The Brass Monkey is a rundown bar where polo-clad twenty-somethings and unkempt locals come looking for cheap beer and a good time. It looks like the Deuce 2.0. but it’s actually located in Los Angeles’s Korea Town, where it’s the hangout of choice for Northwestern alums in this city. Tonight, they’re here for a surprise going-away party in honor of their friend and former classmate Jessica Lowe, who graduated from the Communication School two years ago. For the next two years, she’ll be performing with Boom Chicago, a well-known Amsterdam comedy group of American expats, whose alumni include SNL’s Jason Sudeikis and Seth Meyers.
“We both live in LA, but I never see you!” a slender brunette squeals as she hands her friend a party hat and sequined mask. “I’ve been really busy,” he says elusively. “Let’s grab lunch sometime this week.” Before plans can be made, Dan Bruhl—the party host—runs to the back corner of the bar, where the rest of the crew sits at a cluster of tables. “She’s going to be here any second! Get ready!”
Two minutes later, a diminutive blonde in a maxi dress and black wrap stumbles into the bar. It’s Lowe. There’s shouting, cheers, and a few party horns. She could not be more confused. “Wait, this is all for me?”
Yes, the party is for you. Four days from now, the vivacious New Mexico native with the voice of a Powerpuff Girl will board a plane to her new home. Everyone knows this could be her big break: Boom, which was started by the son of legendary NU professor Charles Moskos, is regarded as Europe’s Second City and a launching pad into the world of big-time sketch comedy. “In the improv community, it’s a big deal because they only pick two people in North America. She was one of them,” says Bruhl, before adding, “But outside of the improv community, it’s not really a big deal because nobody has ever heard of it.”
Bruhl’s subtle jab at Lowe is hard to miss, but not all that surprising. Career envy is par for the course at Brass Monkey. According to the Northwestern University Entertainment Alliance, which keeps track of grads breaking into the entertainment industry, 30 alums move out here every year. Mostly theater or film grads and card-carrying members of the ubiquitous “Northwestern Mafia,” they pursue acting, modeling, and filmmaking. The competition is always fierce. A few, like Lowe, find moderate success. Some others admit to becoming frustrated, depressed, and lonely. And many others just call it quits altogether.
“You go from being the top of the world at Northwestern—you have friends galore, you glide into any opportunity based off your seniority or reputation or whatever. And then out here, you don’t know anybody, and you start from scratch,” Bruhl says as he smokes a cigarette in front of the bar. “You have to build up your reputation. Being in one of the most highly-touted Northwestern groups, like Mee-Ow, means shit in the real world.”
Three months after graduating, Bruhl, packed up his things at Ridge and Davis and moved to Los Angeles with his best friend and fellow Mee-Ow castmate, Dan Foster. He had no plan in mind except that he wanted to pursue a career in the entertainment world. Until that happens, he’s taken on a number of temporary “industry jobs,” which have helped him discover exactly what he doesn’t want to do.
Bruhl was pushed to his limits when he was reprimanded for refusing to add 100 people to Brendehoft’s MySpace page at 2 a.m.—a feat, Bruhl points out, that’s technically impossible.
His introduction could not have been more stereotypically “LA.” Working as a personal assistant to Josh Brendehoft, “a friend of someone on The Hills,” Bruhl was required to get a faux hawk and clocked in 20-hour days doing frivolous tasks that ranged from keeping pace with his pseudo-celeb employer at the gym to updating his social networking pages. The typically agreeable Bruhl was pushed to his limits when he was reprimanded for refusing to add 100 people to Brendehoft’s MySpace page at 2 a.m.—a feat, Bruhl points out, that’s technically impossible.
After quitting his assistant job, Bruhl spent the next few months working in casting for the MTV reality show Parental Control. He spent his afternoons trolling suburban malls and community colleges, advised to look out for, “freaks, attractives, or gays.” Needless to say, that job didn’t last very long either.
Today, he’s a proud member of the Trainee Program at Management 360, a boutique talent-management company in Beverly Hills. He earns $9 an hour working in a mailroom and faxing contracts. Seen as training ground for anyone interested in the entertainment biz, monotonous jobs like this are coveted by the smart, driven college grads vying for seats at the top. Bruhl’s co-workers include two Yale grads, a Harvard, an Oxford, and a Brown. Everyone is hoping to advance to a “desk.” “When I was applying for these jobs they would tell me, ‘You’re not experienced enough,’” Bruhl says. “It’s really frustrating because it’s like, ‘I’m not a monkey. I can answer a fucking phone call.’”
