It has been a long time. I have been working a lot and I get so fatigued by the end of the day that I am unable to sit down and jot some news thoughts and embellished stories for my immense readership. But now is the time for me to invite you, oh faithful reader, to read about the second half of our acting debut. (PS If you want to read the first part of the day, simply scroll down the page.)
The day was still fresh at noon on this lovely Saturday and I was becoming more and more disinterested in continuing our adventure as actors as the weather seemed much more inviting than spending time with the random film crew and some chicks who had already proven to be "not our type." Nevertheless, we chose to take the leap of faith and changed locations across town where the second half of this infomercial would be filmed.
After a long and cramped car ride filled with rude and mocking remarks about our less than average director/driver we arrived at the second site. The building was down a more than dirty alley and it felt like we were entering the most painful and horrifying part of our gang initiation as we ascended up the cracked and rusty steel elevator. When the elevator doors opened our anticipation of relief quickly disintegrated at the site of this putrid employee "lounge" that lay before us.
Seeing as we were the stars I thought it only appropriate that Graeme and I take seats on the one couch dying in the corner of the depressingly decorated hall. I plopped down on the couch thinking that I had finally arrived to some well earned comforts when my leg knocked into a sloppy sounding bucket at the foot of the couch. One look at the puke filled waist basket was all I needed to initiate the thoughts of regret and irritation of knowing that I had no way of leaving this place. I did, however, feel at ease to know that I now knew the locations of all the fire exits as well as the puking section of the building.
I moved the portable outhouse behind the couch and watched as the others filled in quietly apparently undaunted by the grim prison yard we would be restricted to for the next couple of hours.
After a sit on the couch and a brief admission to Graeme that we weren't in the most excellent situation the staff arrived with two giant bags full of boxes of Chinese food. The over eager French speaking Taiwanese man was excited to have us sit with him to discuss, in both Chinese and French, life as a traveler, opera singer, and patron of the weekend entertainment jobs.
As was chewed briefly on our barely edible food boxes Graeme and I took great pride at our abilities to hold one conversation using the combined abilities of French, Chinese, and English. The girls at our table could only sit, watch, and listen to bits and pieces of our sporadic dialogue. This set the scene for the next event. The three stars had met and certainly did enjoy each other, so we were now ready to make 'em weep as they say in the bidness.
The soviets had gone (bowing their heads in embarrassment I may add) to brew a new poison while kissing and chanting prostitute inspired Russian poetry to each other, and it was our turn to show the crew who the actors really were.
Picture this. We find the crew in a thinly lit and moody board meeting. The board is Graeme, myself, Opera man, Guy with twenty pins sprinkled throughout his suit coat, random white girl with lab coat, and "told to say nothing hot Asian secretary lady." Our motivation is to keep serious faces but be relaxed as we discuss this fantastic Chinese sex medicine. We were the elite team that is to lead this great presentation about whatever the hell we were selling.
The audience/low level employees were instructed to do more of the same, nodding heads in pretend agreement, smiling in accord to made up ideas, and clapping out of satisfaction to the random things that each actor could produce. The scene was set and.....ACTION!
My first spot gave me the chance to really go for a different range of monologue. With the lights shining and a Chinese book in front of me I began my speech to all of my hard working employees. "Well we can see from last quarter's numbers that Graeme has been spending a large amount of the company's dollar on a range of different kinds of prostitutes." I got some smiles and nods from my attentive audience and continued running my finger down the page moving on to the rest of the information. "From the looks of these numbers there is no contest that Graeme seems to have a very serious sex addiction that must be handled. He is spending so much money and having so much sex that it really has become a concern. In the next quarter we would like to really address this problem and (pointing to my 'employees') I trust that you will help share this responsibility in getting him off of the vagina." I was received very well by my staff who thought whatever the hell I had said must have been very good and interesting. I then pointed to my "associate" Graeme who now knew that the game was on."Well everyone, we have some interesting numbers on the board." Graeme had been instructed to use the power point page as the basis for his fake speech and with his thin black tie and his borrowed suit coat, he was the model of success. "We can see that this graph here clearly states what a giant homosexual Andrew is. I mean the graph goes all the way to 84% which indicates that four fifths of you in this room believe Andrew to be a giant fudge packer." At this he cleverly, like the great improvising actors before him, pointed and smiled at the staff leaning on his every word.
"So while I may be a sex addict," he continued, "we can see that Andrew has a much more profound secret to admit because the whole room here believes him to be a giant gay!" The claps were loud and everyone could see that the crew was feeding off of our powerful acting ability. I think a guy in the front may have even winked at me.
Graeme and I continued to battle for the most random statements each time we spoke. I tried a bit about different things you could put in a soup and how they were all very delicious and healthy, and Graeme gave a kind shout out to the man in the crowd who had loaned him his 3XL jacket that made him look like Tom Hanks in Big. We enjoyed the experience and at the end we were complimented for our body language and sincere facial expressions on camera. Oscars here we come!
