The guys over at the production company have been after me for another round.
I turned them down for this weekend; we've got a friend visiting from the US, although the thought of forcing him to come along with us, or even just making him act, occurred to me. They're pretty desperate- they even sicced Da Yang, the white guy, on me. So if there are any stardom-seeking Amero-Beijingers out there, email me and I'll hook you up.
The last round of DVD shooting was by far the most relaxing day I've yet spent in China. There were the usual confused logistics- it took them three tries to get us the script, they changed the meeting place an hour before we were due, etc. But the location they finally chose was on Tsinghua University campus, in as lovely a spot as exists in Beijing.
Rolling hills, actual grass, not to mention lilacs and forsythia! Little canals threaded through campus, past cute Chinese style buildings. Not really more lush than an average American playground(1), but practically jungle by Beijing standards. The groundskeepers must work overtime, scrubbing fingerprints off the trees.
The crew started setting up in a corner of this park, and immediately lost themselves in the usual anarchy. It was compounded in this case by the complexities of outdoor shooting- car alarms, curious passerby, and thieving magpies.
I had only two pages of script, this time, and profited from the chaos, relaxing on the grass and reading Tarzan of the Apes. I fell asleep at one point. As usual, we worked with a fairly gracious lady, and a jumpy, irritated guy, both college kids. To be fair, though, I was just as irritated as he was, the first time I worked for these guys. He'd done some acting back in the states, so unlike the previous losers, his objections were based in reality.
Of course, Ellen got stuck with four pages of nonsense, playing, as usual, the jerk. Can you guess which character she's playing?
...
Christina: You just want to sit around and hang out? That sounds boring. Come on, let’s give each other manicures. Your nails look kind of bad. You could really use one.
Ashley: Well, I’m not so sure. I think manicures are a waste of time.
Christina: They’re not and you really need one. Just let me give you one and you’ll change your mind.
Ashley: You know what? (sigh) I’m not sure if I can come this weekend. How about this? I’ll call you when I figure out my schedule.
...
The hardest line I had was this-
...
Mark: Oh, that's Guarav, he's on the college debating team.
...
What it all amounted to was long nap in the park, a free lunch, and about a half-hour of work. I learned all about the rhythm method from my fellow American Man Actor, who was a devout Catholic. He pointed out an angle I hadn't bothered to figure-
"It has a high failure rate because it's really hard to keep your hands off each other."
1) You can bet I felt like a rube taking Mandarin classes at Beijing Language and Culture University, whose campus is as seedy and decrepit as they come. This particular corner of Tsinghua reminded me strongly of Brandeis. Of course, the Chinese are delighted when you can draw those sorts of parallels.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Vanity
Supposing for a moment that this blog were about personal glory, rather than the betterment of others. What would be the point of requiring some kind of log-in to comment on a post? It'd be silly- I never log into anything if I can help it. The New York Times is lucky to have me in their databank as a 90 year old millionaire Uzbeck prosthetics engineer, and I only caved to them because you can't get the print edition over here.
It was with unjustified dismay, then, as I watched day after day go by without so much as a Viagra ad posted to the comments. Sometime yesterday morning, however, Alexis Turner, a better netizen than I, actually logged in to post a reply. It was her heroic sacrifice that made me realize what was going on- the comments section was closed to casual readers.
Well, no more. The comments are open to all, and soon, no doubt, will become a palimpsest of wild commerce, negative attention seeking, and hypergraphic babble. Mom and Dad are welcome to post, too.
Love and Kisses,
Will
It was with unjustified dismay, then, as I watched day after day go by without so much as a Viagra ad posted to the comments. Sometime yesterday morning, however, Alexis Turner, a better netizen than I, actually logged in to post a reply. It was her heroic sacrifice that made me realize what was going on- the comments section was closed to casual readers.
Well, no more. The comments are open to all, and soon, no doubt, will become a palimpsest of wild commerce, negative attention seeking, and hypergraphic babble. Mom and Dad are welcome to post, too.
Love and Kisses,
Will
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
More On My Acting Career
Since I last wrote about it, my girlfriend and I have been on two more instructional DVD shoots. It's gotten to be a nice pattern. They call us about three days in advance, send us a long, agrammatical script and a place to meet, and we arrive with books, ready to face the chaos. 500 yuan is eating money for a week and a half, after all, and without DVD acting, I wouldn't have a blog. (How much milage can I squeeze from gun-toting nerds?)
Two weeks ago, we spent the day in a rented coffee shop in Haidian district. Would've been a nice day, except the guy they pulled off the street to star opposite me was an enraged securities broker from Philadelphia.
According to him, "I don't need the money- what I do, I earned enough in the first four months, you know, to live here, check it out for a while."
