UNTITLED CHAD DARNELL PROJECT

Chapter Nine: "I'm Looking for a Few Good Men..." ("Miss Evers' Boys")

Chapter Nine:  "I'm Looking for a Few Good Men..." (Miss Evers' Boys)

Of the nearly 75 shows I've cast, "Miss Evers' Boys" is a close second to my "Oldest Living Confederate Widow" as favorite show I cast.  It was probably the most challenging of all of them. 

The film took place in the 1930's and the 1970's and was a fictional account of the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syhlipis in the Negro Male."

The LOOK was excruciatingly important.  The film was probably 85% African American men and they all had to be rail thin.  They had to look period and they had to have great faces. 

It was challenging because this was a look we had to go out and find on the streets.  You can paper the town and hold all the open calls you want, but at the end of the day, you are going to have to get in your car and find these people.

When I worked at Central Casting, we had an amazing data base.  The images were digital - taken of the talent when they register in the office.  Information such as race, sex, height, weight, clothes sizes, phone numbers - everything you need to know are input into one main frame and it's searchable.

Back in 1996, we didn't have digital cameras.  (That didn't cost the same as putting a man on the moon.)  And with on location casting, you need up to date information.  If someone wants to be an extra on a film, they send in their picture and staple their information to it.  So you have everything from a headshot, to a graduation photo, circa 1974, to a group shot with all the other faces x-ed out.

And usually if you call someone from a photo used in a previous project, they have long forgotten about being an extra and could care less in the present moment.

And with on location casting, you don't have people that are professional background artists - and that this is all they do.  They have day jobs.

The production office for "Miss Evers' Boys" was exactly one mile from the Turner campus on West Peachtree, directly across the street from the Arts CenterMARTA station.  Because extras casting is the lowest on the totem pole, I was placed at a desk in the very front lobby.  I became the unofficial receptionist for production, until shooting started.  After principal photography started, I was allowed to move into the office of the director of photography.

I started with the open calls.  We held a series of open calls in the office.  I spoke to radio stations, newspapers.  Soon, photographs and snapshots arrived at the office and I began filing them.

Cynthia's mother was very ill.  She knew that it was only a matter of time.  Cynthia drove back and forth to Savannah.  I took the lead and recruited Cindy to be my partner, once again.  It's like when Bill Paxton turns to the old lady in that movie about the sinking boat, "are you ready to go back to Titanic?"

The film starred amazing actors.  Alfre Woodard, Laurence Fishburne, Ossie Davis,  Obba Babatunde, E G Marshall, and Joe Morton.  It was directed by Joseph Sargent, who is just about the best director for made for television and made for cable movies.

Our first order of business, aside from setting up the files, was the dance scene.  In Los Angeles and New York, dancers are "contract" performers.  In Georgia, a right to work state (meaning that performers can join the union, but production is not required to hire union performers), they are extras.  We worked with the choreographer to find dancers, scouring all the dance studios in Atlanta.

We began shooting in Porterdale, which was just on the other side of Covington.  I drove into Porterdale and put up posters all over town advertising for extras.  I also stopped at the Department of Labor, which helps find jobs for people as well.

I stopped at a gas station and saw an old African American man sitting on a porch.  I asked him if he wanted to be in the movie.  He had no teeth and one eye.  And he didn't say much.

"Well, do you have any friends or family that might want to be in the movie?"

He just stared at me.

Something about this man told me, he was a gatekeeper I needed.

"I think you'd be--" I started and he got up off the porch, walked over to my car and opened the passenger door of my new Saturn and got in.

I think the words, "oh, holy, crap" crossed my mind.  I walked over and got in the drivers seat.

"Drive," he warbled, reeking of smoke.

I drove down the street and he told me to stop at a liquor store.  We went in and he instructed me to buy a carton of Salems.  At this point, I just thought, why the hell not.  One day this will be an interesting story to tell and I would love to explain the twenty dollars for a carton of Salems on my petty cash report.

I did.  He put them in his coat.  We got back in the car.

"Drive.  I'll tell you when to stop."

Figuring that I was now Driving Mr. Daisy and was going to end up in Panama City, I did.  About three miles down the road he said, "turn here."

"Turn WHERE?"  There was no road.

"Here."

"There's not a road!"

I pulled off the road and down into the woods.  Fantastic.  He's taking me into the woods to kill me.  I should have stopped and said, "get out," but in the distance I saw a bunch of trailers.  As we got closer, I saw that these trailers were extremely run down and there were tool sheds serving as homes as well.

And this is how I'm going to die.

I stopped the car.  He got out and walked into a trailer.

I sat in the car and watched as several children emerged.  Then several women appeared.

I looked around my car for anything that could be used as a weapon, in the event I was going to have to fight my way out.  I finally sighed and resigned my fate.

I got out.  Yes, goofy, 6'2" white boy emerged and began his song and dance.

"Hi.  I'm working on a movie and I was wondering if you guys wanted to be in it?"

They stared at me.  I'm not sure who was more confused about my presence.  Them or me.

They didn't say anything.

Then the men emerged.

And this is how I'm going to die.

"Hi."

"You a cop?"

I laughed.  A little too high.  "Me?  Do I look like a cop?  No, I'm a casting director.  I'm working on a movie.  We're shooting nearby.  I'm looking for people to be in it."

A young boy, his name was LeRoy, came out holding a baby.  A BABY!  I needed a baby!  I could use him and what I assumed was his baby brother! 

No, the baby was LeRoy's.  LeRoy was thirteen years old.

With a burst of confidence I talked to everyone.  I arranged to cast all of them for the scene that would shoot the next day.  I needed thirteen people and they would be the people.

As I was leaving, I told them to meet me down the street at the church at five in the morning.

"We don't have a car."

"You... NO ONE has a car?"

They all shook their heads.

"Uh, fine.  I'll pick you up.  But you HAVE to be ready."

Everyone agreed.

On my way out of the woods, I stopped and tied a piece of tape to a tree, so I could find the road the next morning.

The next morning... now see, honestly, in hind sight, I don't know how I got away with this and how I didn't wind up in prison.  It happened.  I swear it did.  But to this day, I'm not sure what possessed me and how I got away with it.

I found my way to the road and began driving in, when I saw police lights from a cruiser near the trailers.  I pulled up and the police were just as surprised to see me, as I was them.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm working on the movie and I'm taking these people to set."  I saw LeRoy in the cruiser.

They were taking LeRoy.

But see, we had a problem.  Cause I needed LeRoy and I needed LeRoy's baby.  In my mind, if they took LeRoy, I couldn't have the baby.

"You can't have him," I said.

"Excuse me?"

"I need him.  I need him and his baby."

"We're taking him in for questioning on a murder."

"What!?  LeRoy couldn't kill anyone."

They just stared at me like I was an alien.  And I was playing character witness to someone I didn't know.

"Besides, LeRoy was with me yesterday afternoon."

The rest of tent city just stared at me like I was a Jesse James.  I FELT LIKE Jesse James.  More importantly... in three hours, cameras were going to be rolling and I NEEDED LEROY'S BABY.

"Look, I don't think you understand.  I need LeRoy and I need his baby.  Now you guys can follow us to set, but I need him in the first shot."

Seriously... no idea how I got away with this.  I guess in the early days of casting, I took everything so seriously that it was life or death.  MY life.  MY death.

And when I need something, not even the arm of the law can stop me.

Six people climbed into my car and we drove to the church.  The police cruiser followed me out.  I assumed they were taking him to jail.

A woman in the backseat finally broke the silence.  "You are one crazy bitch."

"Sister, you have no idea."

I pulled into crew parking and the cruiser followed me in.

Now I had another problem all together that I had not considered.  I now have two cops attached to one of my extras.  Try explaining THAT to a production.  "Oh, those guys?  Well, they are waiting for us to get the shot before they take him in to question him about a murder."

I dropped off the first group and then drove back to pick up the next group of six.  The baby was taken by a neighbor.  I had the baby.  That was all that was important.

As it turns out, LeRoy talked to the cops and they left him alone.  When one of the set PAs asked why the police were in crew parking, I just smiled and said, "they were nice enough to help me drive the extras to set."

If you go back and watch the movie, the scene I am referring to is the scene in which Alfre is talking to a group of people about the "good medicine" and the scene ends with her saying, "look at this beautiful baby."

It would also be THE clip used for every awards show, the show was nominated for.

After we shot our extras out - meaning, they were done for the day - craft service packed a large box of food and drinks for the extras and the transportation captain arranged for a van to drive everyone back home.

Once we returned to Atlanta to shoot, the number of extras working per day tripled.  Problems grew.  We got great pictures sent in - but no name or contact info on the pictures.  They were mounted on the "wall of shame."

We got great faces.  Unfortunately, they had enormous bodies that would never fit into the period wardrobe.  We got great faces, but they had mutli-colored weaves.  We got great faces, but they couldn't work all day.

I remember casting at two in the morning, trying to find people for a scene that would work in the early hours of the morning.  And I called asking for "Tomeka."

Me:  Is Tomeka there?

Man:  No.  She out.

Me:  Will she be coming in tonight?

Man:  Who this?

Me:  My name is Chad Darnell.  I'm casting the movie "Miss Evers' Boys."

Man:  You doing what?

Me:  Casting.

Man:  Casting?

Me:  Yes, casting.

Man:  What does that mean?  You going to put her in a mold?

Me:  No, I put people in the movies.  The people that don't talk.

Man:  How did you get my number?