We went on to do more scenes that were dumb and hard to understand and will only be laughable when I receive the video and post it on youtube for everyone to enjoy. However, it was the last scene of the day that made the whole 9 hour adventure worth the effort.
At this point we had been contrasting from dark corners to bright spotlights so much that I think we were beginning to get a little delirious. We were now getting carried away with the recognition that no one understood what we said in English, so we felt free to curse and make humorous remarks about whatever we felt like. It may not have been the most noble thing to do but we certainly found it to be enjoyable and entertaining.
Now I must say that while we were rather flamboyant and free with our speech by now, we hadn't been making fun of anyone or doing anything cruel or disrespectful. (Except for the things we said to the director, but that is just a working hazard for him. I seriously think he was saying "Fucking Actors" in his head the whole time. Or maybe he was saying it aloud in Chinese. I don't know.) So like I said, we had been nice and friendly and we had gotten to know most everyone there and they were all nice and friendly and we were having a good time.
But then came the New Dude. A man they had been saving for this last important scene. A man who was nicely dressed and who was getting his face powdered on the set. He seemed the ultimate professional.
The scene was New Dude, white girl with lab coat, (now in my delirium) super hot Asian secretary, and the two CEOs: Graeme and myself, Doofus McGumphrey. It seemed like the scene was going to be quick and easy and we would be outta there in no time.
The first cut began and everyone seemed cool and relaxed as we scanned through giant Chinese books pretending to talk about the ancient lore and usage of Chinese sex medicines. Moments after the the big hot lights came on and the classic RORRING! (rolling) was called New Dude began to sweat like he was at a wool convention in the Sahara. It was hard to even listen to him speak as his hand visibly shook with the giant book in his hand. He was shaking so bad that the camera was probably seeing both sides of the books as if he were trying to spin it.
He made it about halfway through the scene until he was startled when the window shade fell down and blasted us all with the rays of the midday sun. This was then the beginning of the coexisting moments of New Dude totally loosing all control of himself and Graeme and I doing the same but in a more impossibly insensitive way.
Disclaimer: Now I'm not trying to be a dick here but this dude must have had tourettes or something. That of course is no big deal but combine that with an absolutely crazy dominating fear of being on camera and you add white gasoline to the already raging fire that is the two boneheads' laughter. So maybe we are dicks or maybe acting just isn't the right profession for this guy. That is all I'm saying.
In our next scene New Guy was hard to handle. We were sitting across from him and every time he would try to hand the book to us his eyes would bounce up and down and his mouth would go from frown to smile frown to smile frownsmile frownsmile frowile AHHHHH!!!!
I was the first to loose it. I couldn't help it and I know it is bad but the day had already been one of the weirdest experiences of my life and this dude with pin ball facial movements and a shakiness that would make an ice swimmer look steady made me crack.
Graeme and I were still committed to our art as well, so we wanted to have some fun ourselves. We were sharing the same couch as before and every time the man would hand over the book I would try to make my commentary using a gay accent. While I was doing this Graeme would point to the book and talk about different employees who really had to read this and that and how he wanted to buy 4 million units that day or else someone would be fired. On my other side the secretary was taking fake notes which I noticed to be Hello Kitty drawings. Everyone was going completely crazy in front of this camera and yet all it will look like in the end is a group of totally random people talking about Chinese medicine. How could anyone have kept it together?
Suddenly, it was all too much and Graeme burst out in a laughter best described as uncontrollable and contagious. I was doing the spitting laughter where I tried, unsuccessfully, to hold it in and all the while the white girl kept acting away without the slightest attention to her couch mate (New dude) who was about to explode right in front of all of us.
I think the moment when we really lost it was when the cameramen noticed what was going on and started laughing along with us. We made it through a last cut with Graeme and I visibly giggling on camera and then the staff burst out into a torrent of unfathomable laughter. Graeme of course didn't see most of this because he was in the bathroom almost about to puke because he was laughing so hard.
So we almost lost composure from laughter all thanks to one man: The New dude. However, great actors like Graeme and myself can always be trusted to keep composure in a scene.
The real shocker is, guess who was the one good and kind person who saw through this man's uncontrollable nervousness? Yes, that's right, the hot ass secretary. In fact the only hot girl there that day, was madly in love with the New Dude and in the end he showed us all up by being the actor who got to score with the hot chick on set.
So while we didn't get the girl who did a passionate portrayal of a sex starved Harvard educated secretary, we did get to be considered the main actors on set. We will even get credited in the final cut and I got paid again to come in three days later and film the final monologue where, acting like a physics professor, I spoke sincerely about different ways to grow, cultivate, and harvest weed. Ain't life sweet in Taiwan?