This little bald guy was mad because he had thought he was here to do voice acting, and read off a script. Nobody told him ANYTHING about memorizing ANYTHING. And he wasn't going to wear no fucking makeup, either. I suggested, privately, that he leave. He didn't need the 500 yuan. He could just apologize and go.
In classic Western Creep style, he insisted on staying. But no makeup ("I shaved it- it's supposed to be shiny") and no memorizing.
As I explained before, the torturous problem with making this instructional DVD has been that you've got to speak your lines word for word. This is hard to do without rehearsing, and really hard to do when an a seedy waiguoren is fuming in your ear about the injustice of it all, or relating sexual adventures gleaned from the personals in That's Beijing.
On an hybristrophilic note, he got the makeup girl's number on the way out.
Interestingly, whoever wrote the script had a startlingly clear grasp of modern American political debate. I played the liberal, my girlfriend the conservative.
（F2）大英 Unit 11—1
一男一女在楼道、室外或咖啡厅谈论两个总统竞选者前一天的电视辩论。
Michelle: Did you see last night’s political debate between the two presidential candidates?
Jay: Yes, but I was disappointed in Congressman Santos. I wanted him to talk more about the issues and less about Senator Butler’s character. I don’t like it when the candidates get into a character debate.
Michelle: Well, I think the character of the candidates is important.
Jay: I’m not saying character isn’t important. I just think politics is mostly about issues, not about character.
Michelle: I disagree. I care about political issues, and I’m a conservative. I want a president who can keep me safe and I think knowing a person’s character can help me know who will keep me safe.
...
Michelle: Congressman Santos seemed to take his duty to defend the country seriously. Plus, I saw a picture of him kissing his wife. This makes me think he is a good husband. And I know he goes to church. I like leaders who believe in God. If he is a good soldier and a good husband who believes in God, I think he has the right character to be President of the United States.
Jay: But Senator Butler is known for his character. He is a liberal Senator and has always supported liberal issues.
Michelle: Sure, it’s easy to support the issues that your party supports, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he has good character. It just means he’s smart enough not to make his party mad.
Jay: Okay, maybe, but he has been a leader in his state for 20 years. Many people in his state support his ideas and respect his leadership. Doesn’t that make him a good leader? Isn’t that important to you?
Michelle: Well, I would like a respected leader, but I would rather elect a leader who can keep me safe. I think Congressman Santos is the best leader for the issues that matter most to me.
___________
It's eerie, isn't it?
Two weeks ago, we spent the day in a rented coffee shop in Haidian district. Would've been a nice day, except the guy they pulled off the street to star opposite me was an enraged securities broker from Philadelphia.
According to him, "I don't need the money- what I do, I earned enough in the first four months, you know, to live here, check it out for a while."
This little bald guy was mad because he had thought he was here to do voice acting, and read off a script. Nobody told him ANYTHING about memorizing ANYTHING. And he wasn't going to wear no fucking makeup, either. I suggested, privately, that he leave. He didn't need the 500 yuan. He could just apologize and go.
In classic Western Creep style, he insisted on staying. But no makeup ("I shaved it- it's supposed to be shiny") and no memorizing.
As I explained before, the torturous problem with making this instructional DVD has been that you've got to speak your lines word for word. This is hard to do without rehearsing, and really hard to do when an a seedy waiguoren is fuming in your ear about the injustice of it all, or relating sexual adventures gleaned from the personals in That's Beijing.
On an hybristrophilic note, he got the makeup girl's number on the way out.
Interestingly, whoever wrote the script had a startlingly clear grasp of modern American political debate. I played the liberal, my girlfriend the conservative.
（F2）大英 Unit 11—1
一男一女在楼道、室外或咖啡厅谈论两个总统竞选者前一天的电视辩论。
Michelle: Did you see last night’s political debate between the two presidential candidates?
Jay: Yes, but I was disappointed in Congressman Santos. I wanted him to talk more about the issues and less about Senator Butler’s character. I don’t like it when the candidates get into a character debate.
Michelle: Well, I think the character of the candidates is important.
Jay: I’m not saying character isn’t important. I just think politics is mostly about issues, not about character.
Michelle: I disagree. I care about political issues, and I’m a conservative. I want a president who can keep me safe and I think knowing a person’s character can help me know who will keep me safe.
...
Michelle: Congressman Santos seemed to take his duty to defend the country seriously. Plus, I saw a picture of him kissing his wife. This makes me think he is a good husband. And I know he goes to church. I like leaders who believe in God. If he is a good soldier and a good husband who believes in God, I think he has the right character to be President of the United States.
Jay: But Senator Butler is known for his character. He is a liberal Senator and has always supported liberal issues.
Michelle: Sure, it’s easy to support the issues that your party supports, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he has good character. It just means he’s smart enough not to make his party mad.