Me:  Tomeka sent me her picture.

Man:  So why do you want Tomeka?

Me:  I want to put her in the movie!

Long pause.

Man:  Tomeka going to be in a movie?!

At this point, I threw myself backwards in my chair, in frustration.  The chair tipped over and I hit my head on the table behind me.  I fell out of the chair.  I couldn't do anything but laugh and cry.

"Tomeka going to be in a movie" became our catch phrase for moments of tension.

Then there was the "Princess of Unity."  That was her name.  She wouldn't allow us to print her real name on her check.  She was the "Princess of Unity."  She held up check-in with my coordinator for ten minutes, as I had people backed up.  I walked over and asked what was the problem.  "Honey, I don't care if you call yourself the Queen of England, but the tax forms must match whatever you report to."

Apparently, she is the "Princess of Unity."

During our third week of shooting, we moved into the city and began shooting the hospital scenes.  These scenes required hundreds of men, mostly shirtless.  It required the gauntest of the gaunt.

We shot in an area of town that a skinny white boy had no business being in.  With production shooting at a school, I would spend my nights walking out to a well lit street corner and standing.  Like Covington, first the children would come out.  Then the women.  Once the women asked me what I was doing there, the men would come out.  Within thirty minutes, I was surrounded.

One night, one of Atlanta's finest cruised up with his search light pointing at my circle.  He got out, walked over, jerked me aside, and everyone scattered.

"Just what in the hell do you think you are doing!?  Trying to get yourself killed!?"

"No, I'm TRYING to cast my movie.  And you just scared them all off!"

"Have you lost your mind!?  You don't have ANY business being out here at this hour."

I, for some reason, had no fear whatsoever.  I was offering these people jobs.  Money.  Plus, I had a feeling that I was being watched over.

Night after night, I would say a little prayer, and then wander out into the night, wandering the streets, waiting for the kids.  Then the women.  Then the men.

Of course, this was not a fool proof plan.  For every ten men I talked to, three would show up the next day.  That's why I had to talk to as many as possible.  Every morning I would make an announcement in extras holding, "if anyone has a friend that wants to work, come see me and you can call from my cell phone."

And since we were filming in a neighborhood, they would often leave set, often in wardrobe and never come back.  Wardrobe hated me.  "Can't you find people that aren't going to steal our clothes?"  Sadly, I don't do background checks when casting.

During our last week of filming, "the riot scene," which appeared in and out of the script pages during the shoot, was finally decided it would "in."  Filming was expected to shoot on a Friday, but at the last minute, it was decided we would have to shoot a day early.

The riot scene involved a protest in which Alfre Woodard's character simply walked from a car, up the steps and into the capital building.  A scene that would last a few seconds and involve two hundred extras. (A scene that would get cut from the final film).

This was cake.  The protesters were all white.  I had white people in droves.  We began lining the white people up.  Again, keep in mind, while it was easy to find them, it took close to ten minutes per person to explain wardrobe and give them directions.  Assume one person books six to seven people an hour.  You are looking at two people working 14 hours straight and doing nothing else.

Not terrible.  Not fun.

At midnight the night before, just as we were wrapping up to go home - they added 75 people.  75 men to be exact.

It's one thing to sit down and start calling out men.  It's another to find 75 in seven hours, who are not go to work the next day and make minimum wage. 

I nearly had a stroke.

At this point, we had been working sixteen, eighteen hour days for weeks.  In addition to finding 75 men, paperwork would have to be done.

I lost it.  I closed the door and burst into sobs.  Cindy came in, ever the cheerleader.  "Come on!  We can do this!  Just start calling!  You just need to focus!"

"Cindy!  We are NOT sitting here and calling out to five hundred men in hopes of finding seventy five!"  I went from loss to rage.  "This is bullshit!  Where in hell are we going to find seventy five men at midnight!"

If this were a movie, you would immediately hear the horns of The Village People and the beginning "YMCA."

I don't think Cindy and I even talked.  I grabbed my coat, she grabbed hers.  We got in my car and drove five blocks to Backstreet.

Backstreet, which is now closed, is a predominately gay club in Atlanta that used to be open 24 hours.  There were three levels and it was always packed. 

We arrived and I asked to speak to the manager.  I explained my situation.  He told me "good luck."

See, to me "good luck" means, "I'm giving you permission to do whatever you want."

I made my way to the DJ booth and spoke to the club kid inside.  The music stopped and I took the microphone.  There were screams and shouts from the men and women below.

"I'm looking for a few good men," I said.  Screams, catcalls - I was a rock star.  "Seventy five, good men to be exact."  Screams, applause.  Someone yelled show us your tits!  At that point, I would have stripped naked and done a pole dance, I was so desperate.

"Do you think you could be my man?"  Woo-hoo!  "You want to come play with me?"  Screams.  "I... want... you... all... and when I'm done with you, I'll buy you breakfast."

The deal was closed.  We told the men to meet us at the capital building the next morning at six.  When they balked, I suggested they just stay out all night.

Six hours later, magically, I had 75 new men.  Granted they looked like they had all been run over by a truck, but nothing a few barrels of coffee couldn't fix.

The days began to wind down on production.  During the shoot, Cynthia's mother passed away and she remained in Savannah, dealing with her mother's estate.

For me, the show was exhausting.  It nearly broke me me in half.  But it was one of the most rewarding.  I was very proud of my work.  I wish I had taken pictures.  But at least it lives on in DVD.

As I was wrapping out the office, I received a phone call for Cynthia from a production manager in Savannah.  He wanted to talk to Cynthia about casting the film, "The Gingerbread Man."  The movie sounded vaguely familiar.  After doing a little bit of research, I discovered why.

It was to be directed by Robert Altman.

In film school, we were to pick one director and study that director intensively.  The director I picked:  Robert Altman.

I would have cut off on arm to work on that film.  I called Cynthia.  Relayed the message.  The last thing in the world she wanted was to stay in Savannah any longer than necessary.  She certainly didn't want to work on a movie in Savannah.  I begged and pleaded for her to take the interview and pitch me as casting the movie, suggesting she go in for prep and I take it over.

She told me she would think about it.

A few days later, I was in a car, driving to Savannah to meet with production.  Cynthia pitched to production that she would start and prep the film.  Once production started, she would leave and I would take over.

They were not sold on me.  Cynthia was the Savannah native.  Cynthia knew the area.  But they would at least meet with me.

"Miss Evers' Boys" would later go on to win tons of awards including the "Outstanding Casting."

Guess who's name was not on the award.

Chapter Eight: "There Will Be A Great Schism" (THE TURNER YEARS Part 2)

Okay, you've been asking for it...

This is a really long chapter, and the conclusion of my years at Turner. 

If you have not read the first part - or need to re-read the first part again... cause it picks up where the last part end ed- and that was back in September, click here.  But don't read this one until you read the first part, otherwise you will be completely lost.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about... I started writing all my experiences in casting into a book, called Trade Secrets.  This is the second part of Chapter 8.  You can reread them all by going here

I really need to go back and rewrite it - so let me know if something is vauge.  Interested in your thoughts.

Enjoy.

-C

                        

Chapter Eight: "There Will Be A Great Schism" (THE TURNER YEARS Part 2) 

Christy and I arrived at the DeSoto Hilton about a thirty minutes later.  We took the elevator up to the pool level and walked out onto the terrace.  Andrea, Scott, and Christopher all rushed towards us.

"Oh my God!  You're okay!  Thank God!" they screamed, hugging me and hugging Christy as if we had just survived a plane crash.

At this point, we had no idea what or why there was such an insistence on our appearance at the hotel.  And frankly, their enthusiasm was frightening.

Christy and I sat down by the pool and they began to retell the story.

As it goes, Andrea and Christopher sat down the evening before with the Ouija board and were contacted by Hawk, a spirit.  The spirit pulled the marker into a figure eight across the board and they described how good the feeling felt.  Like a peaceful feeling.

I looked at Christy.  Clearly, these people were nuts.

Cynthia walked out onto the terrace in mid-story, looking exhausted.  "Did you get to the part about Hawk?"

They shush her.

It's not clear at this point if Hawk is in fact a hawk or Hawk is a man named Hawk.  Regardless.

"We asked the spirit if there was someone here who was influenecing him." And to demonstrate, Andrea and Christopher moved their hands to a phantom area - as if it were the board, "yes."

"So, we asked who was influencing him and he spelled C-H-A-D-A-T-T-B-S."

Perplexed as to who exactly "Chadattbs" was, it was Christopher who broke the code - "Chad at TBS."  There was much screaming and gasping.  They began talking over each other.

"Chad at TBS," I said.  "And what time were you guys doing this?"

"It was around three in the morning."

"3:17.  I looked at my watch."

"So we asked, is Chad going to be okay?  And he said "yes."  And he spelled out CHRIS TAKE CHAD HOME.  He kept spelling it over and over and over again."

"So I guess I need to take you home," Chris suggested.  I smiled a smile that read, "not on your life."

"And-and-and!  Hawk said CYNTHIA AND CHAD WILL WORK TOGETHER AGAIN."

I looked at Cynthia, who was reclining on a chaise with her sunglasses on.  Cynthia and I had our differences in the past.  But I had a job in development I was happy with.  And I saw no reason whatsoever I could ever want to go back into casting.

"Is that right?" I asked.

"BUT THERE WILL BE A GREAT SCHISM."

Great.  So you're telling me we are going to work together again, but then we're going to break up.  Thanks for the warning.

