I’m on the phone, leaving a message on my best friend’s answering machine when I glance over towards the door. And what do I see walk through the hall, but a man holding the hand of a chimpanzee wearing diapers.
What the...? To the best of my knowledge, I didn’t take any LSD or peyote that day. I hang up the phone and immediately head out the door. I follow them to the other end of the hall. Several other people from other offices also saw them too and flocked at the other end of the hall. It was a trainer taking the monkey to meet a director who was prepping a new Tarzan movie.
The chimp was extremely cute. How often do you see chimp at work? Of course, the capper was the fact that he was wearing diapers. The trainer and the animal went into the office and were gone. We were all left muttering stuff to one another. Mostly we were all still flabbergasted by the fact that there was Chimpanzee in the hallway. Right next to the Tarzan office was a casting agent and I found myself standing next to an actress who came out of the casting agent’s office.
Did I say actress? Actually, that is not accurate. She was a genetically engineered robobabe. Remember Bo Derek? She was a “10.” This girl was an “11”... on a scale going from one to three!
As we start to go back to our offices, she says to me, “Excuse me, do I know you from somewhere?” Now when a face that could launch a thousand ships has words coming out of it and they are directed at you... you respond.
She is giving me one of the oldest lines in the book. But I don’t know how to respond. “Uh, I don’t think so. I would probably remember if I met you.”
“Did you work on the Paramount Lot?”
SCORE! I did work on the Paramount lot a year prior. Okay, maybe I have met this woman and forgot (after all, to paraphrase William Goldman, beautiful women are a dime a dozen. I can throw a stick in the direction of Malibu and hit ten of them). “Yes I did work at Paramount last year.” I can see her eyes pick up. “I was way in the back of the lot.” I see confusion in her eyes. “I was in the Haggar building.”
She asks, “Oh wait, do you work in casting?”
“No. I am a film editor.” At that moment I can see her completely shut down and lose all interest. It was as instantaneous as flipping off a light switch. In that instance I thought of that joke “Beauty is only skin deep. Ugliness goes to the bone.”
But that’s okay. I wasn’t chasing tail. I was chasing a Chimpanzee in diapers. And I got a funny story out of it. When my friend called me back he asked if I lost my mind. I didn’t understand. He then played back my message which was
“Hey, Chris. When you get this message give me a call back. Oh look there’s a Chimp!”
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