Hall(ywood) of Mirrors

Normally I get myself dressed in workout clothes and go to my gym in the morning. This morning, I was instructed to get dressed in workout clothes, go to my gym's parking lot, and ride a shuttlebus to set. On set my role was to appear to come out of a gym after working out. No working out happened there; so when I was wrapped, I went to my real gym for a workout, wearing my real workout clothes that earlier masqueraded as fake ones. ("Is this your real coffee or your prop coffee?" the propmaster asked me in-between takes.) At my real gym for my real workout, a camera crew roamed, filming contestants for a reality show. There I was, real-working out, surrounded by contestants only fake-working out, since they just needed a few minutes of footage here and there. Back at home, I half expected behind the initial walls to lie a team advising me on how to best present, enact myself. "We know the manipulations you need," they'd say, "to be truly authentic."