About an hour after we arrived, Christy and I left.  The group insisted on me coming back to Savannah soon.  I smiled and said I would think about it.

Christy and I didn't talk for the first hour we drove back to Atlanta.  Finally I turned to her and said, "so... weird, huh?"

"You think?!" she exasperatedly said, as if a bottle had been opened.

"I mean, that was kind of weird.  "Chad at TBS," right?"

"What I thought was weird was "Chris Take Chad Home."

I looked at Christy.  "Yeah.  That is weird."

I turned on the radio.  "I am still living with your ghost.  Longing and dreaming of the west coast.  I don't want to be your downtime.  I don't want to be your stupid game.  With my big black boats and an old suitcase--"

Changing the channel.  "Like anyone would be I am flattered by your fascination with me.  Like and hot-blooded woman I have simply wanted and object to crave--"

Okay - gotta be something on here not creepy:  "Listen as the wind blows, from across the great divide.  Voices trapped in yearning, memories trapped in time--"

A clicka - "You're uninvited an unfortunate slight."

"You know, I'm good riding in silence," I suggest.

I looked down at my watch. 

"3:17."

The next day, I arrived at work.  I spread out all the research and notes I had complied from the trip to Savannah and made my first phone call to Margaret DeBolt.  I thanked her for her time in Savannah and told her about the strange things that led up to my moment in the square.

"What did he look like?" she asked.

"Blondish, grayish hair.  Mustache. Khaki pants--"

"Did he look like a young Ted Turner?"

Why, yes.  Yes, he did.

"Oh, that was Joe Odom."

"Really?  That's interesting," I said, with a feeling of dread.  "And when did he die?"

"Oh, Joe died back in the late eighties I believe.  Where you were sitting was in front of the apartments.  The LaFayette, where he lived.  That's where John met him the first time.  Do you have "The Book" (what everyone in Savannah refers to as "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil)?"

I did.  It was on my shelf.  She instructed me to read the description and then call her back.

I pulled the book and flipped through the pages.  I found it.  I gasped.  When John Berendt met Joe Odom for the first time, Joe Odom was throwing a party.  He found him hunched over an electrical box trying to turn the power on inside his building.  (The power company had turned it off).  I ran into Adrienne's cubicle and read the description to her:

"Joe Odom had a mustache and graying blond hair.  He wore a light blue shirt opened at the neck, chinos and brown and white saddle shoes.  He was about thirty-five and looked remarkably calm, I thought for someone who had just pulled off a life-threatening , high-voltage act of larceny--"

I stopped reading, because all of the power went off in the building.  I heard from across the floor, "damn!  My computer"  "What happened!?"  "What the hell!?"

I looked up.  Adrienne's eyes widened.  "GET OUT OF MY CUBICLE!"

I closed the book shut.  All the power came back on.

Needless to say, it freaked me out.

Later that afternoon, I drove Adrienne to lunch.  As we were entering the parking deck I reached down to my cassette player and turned up the volume.  I forgot that I had left the audio tape of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" in my car from before I left for Savannah.  On cue, Anthony Heald read:  "remarkably calm, I thought for someone who had just pulled off a life-threatening , high-voltage act of larceny."

Again.  All the lights in the parking deck went out.  It took Adrienne about ten seconds to realize what had happened.

"You are a freak!"

That night, I took my film to the One Hour Photo place around the corner and developed my pictures.  In the photos I had taken of Christy inside the hotel room, they were all blurry.  Then photos I took outside of the Telfair Museum were all black.

I called Cynthia from my cell phone, standing there flipping through pictures.

"So, I'm coming back to Savannah this weekend.  Mind if I crash with you guys?"

I flew to Savannah after work Friday night.  When I arrived, I went to the apartment where everyone was staying.  Within fifteen minutes of my arrival, the Ouija board was out.

I watched as Christopher and Andrea immediately began contacting spirits.  I was still the reluctant in all of this, but had to admit, there was something here.

Andrea insisted I sit at the board.  She said a prayer to God to watch over us and protect us.  This made me extremely nervous, because obviously, here I am not dabbling in the occult, I'm walking into it and saying, "Hi, howya doin'?"

Now here comes my big disclaimer:  I'm not going to tell you who and what I saw.  I know, that's the juicy stuff. 

And here's why.  After three days of talking to dead people, I went to interview a spiritualist in the low country.  When I walked in and sat down, she refused to look at me.  Why you ask?  Because she didn't like the man who was standing behind me.  (And keep in mind, there were only two people with heartbeats in the room...)  She described him and told me his name.  Which coincidentally happened to be one of the spirits we had talked to for three days.  And his name was not Hawk.

No, this person was someone who died a horrible death.  And someone she said that had attached himself to me.  Someone she said was trying to cross over into me.  The recent bruises I had on my body were also explained.

She told me to pray to God to have him released and to let his spirit find peace.

And most importantly... I was to NEVER touch another Ouija board again or speak his name again.

I drove out to the beach that night and prayed like I had never prayed before.  It was probably the first time in my life that I had actual proof of life after death. 

Growing up in church, faith is something you can't see or touch.  It's an emotion you are entrusted to feel.  To believe in something you can't see.

What I took from that weekend was honestly the greatest knowledge I could have hoped for.  Yes, indeed - There is a God.  There are spirits.  There are good ones and there are bad ones.  There is something beyond death. 

But there is a RESPECT that one must have for the dead.

When I returned to Atlanta, drained and exhausted, I dropped all the interest I had in the project.  TBS took the idea of doing a special on ghosts and called it "Haunted."  It was rushed into production and aired October 27, 1996. 

I, however, avoided any and all involvement with it.

The following weekend, "The Swan" opened at Georgia State University.  It was a great experience.  It was also the final weeks we Atlantans would have to ourselves.

A month later, the entire world came to our backyard.  The 1996 Olympics.

Because the Turner Complex sat right next door to the Olympic Village, Turner wanted us to scatter to the four corners of the country.  Vacations were encouraged.  Work outside the city was ideal.

I requested to go to Los Angeles.  Turner said okay, as long as I put myself up.  (Cheap, cheap company... but keep in mind, I was still a lowly underling.)

Even better, Cynthia and company were in Los Angeles at the time, staying at the Oakwood on Barham.  I could, once again, crash on the floor with them a few nights and stayed with other friends on other nights.

I set up to meet with Rob Stone and Andrew Shue who were both developing documentary specials.

This would be my first experience with Los Angeles streets.  Those familiar with Los Angeles will understand the absurdity that I went from Universal City on Mullholland ALL THE WAY OVER Mullholland to the 405 to get to Sony.  (Read:  suicide).  How I took the 101, to the 405, to the 10 to get into downtown Los Angeles.  It's not that I don't have a sense of direction.  I have the BEST sense of direction of anyone I know.  You can drop me anywhere in the world and I can find my way out.  It's just that I was staying with people GIVING me directions.

The day that went to meet Andrew Shue (Billy from "Melrose Place") he was driving away as I parked.  His wife had just gone into labor.

I met Rob Stone at the City Grill and he pitched a great show on airplanes. 

Ultimately, I knew this trip was pointless.  I knew that I was getting close to hitting a glass ceiling.  I was young.  And I had a penis.

The division I worked for was primarily women.  Very strong women.  Very smart women.  Women who supported other women.  There's nothing wrong with that.  Well, okay, maybe there is.  But I knew that my lifespan in that division was coming to an end.

The day that I left, Cynthia took me to the Mullholland overlook to see the Hollywood sign.  In all of my trips back and forth - I failed to realize that if I just LOOKED UP, I would have seen the sign.

I didn't want to go home.  I wanted to stay.  I saw a small coffee shop at the end of Barham and Ventura that was hiring.  I could just quit everything and work there.

It was also during this trip that Cynthia and I sat down and talked about what really happened during our break up.  She was being supplied with information from her business manager that was untrue.  The healing began.  Things were good.

We stood at that beautiful overlook.  The Hollywood Bowl, below.  And I looked up to see a gorgeous hawk.  Circling in the air.  Doing a figure eight.

This is where I'm supposed to be.  I knew it.

I got back to LAX.  Got on the plane.  Cried on the way back. 

When I returned to the city, we were all surprised at how easy it was to drive in Atlanta.  All of our visitors were taking public transportation. 

The Olympics was a giant party.  I loved going to the outdoor concerts in Centennial Park.  Joan Osborne was amazing.

But the party was over real quickly.  On July 27th, I woke up to a phone call in the wee hours of the morning from my friend Alicia.  "Oh, thank God.  Your home.  I was worried."

When I finally asked what was wrong, she told me to turn on the television. 

There had been a bombing.  One woman had been killed.  Eleven were injured.

Security was on lock-down.  Going into the office meant going through a near cavity search.

Three days after the bombing, a memorial service was held in the park.  I was assigned to go with a crew to get reactions from the crowd.  Basically it involved me looking pretty, as I had no camera experience whatsoever.

When we arrived in the park, there was a LINE of camera crews.  I had never in my life seen so many reporters.  And it was so quiet, you could have heard a pin drop.

We positioned ourselves near the tower, where Katie Couric was interviewing Richard Jewell, the hero who found the bag.  Jewell worked to move many people away from the scene in order for investigators to check the bag.  However, the bomb exploded.

After Jewell left the platform, he made his way towards us, inquiring if we wanted to interview him.  Having not thoroughly followed the investigation, I simply saw him as a media whore.  And our job was to get crowd reaction shots.  I blew him off.

