Chollywood Details
By tuck 24 Jan 2002
- Most of the first movie (Warriors of Virtue) was shot in China for various reasons. Thats why this crew was here for the sequel. Certain parts had to be filmed in the same locations.
<p>-I was on a set for 9.5 hours today. That sucked. I was fed, however.</p>
<p>-The set looked lame. A cave with lit torches, water, large tusks surrounding some sort of alter, and many prison cells. The makeup work on the prisoners was cool though. Nice long beards and flakey leper-looking faces. The smoke from the torches was definitely real as it smelled like my basement when the oil burner needs a new filter. Nice effect really. I always thought my basement smelled kind of cavey.</p>
<p><del>In my scene, after standing around with some other prisoners while looking angry but too frightened to do anything (as ordered by the director) I got to speak directly to the evil, enemy boss of the film. His name was Dogon. Actually, I was the only prisoner who got to speak to him</del> or speak at all for that matter. It was kind of strange here because suddenly, after standing in a head-lowered way and listening to the main character and the main bad guy talk to each other for a while, take after take, all eyes and film were suddenly on me as I spoke. Thats just weird. Standing for so long just acting, being recorded visually but along with 4 other captives, then suddenly speaking which draws everyones attention right to you, is quite a little rush. Theres lots of money in each take so if you mess up, it sucks for the director. Things need to be reset, so it also sucks for the crew. And all the other actors need to start all over again which sucks for them. It created quite a surprisingly intense focus on my part. I like those urgent type moments. During each take I was worried that the lack of air coming through the vocal chords for so long would cause some sort of embarrassing squeak or gargle when I first began to speak, which would be just perfect with all the focus on me there. But there was no trouble.</p>
<p>-And now time for a big gripe:</p>
I was <span class="caps">SUPPOSED</span> TO <span class="caps">DIE</span>. Which is what I was most excited about. A death scene. Me. I can die well. Dogon was to kill me after I made him angry, but…
<p>-the scene was cut before I even had a chance to wow them with my marginally practiced guttural gargles of blood, hack, hock and circumstance. The director decided to keep me alive. Ah well.</p>
<p><del>So no dying, but I got to say more lines and Im shown alot doing creepy things with my eyes. Really close up shots of me too. Youll see. The camera was on a set of tracks and during one take it rolled along all of us captives and stopped at the end, focusing on one of the stars of the movie. After doing a bunch of takes, the director moved me to stand right next to this person, putting me in the shot for a long dialogue. I was supposed to react facially to the evil words of the evil guy and the sad words of little star girl but also be really subtle and of course genuine</del> not overly dramatic. So I did. React I mean.</p>
<p><del>The director loved it. You can ask him if you have the connections. He came right over after the first take and after criticizing the angle, there being too much light, and Dogons tone being too flat, he said Tucker that was fantastic</del> can you do that exact same thing again… same words, same pause and everything? So I did. </p>
<p>-Then he moved me into some other shots. </p>
<p>-Afterwards, while people were resting around the cave, he thanked me again and reiterated that I did a fantastic job and that I should act. I walked up on the set one last time and looked around. </p>
<p>-Then I asked if I could watch the takes. He waived me up behind the fancy monitor-film-computer-thing. While watching the takes, we agreed that I looked truly, unquestionably, invariably evil wearing a hood and sporting quite the satanic tuft of chin hair. He said he should have cast me as one of Dogons minions instead of flying the professional actors from the US to play the parts. I agreed. We shook hands again. I was then asked for my number by a couple Chinese movie dudes. And then the Chinese casting agent who was one of the guys who had originally recruited me from school, gave me 3 times as much money as he gave any of the other blokes they hired for the day which came to about $100 US. He clamped down on my hand, patted me on the back and with a huge smile said hed call me the next day (which is tomorrow.) </p>
<p>-There is some real, nervous excitement when a director says: Tucker, that was fantastic, really. You should act! I mean, a director saying the words You should act, and being genuine about it, saying it in front of everyone on the set… you want, or at least you think you want, suddenly, to be an actor. I realize that all this probably means nothing and that if I really was good, it was only in comparison to the actors in this movie, who are not particularly special, I dont think. But for the rest of tonight at least, Im basking in my debut success. I could play evil for $100/day for a while. No prob.</p>
<p>-Also, it came very easy for me to play evil. That probably aided in my successes today. I wasnt really supposed to be an evil captive, but it just ended up that way and it looked neato enough that it worked.</p>
<p>-The lame-looking set actually looked great on the monitor. Everything was darkened and smoothed and just looked very hollywoodesque. I encountered the magic of film. It really is neat what they can do. I mean the set looked really MST3K-ish in real life. Really college play-ish, BlackBox Theater-ish, but on screen it was quite nifty if not convincing.</p>
<p>-So the movie will probably not be that good. I didnt see the first one and if any of you readers have, let me know exactly how bad it was for my curiositys sake. But regardless of the films potential or lack thereof… it was fun. I actually enjoyed this day. </p>
<p>The day I was an actor in a real movie. </p>
<p>The end.</p>