Jay: Okay, maybe, but he has been a leader in his state for 20 years. Many people in his state support his ideas and respect his leadership. Doesn’t that make him a good leader? Isn’t that important to you?
Michelle: Well, I would like a respected leader, but I would rather elect a leader who can keep me safe. I think Congressman Santos is the best leader for the issues that matter most to me.
___________
It's eerie, isn't it?
Beijing Spring
I love winter. I don't mind the cold, and I like the snow and the dark days. As Melville said,
"Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals."
Beijing winter is patently unloveable, however. Hotpot does little to ameliorate the effects of frozen smog, unheated public buildings and slicks of tubercular phlegm coating the sidewalk. I'm glad spring is here.
"Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals."
Beijing winter is patently unloveable, however. Hotpot does little to ameliorate the effects of frozen smog, unheated public buildings and slicks of tubercular phlegm coating the sidewalk. I'm glad spring is here.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Nerd Gun Love
So, regarding the guff blown off some American nerds regarding guns addressed in the previous post. Nerds love guns for many of the same reasons other Americans do.
But nerds have a special relationship with guns, too. Libertarian nerdfather Heinlein wrote that "An armed society is a polite society". It's easy to see the emotional appeal of a gun to a social pariah- it solicits through the threat of violence the respect most people achieve through social acceptance. For those who've had trouble figuring out or conforming to the subtleties of human interaction, the "polite society" of Heinlein's imaginings seems like Utopia(1).
(To others, living under the constant threat of death from those around you is a nightmare.)
Besides the dream of enforced civility, there is also the siren song of revenge. A gun obliterates the differences between us. Strength and size, charm and wit are all the same to a gun. Depending on your particular fantasy, there doesn't even have to be a quick-draw contest, only well-justified murder.
All this, however, forms the subtext of the issue. The most striking and obvious aspect of nerd gun love is in its appeal to reason.
Intelligence is the source of a nerd's self-esteem, almost by definition. This can sometimes lead to an ironic mistake- assuming that those who are most intelligent are also the most reasonable. Conflating intelligence with other virtues has always been the original nerd sin, despite having separate INT, WIS and CHA scores clearly marked on D&D character sheets.
Guns belong the hands of the nerd, supposes the nerd, because they don't act irrationally. Aren't intelligent decisions usually the right ones? And who's better equipped to make those decisions?
To be a nerd is, on one level, to be rejected for making logical (geeky) decisions instead of illogical (socially acceptable) ones. By the time they've become adults, most nerds have learned to stifle their negative emotions in the face of rejection and even violence.
As if the mind were a zero-sum game, with the intellect crowding out the emotions. The impulse to abuse power is only available to the powerful- the revolutionary turned dictator, the citizen turned sadist, patriots turned torturers.
The notion that intelligence acts as a restraint to savagery has been thoroughly debunked by history. Humans are bad people, and nerds are human. Cho Seung-Hui was probably mentally ill, and that's a different ball of wax. But this dork isn't, and neither is this one.
Violence is seductive.
1) This might also explain the peculiar love nerds have for military organizations in science fiction. The dream is of escaping the vague but urgent social demands of day-to-day existence for a more rigid, but explicit and comprehensible social order.
But nerds have a special relationship with guns, too. Libertarian nerdfather Heinlein wrote that "An armed society is a polite society". It's easy to see the emotional appeal of a gun to a social pariah- it solicits through the threat of violence the respect most people achieve through social acceptance. For those who've had trouble figuring out or conforming to the subtleties of human interaction, the "polite society" of Heinlein's imaginings seems like Utopia(1).
(To others, living under the constant threat of death from those around you is a nightmare.)
Besides the dream of enforced civility, there is also the siren song of revenge. A gun obliterates the differences between us. Strength and size, charm and wit are all the same to a gun. Depending on your particular fantasy, there doesn't even have to be a quick-draw contest, only well-justified murder.
All this, however, forms the subtext of the issue. The most striking and obvious aspect of nerd gun love is in its appeal to reason.
Intelligence is the source of a nerd's self-esteem, almost by definition. This can sometimes lead to an ironic mistake- assuming that those who are most intelligent are also the most reasonable. Conflating intelligence with other virtues has always been the original nerd sin, despite having separate INT, WIS and CHA scores clearly marked on D&D character sheets.
Guns belong the hands of the nerd, supposes the nerd, because they don't act irrationally. Aren't intelligent decisions usually the right ones? And who's better equipped to make those decisions?
To be a nerd is, on one level, to be rejected for making logical (geeky) decisions instead of illogical (socially acceptable) ones. By the time they've become adults, most nerds have learned to stifle their negative emotions in the face of rejection and even violence.