When we returned to the offices hours later, we stopped at stared at the monitors above the reception desk.  Richard Jewell was the number one suspect.

Jewell, of course, was completely cleared of all charges and accusations.

As the days unfolded, I reached that unhappy stage.  I knew I had reached as far as I was going to go on this ride.  I didn't care about my job any more.  Shows I pitched were shot down with disdainful looks.   I began looking at that job board hourly.

Manna from heaven: I got a phone call from Cynthia.

"I need you."

Cynthia was hired to cast the extras on the HBO movie, "Miss Evers' Boys."  It was a period film about the syphilis experiments on African American men in the 1940s.  It would require nearly 1,500 emaciated African American men.

I gave Turner my two week notice, but that wasn't necessary.  I started with Cynthia the next day.

It was just like Hawk had said.  "We would work together again."

But there will be a great schism.

Chapter Eight: "Thank You For Your Interest In Turner Originals'..." (THE TURNER YEARS: Part One)

(This chapter is SO long I had to break it up, cause no one would ever read it in one sitting...  I also need to fill in more description, but I wanted to get feedback.)

Chapter Eight:  "Thank You For Your Interest In Turner Originals'..." (THE TURNER YEARS:  Part One)

"Turner Originals', this is Adrienne."

"Adrienne... my name is Chad Darnell..."

I remember my voice hanging there and thought, just do it:

"...And I want to work for you."

"Well, we're really not hiring right now--"

"I understand that, but I just graduated from Georgia State University with a degree in film and I want to work in development and I want to work for you, so I'll come in and work for free until you realize you can't live without me."

There was a pause and almost a slight laugh.

"Well, that's great.  When can you start?"

"I can be there in twenty minutes."

Twenty minutes later, I was standing in the lobby at "The Big House," the mansion building that was part of the Turner complex. 

A security guard gave me a pass and told me how to get to the Turner Original's offices, which was through a massive maze of hallways, stairs, and sublevels.  Halfway there I began to wonder if I should have left breadcrumbs to find my way back.

When I finally arrived, at the basement and into the small office, I met Adrienne.  Adrienne Bramhall, on the day I met her was wearing fire engine red dress and sitting in her tiny little office.  Scripts, folders, proposals, video tapes and research grew from every flat surface.  She looked and sounded EXACTLY like Linda Fiorentino from the movie, "The Last Seduction."  Picture her, that's Adrienne.  They could have been identical twins, except Adrienne was slightly less homicidal.

Adrienne explained that Turner Original Productions was the non-fiction series and specials department for Turner Broadcasting.  At which point I thought, "crap!  I HATED documentaries in college!  I slept through eighty percent of that class!"  (Fortunately, I had a former hippie for a professor, so as long as I used big words and related works to pieces of art, I passed the class.)  I ASSUMED, since I said I wanted to speak to someone in DEVELOPMENT, I would have landed in the features department.  Sadly, no.  I was in documentaries.

Shrug it off.  You are in the building.  You can begin your attack from the inside.

I imagine that in those first few days, Adrienne was wondering why I was so apt to work for free, but nonetheless, began assigning me little projects to do.

My first job was to "log" incoming projects.  Independent producers, companies and just in general whack jobs mailed Turner Originals proposals for projects they wanted to produce with TOP.  I would make sure that a release form was attached, and if not, send a release form and then attach the form to the project.

Once the release form and the project were together, the project was passed to someone to review.

Once it was reviewed, 98% of the time, I would construct the generic "PASS" letter which always began:

"Thank you for your interest in Turner Original Productions.  We have reviewed your project (enter name here).  While it is intriguing, it unfortunately does not meet our development needs at this time.  We wish you the best of luck with this project."

The 2% (and that's being generous) that WERE interesting, would move to the next stage - which meant the senior staff would receive a copy of it and review it for the next stage, which would move to the next stage. 

In all of my time at TOP, I believe three projects went into development.

Three out of five thousand.

I logged tapes and projects and sent release forms for three weeks - working for free.  The temp that was hired to work for Adrienne was hired full time for the Cartoon Network.  Suddenly there was an opening.

Three weeks after I said I would work for free until I proved they couldn't live without me... I was hired.

I was hired as a contract employee.  No benefits.  Nine dollars and hour.  (Yes, we call that rape, but it was a job and I thought it would be no time before I would get a better position and salary.)  As a contract employee, I would have access to all the job boards and could apply for any job in any network at any time.  My plan for working from the inside, was working.

It was during this time that I learned what makes a project commercial and knowing your market.  Turner Originals was a non-fiction series and specials.  Documentary films. 

We would receive projects for feature films, comedy shows (I reviewed one project that I KNEW was going to be a huge hit and knew we were not right for it.  When I wrote the pass letter, I remember writing, "Dear Camryn, I loved your project and I know it will be a huge hit.  You are very talented and you are going to explode one day very soon.  Unfortunately, it just does not fit with our network, but best of luck on your project, "Wake Up, I'm Fat."  (Camryn Manheim.  Back in the days when she was a starving artist in NY.  A year or two later she would walk away with an Emmy.)

We also had huge producers and directors interested in working with Turner Originals.  Their projects went straight to the "Development Meeting" - which was the round table review.  One project I gunned for relentlessly was a project about the Birmingham Bombings.  I knew it was going to be huge.  At the same time, I was researching the story for consideration of development based on a book.  It was written by the niece of one of the bombers.

I called the publisher and requested to speak with the author, slightly confused as to why the author in fact had a man's name.

Regardless, Adrienne and I pitched it... but that morning, I received a phone call back from the publisher, asking me if I had finished the book.  (I may have skipped the last few chapters...)  The niece had a sex change and was now a man. 

They passed.

BUT - the other project was at least still on the table...  And they passed on that one as well.

Two years later, Spike Lee won the Oscar for "Four Little Girls."

Bill Burke, was the boy genius President of TBS.  He was 30 years old.  Nicest guy at the complex.  Smart.

Bill called me "Coffee Boy" (he knew my real name, it just happened to be my nickname) since I was the only one on the floor who apparently knew how to make coffee.  He would always find me in the break room at the same time.  He also taught me that if you took a chocolate pop tart and microwaved it for fifteen seconds, it was a piece of heaven.  Aside from our love of coffee and pop tarts, we would also always wind up in the bathroom at the same time.  I wondered if he was stalking me.  (This will become a plot point later, so remember this...)

Thom Beers was one of the producers I worked for the most.  Ever see the movie "Swimming With Sharks?"  He's Kevin Spacey, only Thom had a little bit of nice in him.  When Thom wanted something, he wanted it five minutes ago.  If he needed something from another department, he would send me into that person's office and have me SIT ON THE FLOOR until I delivered it.  But working for Thom taught me resourcefulness.  I could have become a spy after working for Thom.  I tracked down more information and at one point, had to locate a field producer in the middle of Wyoming within five minutes.  The only information I had was their name and the city they were in.  I called all the hotels and located him in three.

Pat Mitchell was the President of Turner Original Productions.  Today she is the President of PBS.  Classy, smart, shrewd.  You didn't cross her.  Few people make me nervous.  But with her, you could never tell.

Vivian Schiller was the Vice President of Turner Original Productions.  Adrienne and I reported directly to her.  Vivian never liked me.  I was not made for the corporate world.  Dress me in a t-shirt and jeans, I'm good to go.  Vivian's assistants were all women.  They climbed the food chain quickly.  I had a penis.  Therefor, I didn't do a lot of climbing.

About a month after I was hired, we moved from the basement to the 1050 building, which housed the Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies and TBS.  We were on the top floor with TBS - the level we half jokingly referred to as "Level Five" - the term for the highest level of contamination in toxic poisoning.

One of the perks of working at TOP were the birthday celebrations.  The higher ups always did cool birthdays.  There was always cake and some sort of party.

Murray Schutte, who I had known as a child doing theatre together, was an executive assistant to one of the producers.  For her birthday, Thom Beers flew out the original Captain Planet costume.  (Thom was the executive producer of the cartoon)  I was to wear it for her birthday because a) I'm the actor.  b) I'm the tallest.  c) I'm the lowest on the food chain.

Thom was out of town the day of the party, but the costume was delivered into his office in this massive coffin.  It was a foam suit and a giant plastic head.  The costume is all padding, but extremely tight to put on.  You had to work to force your forearms through the sleeves.

That afternoon, I had a job interview in marketing.  I planned it to where I would wear the costume and do the whole cake thing, get changed, run home and shower and make it to my interview by three.

I got dressed, pulling my long hair into a tight pony tail before slipping on the head.  Fortunately no one recognized me in this stupid suit as I marched all over the Turner campus.  Everyone was gathered in the park and we did the cake thing.  Ten minutes later, I was done.

I made my way back to our TOP offices.  I took off the head and the gloves as I approached Thom's office.  I opened the door, walked in, and started to close the door when...

(This all happened in SLOW MOTION):  Thom's Emmy nomination for "Ring of Fire" fell off the wall, which was above the door.  I saw if falling, so naturally, I reached up to grab it, but - the frame hit the door, shattering the glass into a million pieces.

One very large piece, sliced my hand and pinkie finger.  Sliced - makes it sound like it slipped away.  It was actually sticking OUT of my hand, so I have to pry it out, as it made a "ffffppptttt" sound coming out of my hand.

I am now bleeding like a WB star in a Wes Craven movie - in the Captain Planet costume.  I'm doing everything I can do to not get blood on the costume and Thom's office.

