- [Harry] They won't
admit it, that there are
hidden cameras there
- [Woman] There are?
- Oh, there were for sure,
I mean, that was it.
That was the audition.
(upbeat trumpet music)
Hi I'm Harry Hamlin, and this
is my wildest audition story.
The year is 1978 I believe,
and Steven Spielberg and
George Lucas are casting
about for a new movie they were gonna make
called Raiders of the Lost Ark,
and they needed someone to play...
What's his name in the movie?
- Indiana Jones.
- So I was on a short list of actors
to come in and audition for Indiana Jones.
(pop)
Of course we didn't have the
script written like that,
it was just go to his company
which was called the Egg
Company on Universal Lot,
and meet with Steven
Spielberg and George Lucas
and read with an actress
who they thought would be
an appropriate pairing.
So I got there and they had
picked Stephanie Zimbalist
from Zimbalist Daughter to be
the pairing for me that day.
When I got there, Steven
came down into the atrium
of this beautiful building
that had just been completed.
He said Harry, Stephanie, so sorry
but George's plane is going to be late,
he's coming flying down from San Francisco
and is gonna be at least 45
minutes until he gets here
but here's the thing, Stephen said.
George loves chocolate cake.
(romantic orchestral music)
It might have been his birthday,
I forget exactly what the excuse was,
but Stephen said come into the kitchen
and he just built a brand new
kitchen in the Egg Company,
and it had, you know,
it was absolutely spotless,
a big island in the middle,
completely brand new.
And he said listen guys,
I want you to bake a
chocolate cake for George.
Everything's here, it's all
the ingredients are here,
but please you know,
if you get it in the oven
by the time he gets here,
he will be delighted.
And I looked at Stephanie,
and she looked at me,
and he closed the door, left,
and we were standing
alone in this kitchen.
And I said Stephanie, have you
ever made a chocolate cake?
And she said no.
And we started opening cupboards
and sure enough there was
sugar, there was flour,
there was milk in the refrigerator,
there were eggs, there was a bowl,
there was a mixing thing,
all the stuff was there but
it was along with everything else too.
But no recipe for how to make a cake.
But we did spend half
an hour, so 40 minutes,
talking while we were trying to figure out
how to make a cake,
and during that time, because Amy Irving
had been a good friend of mine,
I was talking about how Amy was calling
her friend group in LA and saying
that this guy, this director guy,
was stalking her in New York, you know?
And how she was kinda getting annoyed
because this guy Steven Spielberg,
was like, showing up to
the stage door every night
and with flowers and all this
and it never occurred to me, 1978,
it never occurred to me,
and this was before VHS,
this was before you could go to the store
and buy a video camera,
it's before any of that.
Never occurred to me that we were actually
in the audition while
we were making the cake.
The place was bugged with
cameras and microphones
and they were, George
and Steven were upstairs
watching us make the cake!
That was the audition, to see
what our chemistry was like.
Well, I'd been riven on how, you know,
annoying Steven Spielberg
was to my friend Amy,
so hey guess what, I
didn't get the part, okay?
And I've never worked
with Steven Spielberg
and I grant you that I never
will work with Steven Spielberg
and I never learned how to
make a cake to this day,
I don't know how to make a cake.
I can make a hell of a pie,
but I don't know how to make a cake.
- [Woman] That's a crazy story!
- Isn't that crazy?
You know, they won't admit
that there were hidden cameras there.
- [Woman] They won't?
- Oh, there were, for sure.
I mean, that was it.
That was the audition.
(guitar strum)
