From the SF Chronicle - June 19, 2002
View scanned article with photos

Belly Dancers to Banana Eaters
Shot at "Fame" draws quirky mix of performers to Fox audition
By C.W. Nevius
CHRONICLE STAFF WRITER

Tom Gitts was preparing to catch a bullet in his teeth when he noticed something. "There are," he observed, "a lot of balloon animals around here."

Well of course there were. Put out an open call for acts and there is no telling what will walk through the door: fire twirlers, belly dancers, robot mimes, the world's fastest banana eaters. There will be female impersonators singing the blues and belly dancers who grouse that they are prohibited from lighting their flaming sword. But Elvis and balloon animals are the givens, the staples of the open call.

"What would a day be like without an Elvis?" says Jan Smith, the genial talent scout for the new Fox Network show "30 Seconds to Fame," which premieres July 17. "We've had fat Elvis, old Elvis and funny Elvis. We have not seen a standard Elvis."

In Minneapolis they had an 80-year-old female comedian, in San Francisco there was a female contortionist who bent over backward and had a man stand on her stomach, and a nine-piece Philippine drum group.

They came to stand on the X on the floor, look into hot light above the video camera, and sell it. The reward is a half-minute appearance on national television and the chance for a $25,000 weekly prize.

"Sometimes it is a little sad," said Smith, who saw nearly 60 acts here in one long day, 152 in New York and 80 more in Chicago. "You see someone who is not going to make it and you know their friends told them they were. I don't think it is fair for me to curtail that."

Instead, Smith sat behind his table wearing the universal look of polite attention - eyebrows up, attentive smile, eyes faintly glazed - as a woman who identified herself as Doll-ya Kaufman-Kaufman-Stein-Steinberg read Shakespeare's sonnet 116 absolutely straight. Thanks very much. We'll let you know.

If there is anything to be learned from four or five hours of open calls it is that we have seriously underestimated the number of young women who wish to sing popular ballads that include the word "oooh." Smith, ever affable, showed each of them his stop watch, reminded them that it was "30 Seconds to Fame" and asked if they had something "a little more upbeat, a little hotter."

Most of them did not. Still, there was something compelling about that instant between the silence and the sound, when Smith would point to them and there was no telling what might come out.

Robert Parsons, a retiree, for example, came to the Crowne Plaza hotel in San Francisco's Union Square pulling a tiny sound system on a luggage wheelie. He declined to take off his ski jacket, and when he began to sing he had to lean forward because one of his white Adidas basketball shoes was planted on his microphone cord. Who knew he was going to offer up a dead-on Sinatra?

Or Danongan Kalanduyan, wh arrived with his nine-piece Philippine drum group, Ating Tao, and sat down behind what appeared to be a row of cooking pots with lids. The drummers counted off the beat, and using thick drumsticks, Kalanduyan produced a sublime sound. As well he should have. It turnes out that Kalanduyan is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow and Distinguished Artist in residence at San Francisco State University.

Others, who looked like sure things, lovely women in carefully put together outfits with poise to burn, found perfect pitch distressingly elusive.

And here's a tip. The national anthem? It's been done. A lot.

After three or four hours, were were just waiting for something new. Like "Firepixie," a young woman who spun blazing balls on the end of chains. She had a request when she stepped into the room.

"If I light myself on fire," she asked, "please put me out."

Better yet, she did light herself on fire. It was just a brief, innocuous flareup, and she didn't even have to be put out with the fire-retardant blanket she had brought. But hey, you can't get much more upbeat and hot than that.

And then there was Amos Glick, whose claim to fame is "world's fastest banana eater" but whose real love is the songs he writes "about bodily functions."

Glick ate his banana with flair - he looks beatable, to be honest - then got out his guitar and announced that he would sing his composition "Diarrhea." He got to the line "It's the opposite of constipation ..." when Smith clicked off his stopwatch.

"Fine," he said, "Thank you very much."