I ran across the hall and into the bathroom, where, as my luck would have it - Bill Burke is at the urinal.  I reached (out of instinct) for the hot water and ran my hand under it.

You can imagine, the pain that caused and the sight of seeing holes in your skin flapping and screaming "hot water!  Hot water!  Hot water!"  I screamed many curse words, all beginning with letter "F" (actually many different variations of the same word) and snapped my hand up.  Blood sprayed across the mirror in one perfect line. 

Bill has now zipped and flushed and turned to see Captain Planet, Turner Broadcasting's number one Superhero (except the head is replaced by a ponytail hairdo), screaming expletives and bleeding to death.

"Wh... what... Chad?  Is that you!?"

"I cut my hand on Thom's f-cking Emmy nomination!"

He looked at my hand.

"You need stitches."

"No, I don't."

"Yes, you do."

I stood there looking at him, knowing he was right.  But I hate hospitals, and how was I going to get OUT of this tight costume without getting blood on it and GET to the hospital?

"Ok.  Help me get out of this thing."

He tried to help me get out of the costume.  He unzipped the back and tried to help me get out of it, but there was no way my arms would clear without getting blood everywhere.

At this moment, Bill Cox, the Vice President of TBS walked in.  All three of us stared at each other.

"What are you two... doing?"

"What does it look like we're doing!?" we both say.

I was going to have to wear the costume to the hospital.

It may not seem it, but you can actually lose a LOT of blood from your hand.  And I has losing a lot.

Bill zipped me back up.  We wrapped my hand in wet towels.  We walked outside where Jessica Handler saw me.   She jumped at the opportunity to take Captain Planet to the emergency room.

We arrived at the emergency room at Piedmont Hospital.  You can imagine the looks we got.

We had to fill out the workers comp forms and by this time I was delirious.  Name?  "Captain Planet."  Occupation?  "Superhero."  Describe the accident:  "While saving the world from galactic intruders..."

I'm not the kind of person who freaks at the sight of blood.

I AM the kind of person who freaks when kids coming running towards me and attach themselves to my thighs and begin screaming, "Captain Planet!"

"GET OFF ME!" I screamed.

(The next day, it would appear in the paper that Captain Planet was rushed to the emergency room and screamed at two small children.)

A male nurse, who had fought the other nurses and won to stitch up Captain Planet, told me it was the best story he ever had.

Two weeks later, when the workers comp forms arrived back at Human Resources, they were not amused that the name on the claim was in fact:  "Captain Chad Planet" and that he had he been stabbed by an Emmy Nomination.

In the spring of 1996, my alma mater, Georgia State University produced the play "The Swan."  In the play, a swan crashes through the window of a woman's house.  She takes care of him, but the swan dies and out of the body of the swan, climbs a man.  He's childlike at first, but then becomes the man of her dreams, before he runs off.  At the end of the play, he comes to her window and she goes out the window with him.

The play was directed by one of my favorite people, Rosemary Newcott and assisted by Cournteny Myles.

The Players opened the auditions up to former graduates and I was cast as Bill/ The Swan.

At the same time, TOP was preparing for the launch party for "Wild! Life Adventures," our new series that placed celebrities in the wild.  The launch party was held at Thom Beers home.  Adrienne and I coordinated psychics, snakes, circus performers, food, music.  You name it.

After the party was over, I began loading the sound equipment into my car.  And I felt something... wrong.

A few days later, I noticed a rather large bubble shaped protrusion near my nether regions.  It scared me, but I thought, if I ignore it, it will just go away.

It didn't.

The thing about Baptists is there is a lot of up and down and up and down in church.  It's like a step class at the gym.  And one morning in church, I stood up and fell down.

Out of sheer embarrassment, I didn't tell my parents about the alien that was climbing our of my crotch.  But this bubble was now starting to hurt.  Bad.  I went to the emergency room later that day and an Indian doctor walked in and told me to drop my pants.  She stared at my crotch and began talking in fast Indian dialect.  The only words I understood were "strangulated" "surgery" "immediately."

I had a strangulated hernia.  I had to go see another doctor, who again told me to strip.  While it may sound flattering, you never want to hear someone staring at your crotch and say, "my God, I have never seen anything like that before.  Does it hurt when I touch you here?"

Two days later, I was in surgery.  All I really remember about the experience was the nurse hooking me up to the happy stuff, and a bunch of medical students coming by and asking to lift my gown.  And I remember telling them all to take a picture, it would last longer.  And singing, "I Feel Good."

Surgery.  Play.  Work.  Three things that did NOT go together.

I was told I could not work out for six weeks, which was problematic as I was supposed to emerge from the basket naked.  THAT wasn't happening at all, since I had a six inch scar where a six inch scar should not be.  It wasn't just a scar, this thing had a life of it's own.  So the costume designer designed this pair of shorts, which was just as silly.  And needless to say, I was completely uncomfortable with my not having worked out for six weeks body - two weeks before the show opened.

A week before the play opened, I went to Savannah to research a new project I wanted to pitch to Turner about southern ghosts.  "Southern Ghosts" or "Restless Spirits."

I made contacts with many of the locals and began my plan of attack.

We were in rehearsals for "The Swan."  I managed to get away for a weekend, taking several friends with me, who would act as "my crew."  They took pictures and we recorded stories.

On the way into Savannah, my cell phone died and I managed to leave my charger at home.  Without a cell phone, I would have to use pay phones, but then again, this was still in the days when people used calling cards.

One of my points of interest was the Bonaventure Cemetery.  (It is the same cemetery where Jack Leigh shot the cover art for the book, "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.")

I made contact with a man who was in charge of the "Friends of Bonaventure," a group of people in charge of the history and upkeep of the cemetery.

We arrived in Savannah very late.  As we began setting up in the hotel, my contact asked me to meet him at the Kountry Kettle for coffee.

He unfurled a map of the cemetery and began giving me an oral history of the grounds.  I had no interest in this.  I wanted to talk about--

"Ghosts?!"  He sat back and folded his arms.

"Have you seen any ghosts in the cemetery?" I asked.

"Do you know how many dead people there are in that cemetery?"

I shook my head.

"ALL of them."

We went back to the hotel, defeated.  But as I sat on the bed, I turned to Lawrence and said, "you know what I want to do..."

I didn't even have to finish the statement.  Lawrence was up and at the door with his camera.

We drove out to the cemetery.  It was dead quiet.  So to speak.

We pulled up to the giant gates.  We could see inside.  Lawrence wanted to climb over the massive wall, but at the pleads of myself, Anne and Kim, he didn't.

We stood there, the four of us - Lawrence, myself, Anne, and Kim in a line.  I heard a "clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-clock" sound.  I turned to Anne, "what are you doing with your mouth?"

"You heard that?"

"Yeah it sounded like.." The kind of sound you make with your mouth, but it also sounded like--

"A horse" she answered.

"That's it.  I'm outta here." I turned and walked back to the truck.  But the three of them stood there.

I went back and grabbed Kim by the arm and I heard and FELT (as if it were going through my body) this... thing.  And I knew Kim heard and felt it too, because her eyes shot WIDE open.  It only lasted a few seconds and when it was over, I screamed, "NOW!  Everyone in the truck!"

Kim and I ran to the truck and we began to describe what Anne and Lawrence had obviously not experienced.  "It was like a glass..." "It was like a clinking..." "A TINKLING!" we screamed together.  "It was a tinkling sound!"

Stonefaced Anne and Lawrence looked at us like we were crazy.  "It was a tinkling sound!"

We didn't get much sleep that night.  At one point I looked at the clock, 3:17.  I woke up and walked out by the pool with my laptop.

The next morning we went back to the cemetery to meet with Savannah's resident expert on all things undead, Margaret DeBolt.

Kim and I both looked horrible and Sam asked us if we got any sleep.  "No," we replied.

"You came out here, didn't you?"

We just stared at him.

"Did you see an civil war reenacters?"

Huh.

"People come out here and see people walking around, wanting to know when we are doing another reenactment.  They're usually on dope."

"No, but we heard something."

"Did you hear the tinkling of wine glasses?"

HE SAID THE WORD TINKLING.  NOT ME.

"Well that's the story.  People hear the tinkling of wine glasses."

The story goes, that party was being held on the grounds by the Tattnall family.  When the house caught on fire, the party was moved outside.  At the end of the party, Joseph Tattnall raised his glass and said, "may the joy of this occasion never end" and slammed his wine glass against the trunk of a tree.  Everyone else followed suit.

After the cemetery tour, we split up in town.  I walked around searching for people to talk to about ghosts.  I went to several historic homes where stories were said to have happened, but I got the same, glazed over look:  "we don't know anything about ghosts."

I passed by a hotel and saw an old image.  A directional sign that read "Wild."  A film crew was in town shooting the movie "Wild America."  I inquired inside about who the extras casting director was and surprise, surprise... it was Cynthia Stillwell.

I took the elevator to the top floor, deciding to check in and see how she was doing.  It had been a little over a year since we last spoke.  I knocked on the door and girl (she will later become known as Andrea) came to the door.  Her eyes grew wide.

"Oh... oh my God.  You're Chad aren't you."  (Never had THAT reaction before...) 

"Why, yes... yes I am."  Two other guys (who will become known as Chris and Scott) ran to the door and screamed like they had seen... a ghost.

She grabbed me and pulled me inside.  "You're going to think this is totally weird, but we were on the ouija board last night talking to spirits and they said you were coming."

