00:00Giving the girls a show. Would you mind moving a little to the right? You're standing in front
00:07of the peephole blocking the sideline. Well the fame show was really big at that time
00:11and I had the opportunity to go to an open audition for the show because they were looking
00:18for new kids. Right, right. Well this is what I did. So somehow or other I hitchhiked a ride to
00:23L.A. from the school Valencia which was about 40 minutes from L.A. and I stood in line with
00:30like you know 2,000, 3,000 people and the auditions were held on the MGM lot. So I grew up watching
00:38musicals. Here I was under the lion on the lot where all of my favorite musicals were filmed
00:44and I'm getting ready to try to get into this profession that I've been studying my whole
00:51life and you know I just at that moment I just had an epiphany that everything that had happened
00:57to me that all of these little performances here and there in San Antonio and that I was prepared.
01:04This was my school right now and so I was able to walk in with a little more confidence I think
01:09within a lot of the people.
01:16I didn't know what I was going to sing because I wanted to kind of see what they were doing. I was
01:23being very strategic about it. Well I noticed that they were choosing people with very natural voices.
01:28So I said that's great. I have a good voice, right. My father taught me how to sing and I was in choir at school.
01:35So I had I had a good strong voice. I said fine. I'll just sing a song. I said but now what am I gonna sing?
01:40I'm gonna sing a song that I heard my father record. It was a Carlos Gardel tango that he recorded as a bolero.
01:49It's called Cuesta Abajo. So I go up in front of them and they're looking at this young Chicano kid, right.
01:55And by then I was playing with their minds. So I was dressed in a leotard with rolled up, you know, what I wore at Incarnate Word Ballet.
02:06Like a kid right off the street who was a dancer. So they're looking at me like, this is a singing audition.
02:12Why is this kid dressed like a dance audition? So I was messing with their mind. I was like, I'm the complete pack.
02:17So then I turn around and they're waiting for me like, what's he doing? I was doing dance stretches and I was really giving them a performance.
02:24So I turn around and this is after listening to all these English Broadway singers, right. And I go.
02:31Oh, by the way, I can sing in English, too. With the morning comes the dawning of a day.
02:55They were like, thank you very much. Here's your number. Come back for this dancing auditions. I was like, awesome.
03:02We had to go through the storm to see the sun. Why can't we just make it up?
03:15And then they take a snapshot of you, you know, of everybody who made it back to the second callback, whether or not they're going to ask you back to read or not.
03:23And I gave them my resume and my picture and they lost it. So for the next coming week, all of my friends were going back and I hadn't been called back.
03:33So I was like, oh, well, no. So then another week passed and everything had died down.
03:37They had there was rumors that they had supposedly already filled the roles and stuff like that.
03:41And then I was coming in. It was two weeks after the audition. I was coming in from a rehearsal and a friend of mine said, I saw you on TV.
03:50Something that the people from fame were looking for you. And I went, what?
03:53He said, yeah, the people from fame were looking for you. And I almost got into a fight over it and everything.
03:56And then several other people in school the next day told me, yeah, that they had seen it on.
04:00They were flashing this picture on TV, the snapshot, saying, if you know where we can contact Jesse Brego, you know, tell them to contact the casting directors from fame.
04:08And when I called up, they asked me to describe myself because they said that a lot of people were calling up.
04:15that they had no place for you. So I just kept talking for us every day.
Be the first to comment