As if the mind were a zero-sum game, with the intellect crowding out the emotions. The impulse to abuse power is only available to the powerful- the revolutionary turned dictator, the citizen turned sadist, patriots turned torturers.
The notion that intelligence acts as a restraint to savagery has been thoroughly debunked by history. Humans are bad people, and nerds are human. Cho Seung-Hui was probably mentally ill, and that's a different ball of wax. But this dork isn't, and neither is this one.
Violence is seductive.
1) This might also explain the peculiar love nerds have for military organizations in science fiction. The dream is of escaping the vague but urgent social demands of day-to-day existence for a more rigid, but explicit and comprehensible social order.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Apropos of the arguments about the Virginia Tech shooting and gun control-
There's been a lot of guff on the internet recently about how "if only those poor students had been armed" this tragedy would never have happened.
Yesterday, by pure coincidence, an 18 year old crashed his car into my friend's house, through the wall and into the living room. She was asleep upstairs and unharmed, although a passenger in the car was killed. Police say speed was a factor in the crash.
Regardless of your position on gun control in general, it seems obvious that a college would consider it in its best interests to keep guns out of the hands of their students, at least while on campus. Young people are impulsive and prone to make poor judgments about all sorts of things- drugs and alcohol, sex, cars and guns, especially in the presence of their peers.
College administrators are in a good position to witness the outcome of poor decision-making among large groups of young adults. They see the alcohol poisoning, the car crashes, the date-rapes and the other stupidity otherwise smart students get into. Why on earth would they permit these people to carry guns onto campus, and into classrooms?
This is not to say that young people are particularly vicious or violent, or that they can't be taught to safely handle firearms. They are young. They haven't lived very long, and haven't necessarily developed the skills or patience that only experience can teach. They certainly have the right to carry firearms outside campus according to the laws of the state. But school, and college especially, is intended to be an environment where youthful mistakes are tolerated, and used to instruct. Mistakes with firearms are far too permanent, and too horrific, to be tolerated in such circumstances.
As has been noted many times, it is extremely difficult to defend oneself against a suicidal terrorist attack, which is precisely what has just happened. In the event of a calculated ambush, none of us know how we would react, especially since we cannot live our lives in constant expectation of violence. We can only take action to protect ourselves from reasonable threats, not extraordinary ones. Cold-blooded, targeted execution is monstrous, and rare. Accidents and crimes of passion are equally deadly, and far more frequent.
Yesterday, by pure coincidence, an 18 year old crashed his car into my friend's house, through the wall and into the living room. She was asleep upstairs and unharmed, although a passenger in the car was killed. Police say speed was a factor in the crash.
Regardless of your position on gun control in general, it seems obvious that a college would consider it in its best interests to keep guns out of the hands of their students, at least while on campus. Young people are impulsive and prone to make poor judgments about all sorts of things- drugs and alcohol, sex, cars and guns, especially in the presence of their peers.
College administrators are in a good position to witness the outcome of poor decision-making among large groups of young adults. They see the alcohol poisoning, the car crashes, the date-rapes and the other stupidity otherwise smart students get into. Why on earth would they permit these people to carry guns onto campus, and into classrooms?
This is not to say that young people are particularly vicious or violent, or that they can't be taught to safely handle firearms. They are young. They haven't lived very long, and haven't necessarily developed the skills or patience that only experience can teach. They certainly have the right to carry firearms outside campus according to the laws of the state. But school, and college especially, is intended to be an environment where youthful mistakes are tolerated, and used to instruct. Mistakes with firearms are far too permanent, and too horrific, to be tolerated in such circumstances.
As has been noted many times, it is extremely difficult to defend oneself against a suicidal terrorist attack, which is precisely what has just happened. In the event of a calculated ambush, none of us know how we would react, especially since we cannot live our lives in constant expectation of violence. We can only take action to protect ourselves from reasonable threats, not extraordinary ones. Cold-blooded, targeted execution is monstrous, and rare. Accidents and crimes of passion are equally deadly, and far more frequent.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Chinese Stardom
If you found me through my website, you know that I'm a writer, living in Beijing. I've been doing odd jobs to keep things going (not hard, the cost of living is low, here), and working on my fiction. I'm living the life of a remittance man, like so many greasy Westerners here, but I'm trying to keep my creative life vital.
The most recent job was an acting gig for an English-language instructional DVD.
"If you are a Professional Actor, Don't bother Applying! We are looking for Native English Speakers to appear in an instructional DVD. Please send picture! 400 yuan for one day."
Sounded okay to me. I'm not a professional actor. I sent along a couple snapshots, got a nice reply, and grabbed my girlfriend on my way out the door. The auditions started in the Kentucky Fried Chicken near Wudaokuo Station- not an auspicious place to meet, but not out of line with usual Beijing business.
