werewolvesversus:

An excerpt from Lucian Clark’s story, as seen in WEREWOLVES VERSUS: HOLLYWOOD.

More of Lucian Clark’s work can be found here and here.

Being a werewolf isn’t the only strike against me and my acting career. I am openly queer, and also somewhat on the pudgy side, thanks to inheriting my dad’s big boned nature. I’ve been approached less for my acting ability, and more as a stunt wolf, a background piece, or the token minority character. Despite all these downs, with Chris as my guiding light, I thought I could do anything. If he could be the hero, then why couldn’t I? Child me clung to this idea, and I carried it into my struggling actor career.

My largest role so far, in My Sister’s Best Friend, was the token gay man. Not only that, but the gay best friend of the main character, who was a “you-know-what hag”, as the phrase goes. I can count all my lines on both hands. Did I want the part? Not exactly, but I was growing tired of living on ramen and whatever else was about to be thrown away from the Speedy Joe’s convenience store where I worked to make ends meet. Not everything in Hollywood is glamorous. Sometimes you need to take the bad jobs (and work at a haunted house on a farm at Halloween) and hope you can get the good.

Unfortunately right now, it seems there’s more bad than good. I’ve only had three jobs in the last month, all through my intern friend Alex Vasquez, and they are mostly B-movie wolf takes and remakes. One quick shift scene, a few chase scenes, and they CGI the rest. Despite the wonders of CGI, they still cannot make it look as good as an actual person on camera, so they hire people like me.

These were the exact types of offer emails I was looking through when Chris walked through the doors of my humble workplace. There was a role in a painkiller commercial, another in Howling Wind and even an email for a movie called – I am not kidding – The Howling Howls: The Howloween Night. I didn’t even look up from my laptop to greet him. I had more pressing matters to attend to, like paying my electric bill, which came before greeting someone in the store at 3:45AM on a Sunday. Yes, I remember the exact time.

Read the rest in WEREWOLVES VERSUS: HOLLYWOOD. Download the entire issue for any price on Gumroad or Itch.io! Your purchase will benefit all of the contributors to this issue.