This.  Kept.  Getting.  Stranger.

"Oh, is that right?"  They began talking over each other, talking about this spirit they had communicated with named "Hawk."

Cynthia was not at the office, and frankly, I didn't believe in something sold at a toy store, so I said my goodbyes and told them to tell Cynthia I stopped by.

As I was leaving, they insisted on me calling them later so I could join them in their next ouija experience.

"Oh, by the way... what are you doing in town," Andrea asked.

"Um... working on a project about ghosts."

I left the office, completely freaked out by these people and made my way to Jack Leigh's studio.  I wanted to talk to Jack about his night being locked in Bonaventure.

"Do you believe in ghosts?"

He crossed his arms and did the Savannah lean-back that I had become oh so accustomed to.

"WHAT IS IT WITH YOU PEOPLE!?"  I screamed.  He laughed.  "Everyone does that!  They get this, I'm not going to talk to you look in their eyes, cross their arms and lean back--"

"You're asking the wrong question."

Great.  I was being evaded based on protocol.

"What's the CORRECT question?"

"Do I believe in SPIRITS?"

I looked at him.  He couldn't be serious.  "Okay, Jack, do you believe in spirits?"

"Yes."

"And what... prey tell, is the difference?"

"A spirit will only reveal itself to someone it wants to."  This, ladies and gentleman, was my words of wisdom from Yoda.  He went on to explain that he family buried in Bonaventure, but he had never seen that particular statue.  As he stomped around in the dark, he shot several images, but as dawn began to break, he found this statue.  The light hit it perfectly.  He snapped the image.  And that picture made him millions.

I left the studio and went to the square to meet the rest of my people at our designated time.  I sat on a bench, opened my lap top and began to work on my expense report.

As I sat there, a man walked up to me and smiled.  "Hello," he said.  He had blondish, greyish hair.  He was wearing brown pants and a blue shirt.  He had a small mustache.

"Hi," I said back.  My receipts blew away.  I ran to gather a few as the man continued down to the edge of the square.

Inside my bag, my cell phone began to ring.  Which was odd, because my cell phone was dead.  I opened my bag, picked it up.  Sure enough, it was ringing.  I started to flip it open, when I looked up and noticed, THE MAN WAS GONE.

I ran to where he was standing.  Ran past the apartment complex, looking for him.  He was gone.

At that moment, Scott walked up and laughed.  "Oh look at Mr. Hollywood.  With his cell phone that's dead."

"It started ringing.  I swear."  I opened it.  I pushed the battery function feature and saw, the battery was completely charged.

Freaked?  That's putting it mildly.

I went back to the hotel in a taxi.  Another friend of mine, Jason Kilpatrick, called and told me he was in town with two of his close friends.  I went and stayed with he and his friends that night, as our quarters were cramped.

Before I went to bed, I laughed and said, "I tend to talk in my sleep.  And move around.  So just wake me if I do anything stupid."

The next morning, the three people who I shared the room with that night moved about rather oddly.  I finally turned to Jason and asked, "is everything okay?"

"Um... you were a little... active last night."

All sorts of images filled my head, horrifically, but none of them matched what was explained to me.  Apparently "at 3:17" when Heather looked at the clock, I began making choking noises.  She flipped on the light and all three of them awoke to see me sitting up in bed, my eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling, with my arms thrown backwards.  Jason asked if I was okay, at which point I turned from my waist and slammed my body over his back, my arms dangling off the side of the bed.

A few seconds later, "it looked like someone grabbed your left shoulder and yanked you right back into a sleeping position."  Apparently, all three of them tried to wake me, but I wouldn't wake up.

We drove in silence back to the other hotel.  I said my goodbyes and Jason told me to "take care and be careful.  The spirits down here are very powerful."

I laughed and said, "you used the word 'spirits,' not 'ghosts.'"

He didn't laugh back.

After we all met up again, most of the guys went back to Atlanta.  Christy and I stayed to take some pictures at some of the local haunts.

At the Telfair Museum, we parked around the corner.  I took out the camcorder, turned it on and we rounded the corner.  It shut off.  I checked the battery.  The battery was drained.  I popped in another battery.  I watched as the battery drained from four bars to nothing.

We took our still cameras up to the front and were stopped by security.  No camera equipment of any kind was allowed inside.  They took our cameras.

I was starting to get pissed.  When I inquired about the local ghost story, I was told to leave.

(I would later learn that when Mary Telfair bequeathed the house to the Georgia Historical Society, it was instructed that cameras and thespians were never allowed in the house.  What she had against actors, we will never know.)

At the 1790 Inn and Tavern we hit pay dirt.  Not only was the owner excited to talk about ghosts she would give us a tour.  AND SLAM!  The door slammed shut behind us.  Christy nearly came out of her skin.  "Oh, that's just Anna.  She doesn't like girls."

Anna, jumped to her death from room 204 when her lover didn't return.  We walked into the room and I took a bunch of pictures with Christy in the window.

A few hours later, Christy and I prepared for the drive back to Atlanta.  I decided to give Cynthia a call and say goodbye.  When she answered the phone, I laughed and said, "you never answer the phone."

"Where are you!?  Where have you been?"

I asked if everything was okay.

"Just get to the DeSoto Hilton as quickly as you can.  I need to talk to you about what happened last night.  We're out by the pool."

"Wait, what's going on?"

"Something happened last night.  The kids were on the ouija board," she said/

"At what time?"  I asked... dreading the answer.

"3:17."

Chapter Seven: "My Name Is Chad Darnell..." (Hiatus from Casting)

Chapter Seven: "My Name Is Chad Darnell..." (Hiatus from Casting)

"Someone stole my pepperonis!"

I am kneeling in front of a toilet, my arms up to my elbows in vomit and the remains of a paritially digested pizza.

I stand up and look in the mirror.  My entire face is covered in vomit.  I run my hands under the stream of water from the faucet and splash it against my face.  I look in the mirror.  My eyes ooze from their sockets.  My flesh rips away at my nose. 

I scream.

My entire face rips apart.

And I see Jesus.

And he is pissed.

I scream.

I'm passing out now.  I know that I am.  Maybe I'm dying.  My knees buckle.  I'm going to fall now.  I try to grab the counter, but instead hit my head on it.  That causes me hit my head on the toilet.

I'm passing out now.  This is how I'm going to die.

This is how I'm going to die.

TWO MONTHS EARLIER.

"I don't want life to imitate art.  I want life to BE art," Meryl Steep says from my well-worn VHS version of "Postcards From the Edge." 

It is a Sunday afternoon and I am sitting in my childhood bedroom, watching my favorite comfort movie.  Was I just fired?  Did I get fired from Cynthia Stillwell and Associates?  I'm graduating in four months.  What am I going to do with my life?

My head was in a constant tail-spin following the days after our split.

The phone rang.

"Hi Chad, it's David Crowe.  I was wondering if you would like to play "The Old Man" in "Prelude to a Kiss."

Our next college production was "Prelude."  I had no interest in playing Peter - but would have killed to have played The Old Man.  It was a chance to bury myself in prosthetic make-up and play a man who was dying and also a woman trapped in his body.

And more than that, it was a chance to bury myself in a role and forget about what had just happened.  I knew that most of my time would be spent alone.  And I needed that.

I was still production manager of the Players and I now that I was unemployed, I trained my entire focus on school.  I picked up small commercials and industrials here and there to put money in my checking account.

But I was extremely depressed.  I'm talking like when you see those commercials, "if you can get help at Charter, get help SOMEWHERE" depressed.

I began budgeting and meeting with the crews to prep the play.  Rehearsals would begin without me, as my character was not even get introduced until nearly halfway through the first act.

During this time, Greg Willits (who was cast as Peter) and I spent time getting to know each other at what would become my home away from home for the rest of my college days... Java Jakes.

Java Jakes was this corner coffee shop and deli across from the Atlanta Journal, about five blocks north of the campus and near Underground Atlanta.  I would go there after getting off the train for morning coffee.  There at lunch for a sandwich.  And there an hour before rehearsals.  Tammy, the barista, looked after Greg and I, giving us free coffee every once and a while and slipping us free sandwiches.

I met this amazing writer through Greg at Java Jakes named Steve Murray.  Steve was a film critic for the Atlanta Journal and was also apparently a playwright in Atlanta as well.  He would sit by himself, making notes and reading.

Steve would eventually become one of my best friends in the world.

When I finally did begin rehearsals, my scenes were with Greg.  We rehearsed the second act scenes first, just the two of us, and then went back at the end of blocking to do the wedding scene, where my character is first introduced.

It would be a few weeks later that I would realize I had isolated myself from the rest of the cast.  While they were busy building an ensemble, I busied myself in the office and alone - developing the make-up technique for the role.  I spent hours at a time in the dressing room, afternoons and nights, doing nothing but building pieces, trying new pieces.  Shading make-up.  The first few test runs made me look more like a burn victim, but eventually I found a way with tissue paper that gave me wrinkles.

When it came time to actually tech and run the play - it took about four to five hours to do the make-up, but it was time I really needed by myself to do nothing but sit there in silence and transform myself into something I was not.  I needed to not be me.

It began with slicking down my long hair and putting the bald cap on, sealing it up.  Then begin with the pieces under my eyes and nose.  Then the forehead, cheeks, chin and lastly neck.  Once all of those pieces were dry, sealing them and then the process of coloring and shading.  Finally touching them up and adding the hair pieces.  Just trying to move around and get dressed was an effort.  The hands were always the last step.