What was ominous was the slightly weightless feeling of arriving early, and watching the clock tick past the agreed-on meeting time. I was supposed to meet a white guy named Da Yang, but texts to him went unanswered. I called, to no avail. All I got was the mournful advertising jingle that you hear when you ring up a pre-paid Chinese cell. (Sounds like "Mama's Little Baby Loves Shortnin'") I asked a few folks, including a slick-back American pedophile type, but he just stared back at me, wordlessly.
Finally, I noticed a small knot of Westerners congregating out front. I call again, again get no answer, and go out to them. Yes, they're here for the DVD. Da Yang, the white guy, is there. Turns out, the pedophile is in with them too. Thanks for all the help, guys.
I talk to some of the other applicants. A nice Turkish couple. A nervous Chinese American dude named Mo. It's chaos- loud and cold and lonely, like a lot of Beijing. Finally, we're herded up into an adjacent apartment building. It's obviously Da Yang's place, but he obviously shares it with some otherwise uninvolved roommates, who sit quietly on the couch while the director takes pictures and has us read samples of the script.
Mo refuses to read- he's seen this scam before. Get the voicework you need at the audition and kick everyone out, no callbacks. Ellen and I are game, though, and besides Mo, we're the only Americans reading for the part. (Mo also suspects that they're not looking for Asian faces at all, even if they're carrying authentic California surfer-dude voices). We fill out a contact sheet, where I foolishly list my availability as "anytime".
After a week and a half of anticipated silence, I unexpectedly get a call Thursday, 9pm.
"Hello, Mister William?"
"Yes?"
"This is the DVD instructional video calling."
"Oh! Hello."
"Yes, are you available Sunday?"
Ellen and I had a party planned for Saturday night. A chili cookoff, in fact. Everyone was coming.
"Yes, but only after 10."
"Okay, then. We will send a car. We will send you the script to study."
"Great. See you then."
Minutes pass. A text.
Could you come 9:30 am?
Fine.
We get our script by email that night. It says,
Connect it ,,,then you'll see Your Lines with color of orange !
This 'll be played in the office... so wear your Formal clothes please !
Make sure you can familiar with your lines , and almost can say it without paper ! (last time some guys didn't familiar with his lines ,and take all of us lot of extra time)
I give the script a cursory look- The ad had said "Not For Professional Actors." I have two busy days to work, so I rehearse, the night of the party, with Ellen.
The cookoff is a success. We get 4 chilis, 1 scorchingly hot Thai fish soup, 1 bowl of chili dip, and hot chili chocolate. The soup gets the prize, and we hustle everyone out by about 1 am.
We then set the alarm for 9, drop into bed, and are awakened at quarter of six the next morning by a text message:
Can you come at 9 o'clock?
Followed immediately by this:
Take a taxi to this address.
And an aborted phone call for good measure. I turn off my cell. Sleep disrupted, we toss the rest of the morning, get up at eight, and then receive this text:
9:30 is OK! Should we send a car? Or do you still want to take a taxi?
I give them a call. No, we're already up. We'll just take a cab. Yes, everything's fine.
We arrive at their office, and after a brief wait in the spring sun, they send a runner down and collect us, hustling us up into what's obviously their production offices. Having worked with a small documentary company, I was familiar with the setup. No sense in renting an office set if you've got your own. Just unplug the phones that day and go for it.
They'd set up a little cubicle farm in reception, with laptops and production bibles laid out like someone else's paperwork. And there was the pedophile, in a tie, interviewing a young redheaded American in stiff, but unaccented, English. Two big video cameras churned away, and a crew of a half-dozen Chinese tape heads busily attended to the proceedings.
The most unusual thing about the cramped, grubby set-up was the toilet. Instead of a lever, or a massive chrome button, it had a key, like a motorcycle, sticking out the side of the commode.
YoYo, the production translator, was apologetic about the whole time issue- "I'm sorry, I don't know American culture."
We got hustled off to the boss' office to study our lines. There's always a lot of waiting around when you're doing any kind of movie, so we'd brought books too. We read through our lines, went off book, did okay, and then the redhead came in.
So we spoke for a while, and we all rehearsed our lines together.
"Don't worry" she said, "You can usually prop the script up out of sight."
The pedophile took off, and while they broke down the set, YoYo came in for a chat.
"That man is so strange. He wants to be treated special- did you hear him? Everything has to be his way- he needs chocolate in the morning, he needs to be driven home- he lives 5 minutes away!!"
I told YoYo that he was acting like actors in the US. But Ellen and I, I told him, we were just writers.
