My Hollywood System

Chapter 167:

Will was surprised to see Jennifer in front of him. ‘What are Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry doing in 2012?’ This question flooded Will’s mind.

Maybe it was just like how he met Leo or maybe this all had a reason, after all, he was alive and doing better than ever even after his previous death. Not wanting to delve too deep to find answers to the two questions that were in front of him, he shook his head.

“Did you go through the script?”

Will questioned.

“Y-yes, sir. I did.”

Jennifer replied with a slight smile.

“Okay, you can start.”

Jennifer Aniston who stood straight on the stage moved a bit so she was facing slightly away from the judges and was avoiding eye contact, which was a basic rule in auditioning.

Without wasting more than 10 seconds, she started doing her role, as Rachel in [Friends]. Since Will wanted to see if she might fit the role, he had to give a specific script for her to practice and perform on the spot.

She was fine with doing so, in fact, her ‘sure sir’ made her appear like someone who is confident in their acting skills to everyone present. Maybe that was her plan all along.

She started her acting and it looked really realistic when she acted as if she was looking in the mirror and doing her make-up.

“Sorry about that. So. What have you been up to?” Freddie was someone who sat with the panel and volunteered to read the lines along with the actor on the stage. To help them, but he wasn’t really acting as every word that got out of his mouth was monotonous.

Freddie read Barry, a character in the [Friends] line.

“Oh, not much. I-I got a job.” Jennifer played her part while keeping her gaze focused on the walls.

“Oh, that’s great,” Freddie said aloud.

“Why are- why are you so tanned?” Her facial expressions looked serious.

“Oh, I, uh- I went to Aruba.”

“Oh no. You went on our honeymoon alone?” Jennifer looked in disbelief.

“No. I went with, uh… Now, this may hurt,”

“Me?!”

“No! I went with Mindy.” It was the scene where Barry was trying to come out clean that he went on the honeymoon with Rachel’s bridesmaid. Since there was another role during the scene, Freddie kept repeating the lines without a break.

“Mindy?! My maid of honour, Mindy?!” Her expressions changed dramatically which looked funny to everyone. Will had a smile plastered on his face. She even did some hand gestures which reminded Will of the original episode.

“Yeah, well, uh, we’re kind of a thing now,” Freddie said, which was Barry’s part.

“Oh! Well, um..” She acted as if dragging the person in front of her head. “You’ve got plugs!”

“Careful! They haven’t quite taken it yet.”

“And you’ve got lenses! But you hate sticking your finger in your eye!” Jennifer said, giving a confused look.

“Okay! That’s enough, miss Aniston. Can you do the last part, we’ll give you five minutes?” Will questioned. He so badly wanted to prove that Jennifer would suit the role perfectly.

“Oh, yes. Sure sir,”

“Hi, Mindy. Hi, it-it’s Rachel. Yeah, I’m fine. I-I saw Barry today. Oh, yeah, yeah he-he told me. No, no, it’s okay. I hope you two are very happy, I really do. Oh, oh, and Mind, ya know, if-if everything works out, and you guys end up getting married and having kids- and everything- I just hope they have his old hairline and your old nose,”

She acted as if she was slamming the phone down just like it was written on the script and turned to face the audience, “Okay, I know it was a cheap shot, but I feel so much better now.”

“Okay, haha… Thank you so much. Next is Matthew.” Will said while still smiling from Jennifer’s performance. She muttered a quick thanks and went to stand in the line again. Since they came to audition in groups of five, they had to wait till the other person was done.

Just like Jennifer, Matthew Perry did not disappoint Will’s unknown expectations. In fact, his acting was even better than Jennifer’s. He looked like a funny guy himself and made his dialogues look more natural along with his acting.

He acted along the lines of the script he got and came to the end even without knowing that Will is going to stop him.

“Ew, ew, ew, ew ew ew ew ew!” He made faces to suit the scene and mouthed out.

“Okay, that’s enough, thank you, you can go now. We will let you know the results soon,” Will said and smiled giving a brief nod.