I would be at the theatre a good four hours before the rest of the cast showed up.  They would come in, throw their stuff down, run out into the theatre and warm up and I would continue to put myself together.

The cast became a cohesive ensemble, but I was at a point in my life where I didn't want to be around people and that actually helped with the part.  The "Rita" character (after the transformation) is an outcast.

After the first week of the run, I couldn't understand for the life of me, why I hated Jennifer Alvarez, who played Rita.  We're talking full on rage.  The girl had done nothing to me, but whenever I saw her and Greg near each other, I wanted to beat her.

David Crowe, our talented guest director pulled me aside, because it was pretty obvious I was an unhappy camper.  "What's wrong?" he asked.

I lost it.  Tears, sobs, snot, screaming:  "I HATE JENNIFER AND I DON'T KNOW WHY!"

He began to tell me what he witnessed with me over the past few weeks, telling me that when I was brought in with the cast, I stayed in the back watching everyone.  "You were completely removed from everyone." 

And in rehearsals, I would watch Jennifer to match her mannerisms and movements as she would watch mine.  But in reality, this was like a weird version of stalking someone without yourself even realizing it.

I had thrown myself and everything within me so far into this character that while I was not in love with Greg, I was jealous of Jennifer, David explained.

"That's.... absurd," I said.

But I knew he was right.  Somehow, I had rewired my head.  I had put all the raw emotions of losing my job and dignity into a well honed channel of jealousy and rage and it was being played out every evening with a curtain up at 8:00 PM.  I had isolated myself from everyone as the character does and somehow began to take on the traits of my character.

"Chad, everyone does this from time to time when you connect with a character."

Thank God I wasn't playing a serial killer.

The one thing I remember most about my parents coming to see the play was not that my mother said, "I didn't like it when you smoked."  What I was expecting was, "it freaked me out when you kissed that boy" - even though there was an inch of latex from my lips to his.

When we had our final cast and wrap party, it was such a release.  I believed in that night, that I had exorcised my demons and that I could go on and have a healthy existence.  I had one of the most satisfying experiences I've ever experienced in live theatre.  I had developed new friendships.  In a week we would be heading to Norfolk, Virginia for the Southeastern Theatre Conference.  I was on my way to being a perfectly grounded individual.

Yeah.  Not so much.

I was still unemployed.  I was still depressed.  Okay, I was VERY depressed.

We arrived in Norfolk and that night I was so depressed I needed to go out drinking.  Paul Merchant and Lawrence Sharp took me to "The Recovery Room" - a local bar not far from our hotel.

I told the female bartender, "I want something strong."  Now, keep in mind, with my limited experience of alcohol, I knew wine.  But I remembered something from the play that a character drank... a Long Island Ice Tea.

"Give me a Long Island Ice Tea."

So she gave me the largest glass I've ever seen in my life and I downed it like an iced latte.

"Come on, you gotta do better than that.  There wasn't any alcohol in that."

So I had two more.

The thing about Long Island Ice Teas... they taste like tea, but they are actually LOADED with alcohol.

And ten minutes later, so was I.

Paul and Lawrence would later tell me that I decided I would not need to eat the entire time we were in Norfolk, and that I decided all I needed were vitamins to get my nutrients.  Apparently I saw a cop car go by and screamed, "it's the pigs!  Act sober!"  Apparently I gave a five minute soliloquy on the walk/ don't walk sign and that the caricature of the man walking should actually be a cartoon of a man walking until a car runs over him.

We arrived at the hotel and I assume I passed out.  The next morning, I decided that we should all drink instead of going to classes.  I was alone in this theory of thought.  But since the convention was at a hotel, there was a hotel bar.

And I decided I LOVED Long Island Ice Teas.

So I drank all day long.  I was drunk for about 24 hours, when I decided, I needed food.

We ordered Pizza Hut - and I needed a large pepperoni pizza.  I ate most all of it by myself.

Was I depressed?  NO!  I was drunk and full on pizza and decided, "you know what I want to do?!  I want to smoke pot."

I had friends that smoked pot.  I was a grown up.  I could be friends with people who smoked pot, but it wasn't my thing.  I had NEVER smoked pot up until this point, and I was now 22 years old.  It was time to experiment.

So Paul took me to his room where a few of those friends were and rolled and lit a bug? Bud?  A roach?  Cricket? Whatever that thing is called.

I assumed you smoked it like a cigarette.  So once he handed it to me, I smoked it.

All of it.

Paul turns to me, "what did you do with it?"

"What did I do with what?"

"The joint?"

"What do you mean what did I do with it?  I smoked it."

"ALL OF IT?"

"Well duh.  But it obviously wasn't good because I don't feel anything."

And cue the feeling.

My chest was on fire.  I ripped my shirt open, snapping off buttons.  "My chest!  I'm on fire!  I'm hot!"

I pushed open the window as Stuart grabbed my belt loop and yanked me backwards, slamming me on the bed, screaming:  "dude!  we don't have a balcony!"

I landed spread eagle on the bed.  And could not move.

The others began smoking and passing the bud or bug around.  They put on "Sweeney Todd."  The music filled my head.

And THEN I began to experience pot.

I literally could see my childhood toy chest from when my parents lived in an apartment in Chamblee, Georgia.   I saw the stuffed animals my father hung on the walls.  I saw my newborn baby brother coming into the apartment for the first time and my extended family oohing and awwwing over him.  And my mother bringing me a small present every time someone brought a present for Andy, so I wouldn't feel left out.

And while I couldn't express it, with words or facial movements, it freaked me out.  Why was I SEEING this!?  Is my life flashing before my eyes!?  How long is this going to take!?

The music was driving me insane.  My lips couldn't move.  I couldn't talk.  I needed water.  I was drugged.  Instead, I could see myself playing on the hill behind our apartment.  I saw the walls of my bedroom.

I kept trying to say, "turn off the music."  I was convinced the music was doing this to me.  I could see and hear everyone talking.  Laughing.  Ignoring me.  I wanted to scream, "I'm dying!  Look at me!"

I felt my body sinking into the bed.  Through the bed.  But I couldn't move.

This is how I'm going to die.

I laid there for hours.  My real friends were either out dancing or roaming the hotel looking for me. 

FINALLY, three hours later I was able to sit up.  "You doing okay there, Chad?" I was asked.

"I need to go to my room."

I made it as far as the bathroom when I began vomiting.  Again, with the projectile vomiting.  Heaving and heaving.  I saw pizza come out in chunks.  Different colors of alcohol.  I swore I saw organs floating in there as well.

While I was feeling better by vomiting, a strange thing occurred to me... in all of this mixture of vomit and human remains... there was no pepperoni.

"Someone stole my pepperoni!" I screamed.  I dove my hands into the pool of my own innards and began fishing through it.  I would pick up multi colored chunks or brown, yellow and pink and examine it.

"Someone stole my pepperoni!"  I had lost my mind.

I stood up and looked in the mirror.  My entire face was covered in vomit.  I ran my hands under the stream of water from the faucet and splashed it against my face.  I looked in the mirror.  My eyes oozed from their sockets.  My flesh ripped away at my nose. 

I screamed.  I had vomit in my eyes, hair, forehead.  I must have thrown up on myself like a volcano.

My entire face ripped apart.

And I saw Jesus.  (That's right.  Him.  I saw him.)

And he is pissed.

I screamed.

I started to pass out.  I was convinced I was dying  My knees buckled.  I started to fall.  I tried to grab the counter, but instead,  my head hit it.  That caused me to hit my head on the toilet.

I passed out.  This was how I was going to die.

Paul walked in and saw me lying there.  I must have mumbled something about my room when I came to and he took me there.

When he got me to my room, I laid on the bed and insisted he leave.  I was rooming with Greg and he and Jennifer were out dancing.

Paul, reluctantly left, but mainly because I was screaming uncontrollably about seeing Jesus and how he was angry at me.

The room was silent.  Dark.  I was going to die.  My parents were going to hear all about how their son smoked pot and died in Virginia.

I crawled out of bed and across the floor and into the bathroom, where there was a floor to ceiling mirror.  I threw up again, only this time I had no idea what I had left to throw up.  By now I realized that no one had stolen my pepperoni.

Instead, I sobbed and cried on the ground and prayed to God that if I lived through this, I would never, EVER smoke pot (or do drug stronger than Bayer's baby Aspirin) again.  I begged for a second chance.

Now this may all sound like, "Chad got sick and thought he was going to die."  You may be saying, "I smoke pot all the time and I've never had this problem."  To me at that moment, "Chad was GOING to die" and it was time to ask God for one more chance.  Little Bunny Foo Foo had been hopping through the forest and scooping up the field mice and bopping them on the head.  This was Little Bunny Foo Foo's ONE LAST CHANCE.

"I swear... never again...  I'll tell the world..."

Greg walked in at that very moment and saw me, lying near death on the ground.

All I remember for the next remaining hours were him putting me in bed, washing my face, on the phone screaming at someone and waking me up every hour.

When I finally came to the next morning, I realized I was alive.  (And would later learn that the pot was laced with acid).  I showered and we went to eat breakfast, for which my stomach thanked me.

I remember just sitting there for hours and the rest of the trip, thinking about how insanely stupid I had allowed myself to unravel.

When we arrived back in Atlanta, we immediately began prep on what would be my last production with the Players, a performance art piece called, "The Tragedy At Kent State."