Before our first scene, they brought lunch. So we had a nice Chinese lunchbox there on the boss' desk, trying to keep sauce off our tailored office duds. A meatball, greasy little nuggets on sticks, shredded potato in vinegar, some kind of spicy chicken, eggplant, rice and rolls. I only finished half, and Ellen even less, but it was good.
Our first scene came after that. An easy job for me, at least- I was Mr. Jones.
...
Mr. Jones: Well, you said that you had something to discuss with me. What can I do for you? I’m all ears.
Ms. Biggers: Well, Mr. Jones, as you know, we are involved in Angels Project, a nonprofit group that provides after-school programs for low-income high school girls. Our mission is to encourage teenage girls to be involved in fun and challenging community projects....
Mr. Jones: I understand. As a man, it’s hard for me to relate to this issue. Do you do something comparable for boys?
Ms. Biggers: We don’t, but there is an organization similar to ours that does. It provides activities such as tutoring for fatherless boys in the inner city.
Mr. Jones: That’s good. I know it’s difficult to be a girl in this society, but it’s difficult to be a boy, too…
The girls were, of course, thrilled with the sexual politics of this scene, but there was a practical problem. We'd been given 2 days to learn three pages of this claptrap. Word for word. It all had to match the textbook, after all.
Ellen got it pretty much cold. The Texan and I, though, struggled the whole way. I could recite the scene, and hit every important point. But if "I know it's difficult..." becomes "I know it is difficult..." they stop the scene. As if dubbing didn't exist. Back to the top. I felt like Marilyn Monroe.
(last time some guys didn't familiar with his lines ,and take all of us lot of extra time)
What had been an annoying job suddenly became a test of wills. I was caught. Ellen would give a perfect reading, a full paragraph of tortured claptrap, and I would screw up my single line. The poor girl from Texas gave up, after a while, and just read straight from the script, held before her by a hunched PA. On average, I could go about one sentence before gaffing.
A pleasant morning became a long, stuffy afternoon. At every slack moment, I worked on my lines, trying to get them perfect. But, of course, once the camera was rolling, it would all collapse. Adding to the strange Rube Goldberg feeling (which I always have on sets), we were being directed in shouted Chinese from the next room.
Of course, as we left that night, to face the rubble of our post-chili party apartment, the director told us in English,
"We'll call you next time."
(1) I've always wondered about the justifications for the way things are run on a set. Actors are coddled to an absurd degree in the US. In China, apparently, actors are truly cattle. Why not be a mensch and split the difference? Everybody's got a tough job, right?
The most recent job was an acting gig for an English-language instructional DVD.
"If you are a Professional Actor, Don't bother Applying! We are looking for Native English Speakers to appear in an instructional DVD. Please send picture! 400 yuan for one day."
Sounded okay to me. I'm not a professional actor. I sent along a couple snapshots, got a nice reply, and grabbed my girlfriend on my way out the door. The auditions started in the Kentucky Fried Chicken near Wudaokuo Station- not an auspicious place to meet, but not out of line with usual Beijing business.
What was ominous was the slightly weightless feeling of arriving early, and watching the clock tick past the agreed-on meeting time. I was supposed to meet a white guy named Da Yang, but texts to him went unanswered. I called, to no avail. All I got was the mournful advertising jingle that you hear when you ring up a pre-paid Chinese cell. (Sounds like "Mama's Little Baby Loves Shortnin'") I asked a few folks, including a slick-back American pedophile type, but he just stared back at me, wordlessly.
Finally, I noticed a small knot of Westerners congregating out front. I call again, again get no answer, and go out to them. Yes, they're here for the DVD. Da Yang, the white guy, is there. Turns out, the pedophile is in with them too. Thanks for all the help, guys.
I talk to some of the other applicants. A nice Turkish couple. A nervous Chinese American dude named Mo. It's chaos- loud and cold and lonely, like a lot of Beijing. Finally, we're herded up into an adjacent apartment building. It's obviously Da Yang's place, but he obviously shares it with some otherwise uninvolved roommates, who sit quietly on the couch while the director takes pictures and has us read samples of the script.
Mo refuses to read- he's seen this scam before. Get the voicework you need at the audition and kick everyone out, no callbacks. Ellen and I are game, though, and besides Mo, we're the only Americans reading for the part. (Mo also suspects that they're not looking for Asian faces at all, even if they're carrying authentic California surfer-dude voices). We fill out a contact sheet, where I foolishly list my availability as "anytime".
After a week and a half of anticipated silence, I unexpectedly get a call Thursday, 9pm.
"Hello, Mister William?"
"Yes?"
"This is the DVD instructional video calling."
"Oh! Hello."
"Yes, are you available Sunday?"
Ellen and I had a party planned for Saturday night. A chili cookoff, in fact. Everyone was coming.
"Yes, but only after 10."
