The informant has been a professional actor for many years and runs an acting school in Hollywood. He here recounts a few pieces of interconnected folklore which he shares with his class every year. Contained in this are both a legend and a prank.
He begins by explaining how he does voice over acting at his agency (by going in, waiting in the hall, then going into a sound booth) then he launches into…
The story:
On this particular day, I was standing in line and in front of me, waiting to go in the booth, which was across the hall, was Hil Huber with her, ya know, glass eye. And I say “Hey Hil, how ya doin’? How ya doin’?”
She says, “Oh hi David how are you?”
“Good, good.”
And then my buddy Ogie came in and stood next to me. And Ogie’s been a friend of mine for, oh god, like 15 years. And so, we’re sitting there and we started doing this little nudging thing like “You’re too close to me man. You’re too close. You’re too close.” Before you know it, it somehow escalated into a game of capoeira. Do you know what capoeira is? It’s kind of that Brazilian “Oh, I chop at you; I get out of the way; I come back over; windmill kick” kind of thing. [He mimes these moves as he says them.] We don’t really know capoeira but we were kind of in the hallway pretending that we did.
So, me and Ogie are doing the fake fighting thing in slow motion in the hallway, and Hillary Huber is there watching. …with her good eye. [Class laughs.] Uh, and the door to the booth opens and out of the booth comes Kenny Campbell. Kenny Campbell is about six foot five, three-hudred-and-eighty pounds of man.And as he walks out of the booth, I am here, and I’m doing like a chop at Ogie. [Mimed.] And he’s doing like “I get out of the way” like this. [Ducks and spreads his arms.] And he’s down with his leg extended. [Slaps the extended leg for emphasis.]
Kenny doesn’t see. Kenny comes out, trips over the leg, falls shoulder first, the full three hundred and eighty pounds of him, into the sternum of Hillary Huber.
Hillary’s eye pops out. It bounces off the wall in front of me, bounces off the wall behind me, and comes to rest at the center of the hallway. [Nervous laugher from the class.]
And Hillary goes, “Oh my god! Oh my god! Where is it!? Where is it!?” [Clasping his hand over his right eye.]
I’m looking right at it. And it’s looking right at me. But I don’t want to pick it up. Because it was just in her face man! But I feel like I have to so I go “I’ve got it. I got it.” and as I bend to pick it up, I kick the eye. And the eye goes rolling down the hallway and gets lodged under a huge piece of sound equipment at the back of the hall. [This whole bit is mimed.]
At which time Hillary goes, “Oh my god. They know. They all know!” And she runs out of the agency. [Mimed]
Now of course none of that is true you fools! [Uproarious laughter from the class. as well as a cry of “What?!”
There is also a prank involved with the legend:
As I say, Ogie and I have been friends and been at this agency for 15 years. So we know all the people there because at a voice over agency you go in every day. And, when it’s just me and ogie in the waiting room, which happens every week or so, and one of the new people who’ve been there for oh, a week or a month or so comes in and sits down in the waiting room, I look at Ogie and he looks at me and we both know without saying a word… it’s on.
And I say to Ogie “Dude, don’t fuckin’ talk about it.”
He goes “Dude, I couldn’t stop think…”
“Ogie, you’ll get us in trouble.”
“Not gonna get us in trouble. Everybody knows”
“Everybody doesn’t know!”
Until the new person says, “everybody knows what?”
At which point I will turn to them and say, “well, you know Hillary Huber right?” And then we launch into the story, me telling half, him telling half, it getting more outrageous with every telling. And the person never suspects what kind of a sick fuck would lie about something like that. They never suspect that it’s all bullshit.
He then goes on to explain his reasoning:
He explains that the point of the story is that when someone is lying, they are at their most adamant and sincere because they don’t want to be caught in it. He uses the story as an example of how, when you are auditioning for a detective show you should always play the roll as though you were innocent because liars sound believable.
The story and prank are also examples of liminal folklore in that weather you believe the story/fall for the prank is a measure of how long you have known the informant. If you have heard it before, you laugh along with him as he tells it because you are in his circle.
