[Read part one]

NOW LIVING IN Las Vegas and having moved there for a stint as Elton in Legends in Concert. I find myself with no place to go but up. Take all of the things that you learned as a kid and stick them into one show. I did once in Atlantic City a year before and the audience loved it. The pay for the show was zero and the cast, camera crew, and editing cost me $6000.00. Now I'll have something to sell. I can see the future. Guys like Danny Ganz are doing incredibly well so why can't I?

I bring even more to the table like original songs, more musical instruments, a knack for standup comedy and even a summer intensive with Second City that I picked up along the way. Who wouldn't want this kind of show? The diversity worked for Wayne Newton in the day, the impressions worked for Danny Ganz and the vocal talent worked for the big guys like Sammy Davis and other headliners. This has to be the culmination of everything and this must be a sure thing.

My spirit felt repaired somehow. I was Stephen, not Elton or the wedding singer. It was then that I began pitching my show to every casino in Las Vegas and surrounding areas. Rejection is part of the game and I had had vast experience with this during the record label days, I can handle it as I remembered the part in the adage that said "stick with it," I would.

It was then that I began auditioning and landing commercials in Las Vegas as well as driving in for film and TV auditions in L.A. The Vegas market liked me because I was a legitimate personality and could act, but only for local non-union spots. Yes I was on TV and even one day at the gym while on the treadmill, a friend yelled out "hey Steve, look at the TV's, you're the shit!" True, I was on all three networks at the same time in separate commercials. This was local Vegas stuff but who knows what the future will bring?

I had not heard from any casinos as of yet and had no idea as to where and when my show would open so I spent more time driving back and forth to L.A. for auditions. This could only increase my visibility. Remember, guys like Seinfeld, Ray Romano and the like were seen on TV shows and comedy specials and then shows were built around them.

So I found an agent and began what I called the L.A. shuffle. I would get a call from my agent and would usually be told that I had a 10:00 a.m. audition for a part the next morning. I would get up at 4:00 A.M., drive the 4.5 hours to L.A. and park outside the casting agent's office until "read time." It was then that I mustered everything I had learned about auditioning and presentation, the lines were in my head and the character ready for life to be breathed into him.

I walk in, wait an hour, stand in front of a 21-year-old casting apprentice who asks me my name and proclaims "you go ahead, do it."

I read my lines to a dead camera, and someone's son who must had left both his intellect and his personality in his other jeans. When I ask him if I should read again differently he tells me that he doesn't know. I ask him if he could give me a clue as to what the director is looking for and how the piece will be presented, he says "I dunno, it's your audition."

My five hour ride home from L.A. is silent. This can't be it, I think to myself as I slump down in my seat further and further. I looked not unlike my grandmother driving at 85-years-old. From the street all you would see was her hands on a steering wheel and the top of a hairdo, nothing else.

This scenario plays over and over for over 80 auditions.

I do get nine film roles (only one from auditions), two sitcom pilots over the years but find that nothing comes out of them—no phone call with the fabled "hey, this is such and such from yadda-yadda studios, we saw you in that film and would like to talk to you about a project!." No talk, no project but a damn good acting reel of work with no one to watch it.

Spirit cracking and tarnished, I stop the Hollywood shuffle after a number of years.

I do however take with me some great words that were given to me during a shoot for an NBC pilot. The show starred Ed Begley Jr., Dana Delaney and Brian Doyle Murray. The director was Peter Wallach (son of legendary actor Eli Wallach). I was doing a scene with the cast and had played the part very different than what the director had envisioned. He stopped filming and pulled me into the dressing room and looked at me for what seemed an hour. He said, "why are you playing the part that way?" I told him that the character seemed to need a heart and in order for people to laugh with the character that they would have to like him and feel for him first.

He looked at me some more and said, "I would have never thought about it that way, it's brilliant," he went on to say "do you know those are some good actors out there. They are pretty famous and no one knows who you are." I told him that I knew that and hoped that it would change soon. He said, "you are holding your own with those people and impressing the hell out of Ed Begley, the producer and I!" I dust that comment off and take it out when the business beats me down, it comes in handy. That pilot never saw the light of day as the network decided not to pick it up.

By now I accepted the lead in a very low paying show called Le Dinner Cabaret at the old Debbie Reynolds Theater (Greek Isles). I create an original character and help write the music for the show. We open and I get some great reviews. Finally a review that I can really use and I'm dressed as me!…well, not really me, as Nicose, a crazy singing maitre d in a fictional restaurant complete with pantomime clown-like make up.

Things are looking up. Then the show isn't doing well so the pay, near zero already, gets cut in half. We close a few weeks later.

Now the Riviera Hotel is looking for a show! OK, I'm all set, fresh with press quotes in hand, a kickin' DVD demo of the show and smile on my face, I run for a meeting with the lady that runs the room at the Riviera. Oddly, she does not have an office with other executives, instead she has a dressing room with her name in it. Baffled as I was, I come back at night when she was "in" and hand her my demo. Without looking at the press, pictures or demo she says OK you're in. I'm in!!