"Okay, then. We will send a car. We will send you the script to study."
"Great. See you then."
Minutes pass. A text.
Could you come 9:30 am?
Fine.
We get our script by email that night. It says,
Connect it ,,,then you'll see Your Lines with color of orange !
This 'll be played in the office... so wear your Formal clothes please !
Make sure you can familiar with your lines , and almost can say it without paper ! (last time some guys didn't familiar with his lines ,and take all of us lot of extra time)
I give the script a cursory look- The ad had said "Not For Professional Actors." I have two busy days to work, so I rehearse, the night of the party, with Ellen.
The cookoff is a success. We get 4 chilis, 1 scorchingly hot Thai fish soup, 1 bowl of chili dip, and hot chili chocolate. The soup gets the prize, and we hustle everyone out by about 1 am.
We then set the alarm for 9, drop into bed, and are awakened at quarter of six the next morning by a text message:
Can you come at 9 o'clock?
Followed immediately by this:
Take a taxi to this address.
And an aborted phone call for good measure. I turn off my cell. Sleep disrupted, we toss the rest of the morning, get up at eight, and then receive this text:
9:30 is OK! Should we send a car? Or do you still want to take a taxi?
I give them a call. No, we're already up. We'll just take a cab. Yes, everything's fine.
We arrive at their office, and after a brief wait in the spring sun, they send a runner down and collect us, hustling us up into what's obviously their production offices. Having worked with a small documentary company, I was familiar with the setup. No sense in renting an office set if you've got your own. Just unplug the phones that day and go for it.
They'd set up a little cubicle farm in reception, with laptops and production bibles laid out like someone else's paperwork. And there was the pedophile, in a tie, interviewing a young redheaded American in stiff, but unaccented, English. Two big video cameras churned away, and a crew of a half-dozen Chinese tape heads busily attended to the proceedings.
The most unusual thing about the cramped, grubby set-up was the toilet. Instead of a lever, or a massive chrome button, it had a key, like a motorcycle, sticking out the side of the commode.
YoYo, the production translator, was apologetic about the whole time issue- "I'm sorry, I don't know American culture."
We got hustled off to the boss' office to study our lines. There's always a lot of waiting around when you're doing any kind of movie, so we'd brought books too. We read through our lines, went off book, did okay, and then the redhead came in.
So we spoke for a while, and we all rehearsed our lines together.
"Don't worry" she said, "You can usually prop the script up out of sight."
The pedophile took off, and while they broke down the set, YoYo came in for a chat.
"That man is so strange. He wants to be treated special- did you hear him? Everything has to be his way- he needs chocolate in the morning, he needs to be driven home- he lives 5 minutes away!!"
I told YoYo that he was acting like actors in the US. But Ellen and I, I told him, we were just writers.
Before our first scene, they brought lunch. So we had a nice Chinese lunchbox there on the boss' desk, trying to keep sauce off our tailored office duds. A meatball, greasy little nuggets on sticks, shredded potato in vinegar, some kind of spicy chicken, eggplant, rice and rolls. I only finished half, and Ellen even less, but it was good.
Our first scene came after that. An easy job for me, at least- I was Mr. Jones.
...
Mr. Jones: Well, you said that you had something to discuss with me. What can I do for you? I’m all ears.
Ms. Biggers: Well, Mr. Jones, as you know, we are involved in Angels Project, a nonprofit group that provides after-school programs for low-income high school girls. Our mission is to encourage teenage girls to be involved in fun and challenging community projects....
Mr. Jones: I understand. As a man, it’s hard for me to relate to this issue. Do you do something comparable for boys?
Ms. Biggers: We don’t, but there is an organization similar to ours that does. It provides activities such as tutoring for fatherless boys in the inner city.
Mr. Jones: That’s good. I know it’s difficult to be a girl in this society, but it’s difficult to be a boy, too…
The girls were, of course, thrilled with the sexual politics of this scene, but there was a practical problem. We'd been given 2 days to learn three pages of this claptrap. Word for word. It all had to match the textbook, after all.
Ellen got it pretty much cold. The Texan and I, though, struggled the whole way. I could recite the scene, and hit every important point. But if "I know it's difficult..." becomes "I know it is difficult..." they stop the scene. As if dubbing didn't exist. Back to the top. I felt like Marilyn Monroe.
(last time some guys didn't familiar with his lines ,and take all of us lot of extra time)
What had been an annoying job suddenly became a test of wills. I was caught. Ellen would give a perfect reading, a full paragraph of tortured claptrap, and I would screw up my single line. The poor girl from Texas gave up, after a while, and just read straight from the script, held before her by a hunched PA. On average, I could go about one sentence before gaffing.
