be realistic or we have that night, sitting in front of our computers, learning a new song as we continue to dream.  We get frustrated and feel like if we could only be seen for the great talents that we are, then everything will fall in place.  And we feel like we are the only ones feeling this way.  But, clearly, we all feel this way.  We all think we are special.  We all feel we are unique.  We all feel like we are stars.  And we all know the percentages are low for "making it" but we all also think, "Why not me?"  If someone is going to get "that" role...why shouldn't it be me?  If not this one...then the next.  And we keep going.  

I'm sure as the show continues there will be major divergences from how it reflects my life.  But this pilot episode was pretty spot on.  I cringed. I groaned. I empathized. I waxed romantically about NY.  And I set a series recording.