The casting director today was actually pretty mean. In fact he insulted me. Called me dumb...
I've never been called dumb in an audition before. Now he didn't say it to my face, he kinda of said it indirectly.
So here's the story, my fault this happened by the way.
I went in with a group of 3 people, total 4 including me. The director told 2 of the talent to sit down while the other talent and I do it first. My partner was very nice. We were supposed to walk like a zombie, then the director gives a signal and you react to that by saying a line that he gave you and you walk toward the wall. Well my fault for failing the first part. We both walked like zombies then when he snapped his fingers, we both kinda continued walking and not look at the wall. That's when he started getting mean. His smile turned into a, "oh great I gotta deal with this shit again". So after the first take, my partner and I looked at each other and I'm like yo I'm sorry. totally my fault. He was super nice about it, and he was telling the director that he was sorry too, he was just following me, since I was walking ahead or behind, I don't remember. The director then says, "Dumb follows Dumb". So basically he called both of us dumb. He didn't give a shit.
He looked very displeased and just ready to skip us. We weren't given a second shot. Instead we move onto the next scene which is basically the same thing but a different line. The director told us this time use the phone you have in your pocket. By the way he told all the talent that was there how we should do it in a short briefing. This was before I even went in.
The second time I said, oh ok this time use the phone right? It was just a question. And he starts saying some stuff about wow this guy, you're nervous aren't you? Which I wasn't. So he starts kinda trash talking me. My partner and I were kinda laughing at the situation just to try to calm things down.
I've never been called dumb in an audition before so this is the first. However, having been doing this type of work for so long, I've seen and heard a lot of other different things. Back then I think this would've really put me down. Right now though, I'm a little insulted but I don't feel like giving up. This lightly motivates me because I know everyone has stories about their auditions but they never gave up. We just kept going and if we ever work together (the talent I meet), you'll hear all the stories they have and they hear all the stories I have and we all just laugh. All of us talent, even though we're competing against each other for sometimes the same roles, even if we're working full time jobs and running to auditions, having no money in our pockets, even when we're being talked down on and called bad things, we never give up. We take it up the wazoo and continue on with the next audition.
This goes for a lot of talent, not all though. Some people quit and some people do just fine without being talked down on :D