A pleasant morning became a long, stuffy afternoon. At every slack moment, I worked on my lines, trying to get them perfect. But, of course, once the camera was rolling, it would all collapse. Adding to the strange Rube Goldberg feeling (which I always have on sets), we were being directed in shouted Chinese from the next room.
Of course, as we left that night, to face the rubble of our post-chili party apartment, the director told us in English,
"We'll call you next time."
(1) I've always wondered about the justifications for the way things are run on a set. Actors are coddled to an absurd degree in the US. In China, apparently, actors are truly cattle. Why not be a mensch and split the difference? Everybody's got a tough job, right?
Monday, April 9, 2007
List of things left on Chinese roofs
Bricks
Corn
Scallions
Bicycle Tires
Pick Axes
Cabbages
Air Conditioners (Unplugged)
Roof Tiles
Stuffed Animals
No Frisbees
Corn
Scallions
Bicycle Tires
Pick Axes
Cabbages
Air Conditioners (Unplugged)
Roof Tiles
Stuffed Animals
No Frisbees
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Occam's Razor
Weirdly, after writing this essay about it, I was searching for some unrelated information about Anton Levoisier, an 18th century French chemist. While googling, I came across a strange, crank article about Georg Cantor, who discovered transfinite number sets.
I'm not qualified to comment on his primary objection, that Cantor's math requires a leap of faith. I don't believe it does- the diagonal proof is pretty easy to understand, but there might be subtleties...
I am comfortable identifying him as a nutcase, though.
His main point is that the problem of artificial intelligence could solved easily of if only computers could be taught math (1). To my ears, this sounds like "If only horses could be taught to run, they'd be cars."
What interests me is that he assumes arithmatic computation is what makes us conscious. The solution must be simple, and therefore, anyone who suggests that it's really complicated must be perverse. A comment on the article notes that the Nazis held the same opinion of Cantor's work that they held of Einstein's- Jewish science.
It's interesting because simplicity is usually a sign of sound thinking. Occam's razor is a good rule of thumb, and the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. But if applied inflexibly, it'll make you bonkers.
The cornerstone of conspiracy theory is the notion that it's all connected. A conspiracy, after all, is solvable. The Jews, Freemasons, Cantorists, Rightist Elements, can all be uncovered and thwarted. Creationists get a lot of milage out of the watchmaker theory for the same reason- it seems simpler than the Rube Goldberg mechanism of evolution by natural selection.
Here in China, and back in the US, the simplicity argument is often invoked by different factions of the government to smooth over complicated problems. The terrorists hate our freedom. China's too big for representative democracy.
A friend of mine recently heard from a Chinese colleague that,
"Other people evolved in Africa, but Chinese people evolved in China."
Makes perfect sense to me, but it's beside the point. What I mean to say is that you've got always to stay loose. Acting rationally requires a lot of guesswork, and knowing when to apply the rules is an art. Otherwise, you go nuts.
1) Of course, there are ad-hominem attacks against the mathematical community itself, which speaks to an unhappy postgraduate experience.
I'm not qualified to comment on his primary objection, that Cantor's math requires a leap of faith. I don't believe it does- the diagonal proof is pretty easy to understand, but there might be subtleties...
I am comfortable identifying him as a nutcase, though.
His main point is that the problem of artificial intelligence could solved easily of if only computers could be taught math (1). To my ears, this sounds like "If only horses could be taught to run, they'd be cars."
What interests me is that he assumes arithmatic computation is what makes us conscious. The solution must be simple, and therefore, anyone who suggests that it's really complicated must be perverse. A comment on the article notes that the Nazis held the same opinion of Cantor's work that they held of Einstein's- Jewish science.
It's interesting because simplicity is usually a sign of sound thinking. Occam's razor is a good rule of thumb, and the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. But if applied inflexibly, it'll make you bonkers.
The cornerstone of conspiracy theory is the notion that it's all connected. A conspiracy, after all, is solvable. The Jews, Freemasons, Cantorists, Rightist Elements, can all be uncovered and thwarted. Creationists get a lot of milage out of the watchmaker theory for the same reason- it seems simpler than the Rube Goldberg mechanism of evolution by natural selection.
Here in China, and back in the US, the simplicity argument is often invoked by different factions of the government to smooth over complicated problems. The terrorists hate our freedom. China's too big for representative democracy.
A friend of mine recently heard from a Chinese colleague that,
"Other people evolved in Africa, but Chinese people evolved in China."
Makes perfect sense to me, but it's beside the point. What I mean to say is that you've got always to stay loose. Acting rationally requires a lot of guesswork, and knowing when to apply the rules is an art. Otherwise, you go nuts.
1) Of course, there are ad-hominem attacks against the mathematical community itself, which speaks to an unhappy postgraduate experience.
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