Bruhl and Foster live in a Korea Town apartment they call the “Hobart House.” For the most part, it feels like an extension of their old digs at Ridge & Davis—there’s even a liquor store around the corner, the neighborhood’s answer to EV-1. But on the fireplace mantle, they’ve stacked headshots and resumes of their friends and fellow NU alums, who all seem to be actors of some kind. It’s meant to be something of a joke—a goofy acknowledgement of the superficial side of the industry. But after you get past the humor in a frat boy who looks like a second-rate Nick Carter, there’s something tense about the headshots—the calculated smile and tilted head marketing themselves to any casting agent willing to look. And it’s hard not to ask: Headshots? In the living room?!
Matt Wool—who, like Lowe, graduated two years ago—is one of the half-dozen faces on the mantle. He’s pursuing acting full-time and has avoided the office jobs that so many of his friends have taken on. Until he got his first waiting gig in August, the New Jersey native spent his weekends dressing up as Spider-Man and Elmo at kids’ birthday parties to make extra money. “I’m a birthday performer. It’s educational, it’s fun, it’s really interesting,” the tan blonde says earnestly, without even the crack of a smile.
“I came back, and I was like, ‘Am I really going back to LA to audition for commercials? Is that what I’m doing with my life?’”
Jobs like this have had their affect on Wool. Friends say the pink polo-wearing Lodge frat brother could sometimes come off as a jerk in college, but today he’s a different person. Constantly smiling, he even opens up about some of his insecurities since coming to the city. He’s more conscious about his health, his age, his looks—even his hairline. He spends hours at the gym and even more time anxiously scoping out imdb.com. He says the window for male actors is a bit longer than it is for women, but he’s still mindful of where exactly he fits in. “I just realized this year that I can’t play high school anymore. I hate that.”
But Wool, who insists he’s here for the long haul, is still an exception of sorts among his friends. He lost both of his first roommates to the pressures of L.A. Foster also confesses that until he started taking improv classes again, he questioned his decision to come to the city. “You have to be really competitive. You can’t just be talented, you can’t just want to act or like acting. There is a lot of bullshit you have to deal with every day,” Wool says, before reminiscing about his two-month stint working on the Obama campaign in Colorado—when things were anything but slow, and Wool thrived off the day-to-day grind he hadn’t experienced since Northwestern. “I came back, and I was like, ‘Am I really going back to LA to audition for commercials? Is that what I’m doing with my life?’”
Back inside Brass Monkey, Marcus Cohlan (of “Rushed” notoriety) chats with an NBC casting agent—the friend of NU alum and working actress Bridget Moloney Sinclair—while Wool grabs another drink and catches up with the other alums. Like anywhere else in L.A., networking is still protocol, but instead of talking about upcoming movie deals, they’re name-dropping Mee-Ow, Studio 22, Mainstage, and Titanic Players. The Northwestern Mafia is a tight and cohesive group, quick to explain that you never know when a former castmate or crewmember might one day help out.
As the evening wears on and the drinks sink in, Lowe runs around frantically. It’s obvious that something big is about to happen. Suddenly, she appears outside the front dor, party hat falling off her head. It’s time for a cigarette break, and besides, she has important information to share.
“Did you hear it?! They harmonized on every single note,” she says.
A confused Bruhl nods and takes another drag of his cigarette, unsure what Lowe is talking about. “Amazing!” he says, playing it safe.
“Retarded amazing!” Lowe says. “It’s Seth MacFarlane!”
So there it is. Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, has come inside the seedy Brass Monkey singing Sammy Davis Jr.’s “Birthplace of the Blues” with a friend. For Lowe, this isn’t just any star sighting. This is “the” star sighting. Though she’s shipping off to Amsterdam to do improv, the buxom blonde initially came to L.A. in hopes of landing cartoon voiceover gigs, similar to those featured on MacFarlanes’s Emmy-winning show. But voiceovers didn’t work out so well. “It’s impossible to get cast in that show because they hire, like, Mila Kunis and Seth Green and, like, Angelina Jolie to voice a fish,” she pouts. “They don’t need a no-name!”
Just like all the other NU alums here tonight, Lowe, who graduated magna cum laude, has hit the typical roadblocks since moving to L.A. She likes to talk about how she once had to dress “like a slut” to be a “Red Bull Girl,” or how she tutored entitled prep-school kids to earn extra money before she was able to make enough as a performer. Despite her relative success, she’s genuinely grateful and almost caught off-guard about where she’s gotten. “I can’t think of something that is going to make me better or more marketable,” she says. “I think when I come back, I’ll have a lot more confidence.”
Before leaving, Lowe finally musters the courage to go up and talk to MacFarlane. So far she’s been the hottest thing in the room, but for now, she looks like another star-struck fan asking for a picture.
Great Article!
Orwell references are my favorite. Good read!
wonderful article — brings both humor and light to the post-college abyss