At last, accepted to the big time, on the Las Vegas strip, my name in lights…cue record scratching sound…all I have to do is pay her $2,500.00 per week, pay my own dancers, band and all press, advertisement and media. What?? Acceptance denied! In keeping with the try, try again theme, I go for it. I scale down the show to fit the small "showroom" which was a free lounge until a certain vampire singer sucked the creative life out of spirited and talented people who were trying to get a break.

The show opens and the audience, what little there was, loves the show. The reviews come in and we get great ink and a B+ from the Review Journal. With $28,400.00 per month going out and a 90-seat room in a place with almost zero foot traffic and eight other shows playing, there is more going out than coming in. All the reviews, radio interviews, news interviews, etc. will not bring in enough to make it happen.

Is this how the big boys got started? Did Don Rickles pull 20K out of his pocket to play a lounge six nights a week? How do you get established without going broke?

It is hard to go onstage and entertain people, make them laugh and share your soul with them when you are going broke and feeling unworthy of a regular pay check. The drill would go as follows: I show up and hope that the room was at least 1/2 full, pay the vampiress her weekly cut, get ready for the show, go out in the casino storage room and get my props and get dressed and sneak into the back to make it look as if you had access to her majesty's dressing room. Then get onstage, be funny, be happy, make 'em laugh, make 'em like you, get a standing ovation, sell t-shirts, hear the familiar "man, what are you doing here?" move your crap from the stage so the 11:30 victim can do his show.

Night after night this is how it went until I reached the $100,000.00 mark and would shell out no more.
This was only one year or so since the stock market had taken 75% of every dollar that I had.

Spirit cracked in many pieces, I left the Riviera, the vampire and her graveyard and walked in a very dark and misty haze trying to figure if and if so where I went wrong.

I worked hard, I learned my Craft, I was sticking with it and am doing my very best to remain positive and happy, why does it seem like I'm getting nowhere?

A year or two later I get a call from Atlantic City and Joe Piscapo can't do 4 weeks at the Tropicana. I jump at the chance and assemble the 10-piece band and 10 gorgeous dancers for the month. I fly to Philadelphia and pass my mug on 3 or 4 big billboards…wow, this is where all the hard work and perseverance pays off. It's been a long time coming but I am READY!!

The promoters are excited to see me and we throw a party on opening night. We open to fantastic reviews from all the major publications in the area and even The New York Daily News and the Village Voice. My face is everywhere and everyone is talking about the show.

Five days into the run, the promoters are unhappy with the Tropicana's deal and offer to take the show out. The promoters walk and I am left with my face on every billboard, light box and in reviews being posted daily not to mention 20 cast members who are counting on me to fulfill their contracts. I take over the show and with the deal that the promoters made work almost for free for 2 weeks. The reviews were amongst the best that Tropicana had seen in years and we were excited to have good audiences. On the first day of week three the culinary union goes on strike and a picket line surrounds the building. No more audiences, no more ticket sales, no more spirit.

The run ends with a flutter, a sizzle and crickets heard in the background. A bow to an empty room. My equipment would be stuck for months after that because of the strike. To add insult to injury, all the entertainment directors in the various hotels who expressed an interest in seeing and perhaps booking the show on a later date, could not come because they were making beds, serving food and running all the departments that had been effected by the union strike.

No glory now and no opportunity for future glory.

The spirit now loosely held together with old scotch tape is dark and cracking but somewhat intact.

Now thanks to The Paris hotel and some good people there I do an opening act for some of my favorite people like Patti LaBelle, Dana Carvey and Dennis Miller. This along with a stream of well paying corporate gigs pays the bills. One night Dennis Miller brought me into his dressing room and asked me "why are you doing this?" I was stumped, then offered that I needed the opportunity to prove myself and was waiting for someone influential to notice. He said the he didn't get it and had never had an opening act that got that kind of reaction. He asked me "who manages you?" I said, "I do." He said "maybe that what's wrong." Dennis went on to say that something was missing and that I should be on TV and that he would brainstorm something for me because I was unique and should not be an opening act.

Thanks Dennis for those kind words but the phone hasn't rang with that idea yet, I'm still waiting.

I have for the past few years pitched my show to native American casinos, "stars only" is there policy; local casinos in Las Vegas, "4 wall only" (ya wanna play, ya gotta pay); Jay Leno, "we only take strict stand up comedy"; Letterman, the same and so on.

Last summer I performed at the Mackinaw Theater in Michigan. The owner was so taken by a marketing plan I had for him he decided to give me the room to do my show and produce others all season long…what's this? A ray of hope? Nope, come November he sold the place and it is now a sporting goods store.

I can cook but have no ingredients, I can sew but have no thread, I can build a home but have no tools or lumber. I believe that no matter who you are, there are only so many rejections one can endure over a life time. It will eventually be a learned behavior not to try because the outcome becomes inevitable.

In a world that money takes precedent over human emotions, artistic talent and even the very environment of the planet, there is little hope that things will change any time soon. Where hard work and practice has given way to 30 seconds on American Idol and cookie cutter idols appear and dissolve at will under the eraser of a marketing manager or statistics consultant, there is little hope that no new ground will be forged in the way of art anytime soon.

Spirit officially broken. Game over?