On pitch by one of our advisers, Ray Miller, we agreed to produce this piece (the summer before) since it was a passion of his.  Ray had been a student at Kent State when the said tragedy took place.

It would involve multi-media, music, drama and dance.

But we insisted on a script in the fall.

We never saw that script.

So we began production on a show that had no script.

Ray would write as we began rehearsals.  The cast included over sixty people.  SIXTY.

The show itself was close to four hours long.

We, the Players, were ready to shoot OURSELVES.  I will never, ever forget one of the aspects of his set design:  a deteriorated web of cord and netting that represented: "a womb.  A womb for the birth of the movement."

On the weekends, all of my friends made weekly trips to Jay's ranch in the woods, where we would chill out, camp out, and play in the river.  It was the only thing that kept us sane.

I directed the multimedia aspects, scripting and shooting "reenactments" of students and teachers.  We mounted two large screen televisions on both sides of the stage and played these snippets during scene changes.

Ray returned to Kent State on the twenty-fifth anniversary, two weeks before we opened and took pictures of the campus for the slide portions.  After going through the slides at two in the morning, I flew into a screaming fit - "I told him I needed a picture of the tower!  We had to get a picture of the tower!"

"The tower that burned to the ground?" Lisa asked.

"YES!  That one!  Why didn't he... oh."

We were all stir crazy and slap happy.  There were dance numbers that lasted fifteen minutes.  ON ROLLERBLADES.  This show was like "Starlight Express" meets "Hair" meets "Miss Saigon."

Then there was the day that lived in infamy:  I coordinated a giant protest scene outside Alumni Hall, which housed the theatre as well as the President's office on the second floor.  I had my cast screaming, "pigs go to Hell!"  "Bomb the bastards!"  "Bomb the bastards!  "Bomb the bastards!"

About thirty minutes into this, the local news arrived.

Why you ask?  Because just hours earlier, unbeknown to any of us, Timothy McVeigh had bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City.

While I stood there in total confusion as to why these news reporters were screaming questions at me, and wondering who had put them up to this, President Carl Patton came out and wanted to know what was going on.  Apparently HE HAD been watching the news, and was curious himself (in a deeply angry way) why in the Hell I was staging a riot on the campus and what did I know about Oklahoma City?

Needless to say, we were shut down and got a very stern talking to from the campus.  We had no idea and naturally, my timing is perfect.

During this entire fiasco, I decided to cut off all my hair, if for no other reason than I would constantly try to pull it out of my scalp.  This would end up being a mistake, as Ray insisted that I now play a Vietnam solider in the play.  We had a really sweet guy who wanted to be a part of the play, but he worked the graveyard shift at his job.  During the second act, the soldiers stood in the audience, surrounding them (this was supposed to give an air of hostility).  There was NO WAY my ass was going to stand in the audience for an hour, so when this young guy had to leave every night, I would go in and take his place when the lights went down during set change.  The joke was that when the lights came back up, he had lost sixty pounds and grew three inches.  Audience members always did a double take.

When we finally wrapped this play, Jay had a weekend party.  We stayed at the ranch all weekend long.  We burned the script and all the production notes.  (It took many hours, as we lit each page individually).  Pot was smoked.  I, of course, declined.

Two weeks before I was set to graduate, I got a call from my agent that I had an audition in Wilmington, North Carolina with the Fincannons for a feature film called "Numbers" (it was later retitled, "My Teacher's Wife").  As did two of my college friends, Linda Strike (and future roommate) and Dana Atwood (who was in "Neon Bible").

We rented a car and picked up a fourth member, who none of us knew.  The entire drive to North Carolina, which was a good six hours the way I drive, consisted on this individual telling us about how members of her family had been either killed or maimed in car accidents and the law suits that followed.

We arrived in Wilmington, with no hotel room booked.  We eventually found a place after our tenth try.  Linda and I went to grab a bite to eat at two in the morning at a local diner.  "That girl was freaking me out with her stories!"

The next day, we arrived at the office to find every young actor who lived in the South at the same audition.  We all went in and read and finally left to head back to Atlanta.

It began to rain.

Now, my parents have always warned me that when it BEGINS to rain, the roads are slicker.  So I drove slower at first.

Eventually we were in the middle of a monsoon and I was driving well under the speed limit.

That is, until the tires hit a patch and we hydroplaned.  We hydroplaned across four lanes of traffic from the far left lane and busted through the guard rail.

The fun didn't stop there.

The car is now in the air, a la "Dukes of Hazzard," and then crashes to the ground and begins spinning like a doughnut down the embankment.  Around and around we go - where we land, no body knows!  Everything happened in slow motion.

I heard Linda scream from the backseat and looked to see Dana grabbing the ceiling. 

THIS is how we are going to die.

Spinning and spinning until--

We crashed. 

We stopped spinning.

We all sat there.  In total silence for what seemed like hours.

"Is everyone okay?" I ask, praying to God I hear three voices say, "yes."

I heard two - Linda and Dana - but the third was silent.  We all turn.  "My neck..."

We got out of the car, which was smoking.  The rain poured down on us.  We are at the bottom of an embankment, in two feet of water.  I kept expecting to see Eric Stoltz come running from above, screaming, "TOM!"

A passerby called an ambulance and the police.  While the girls sat inside the cover of the ambulance, I was interrogated.  "Have you been drinking?"  "Absolutely not.  I can tap dance a straight line."

The car was pulled back to the road by a crane.  While the grill and the front of the car was smashed, and grass and mud covered the belly, the car was amazingly still driveable.   However, the radiator was badly damaged and we were warned that if the heat index rose above a certain point, we should stop immediately, for fear the car would explode.

We decided to take that chance.

A few hours after our stunt jump, we were on the road again. 

A few hours later, driving through Augusta, Dana and I were talking when we heard a "WHOMP, WHOMP, WHOMP, WHOMP."

"Did you hear that?"

I kept my eyes straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge it.

"No.  It was the wind."

The car was driving unstable.  I finally pulled over to see we were actually driving with three wheels, and the back left tire was gone.

Linda woke up and got out of the car.  This was like, "I Know What You Did Last Summer," only there was no man with a hook.

The tire had to be changed.

And none of us knew how to change a tire.

It was POURING down rain.  Linda and I popped the trunk, pulled the tire out, and began to change the tire to the best of our knowledge.  About thirty minutes later, Linda and I stripped off our went clothes.  I drove in my boxers and Linda wrapped in a blanket.

We were driving on a doughnut tire, in the pouring rain, with a banged up car that could explode at any moment.

Three hours later, we finally arrived at Linda and Dana's apartment.  I dropped off all the girls and finally put on my still wet clothes for the ride home.

And the hand on the heat gage began to rise.

This is how I'm going to die.

I started laughing, manically and hysterically.  "It was ME you wanted all along!  Bring it!"

I started onto I-85, driving towards my parents house, convinced of imminent death.

But I arrived.  In one, soaking wet piece.

I sat there in the car when I pulled into the driveway.  If I was a cat, in the past two months I had used two lives.

My parents woke up.  "Where have you been!?"

"We had an accident."

I went straight to bed and fell asleep.

The next morning my mother woke me after seeing the broken down car in the driveway.  "What did you do!?"

Thank God for rental insurance.

I spent the last remaining days in school becoming thankful  Thankful for the experiences I had experienced.  Thankful for my near death experiences.  Instead of growing more depressed, I was growing stronger.  Instead of growing sad, I was growing harder.  I was learning resilience.  I was learning survival. 

Getting fired, going crazy, losing my mind, nearly dying - TWICE, obviously there was a reason I was still here.  It wasn't an overnight transformation, but I was at least moving upwards. 

In a matter of days, a piece of paper would be handed to me, explaining to the world that I was a graduate.  Childhood was over.  I was an adult.  I wasn't scared.  Just unsure.

It was now time for our hero to graduate.

When I finally crossed that stage on June 24, 1995, taking the diploma from President Carl Patton, he looked at me, taking my hand in his firm grasp and said, "try not to blow anything up."  I smiled and said, "only the world."

I was sad to be leaving the Players, but anxious to get on with my life.  There was just one small problem:  I had no idea WHAT I was going to do with my life.

Turner Broadcasting is the largest production facility in Atlanta.  It seemed the only logical choice.  I wanted to work in development and develop scripts and stories for their feature division.

I sent my resume, at the nagging of my mother, to Turner.  "You have to send in your resume before you graduate," she said.  I thought she was crazy and it really didn't matter when I got it in.  I was a college graduate with a degree in film, so of course they would want me.  I had experience in casting.  They were going to hire me.

Cue the sound of crickets....

Nothing.

I got NOTHING.

I went a few weeks and finally broke down and called them.  Obviously, they had misplaced my resume.  A mistake had been made.

I called Human Resources and demanded to know why I had not heard from them yet.  "We'll call you when we find a fit."

"A fit?"  That answer didn't work for me.  (As should it anyone... this was my first lesson in the work place... you have to MAKE your opportunity.)

I hung up and called the main line at Turner.

"I need to speak to someone in development."

"Hold please."

It was that simple.  I held.  I had no idea what I was going to say once I got through... but I knew I had to talk to someone in charge.

I paced around my bedroom.  Okay.  Here we go.  I was going to finally be--

"Turner Originals', this is Adrienne," came a low, sexy voice from the other end.

Oh crap.

What do I do!?

I took a deep breath. 

It's now or never.  This was make it or break it time.  This was it.  My entire future as I knew it hung in on the other end of that line.

"Adrienne... my name is Chad Darnell..."