Will turned to look at the other people sitting at him and said, “Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry would suit the roles perfectly,”

“But- we have not seen all the-” Susan tried to say her thoughts that they did not see every actor who wanted to audition and judging too quickly can lead to losing the chance of seeing better talents. But, her words were cut off by Jennifer.

“Sh Shh… whenever Will had said this, the person has gone on to become a star, hold your tongue when it comes to his decisions,” She whispered in Susan’s ear.

After finding the perfect Rachel and Chandler, the actors kept performing their talents one by one. Will was able to find actors who resembled Ross and then an actress for Phoebe. He was undoubtedly aware that he wouldn’t be able to find the original actors to create [Friends] but this was not that bad either, every actor had their own talents and some had the taste for comedy within them.

Therefore, Will tried his best to get the actors that even closely resembled the original ones in his mind.

In the end, he even got someone to play the role that Matthew le Blanc had played, the role of Joey. Benjamin Scott was able to please Will with his skills. He was a pizza delivery guy in the profession who was 28 years old, but after seeing the guy’s acting skills, Will gave him the role knowing with a little bit of practice the guy will nail it.

For Monica, Will had to go with Emily Penelope, an original actress who was around 26 years old, because he didn’t find anyone else among the 100 who were present there. But the girl he found, he thought she lacked something that the original Monica had. Will could only think of ways to perfect her acting of Monica’s role.

***

The assistant director for the movies that Will had directed before, Alan had got a lifetime opportunity. After Will realized and was impressed by his work, he gave Alan the chance to direct [Catch Me if You Can] by himself.

Alan and Leo were talking about the movie while sipping their coffee in the early morning.

“This would be a great shot actually, the Leo I’m aiming for is charming, let me explain,”

After seeing Leo’s face which was full of questions, Alan decided to explain things from the scratch about who Frank Abagnale is. He was, in fact, excited to share all the details.

“So, as you know the character, Frank Abagnale, the one you’ll be starring is someone who is very intelligent, cunning, mysterious, nice, and caring. This scene would be the perfect scene to explain it to you. You know the scene where Frank would pretend to be a substitute teacher in French and carried on the act for a week?”

“Oh yes, that one.”

The scene follows when Frank went inside the class and a classmate joked saying, that ‘he looks like a substitute teacher’. But after a while, Frank got onto the role of being a substitute teacher and had taught the class for a week.

This was a great scene where the character’s traits were more than visible.

“Frank Abagnale who is the main character and is a very innocent boy who was from a newly broken home and he tends to look for amusement in conning people into giving him money. So, this became his profession when he was seventeen and was successful until he was twenty.

Even with that little information, you can understand that he was smart and daring. He observed situations that helped him succeed in his scheme. In every one of the situations, Abagnale changed himself to fit the persona he needed to pull off his schemes. In fact, this scene is funny as hell. The only thing is, the acting skills that you would need to pull this off perfectly,” Alan explained who Frank was.

“Yeah, I can imagine,” Leo laughed imagining the whole scene that was in the script.

“Frank can be taken as someone who knows what to say to manipulate people. Who knows how to say the right thing at the right time. Although Frank would hesitate several times, he manages to hide it well. The only way to spot his hesitation is from the atmosphere around him. It is those subtle situations that give out the entire thing, BUT, Frank takes the risk and it is worth it,” Alan explained.

“Yeah I get it, but I have a question, do you think that after watching this… People might walk away with the wrong idea? I mean, this is basically about a guy who cons others with things right?” Leo questioned.

“Well, not really. The movie is set back years ago. Like, in the movie, Frank Abagnale will be the only one to do it to a certain extent, and that was 37, 38 years ago. He was just this 16-17-18-year-old kid, and that is something everyone needs to understand. Especially, when there were no safeguards that we have today, it was a lot harder to pass the bad check eight years ago than it is today, so it kind of explains the whole reasoning behind it,” Alan explained.

After around 45 minutes of discussing the story, plot, and acting, Leo was content with the information he had.

“It is going to be an interesting movie to shoot, indeed,” He smiled at his own words.

….

//DreamNote//

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