jamie doom

Part 1

So far I have only been on the set of the movie four days. The movie people assumed that the only foreigners able to act in this movie would be English teachers. Of course, English teachers (when busy not working) work during the week, so all scenes involving foreigners are shot on the weekends. Of the three “foreign assassins,” only one is a teacher. He is from Canada. The other guy, “head honcho assassin,” is from France. He has a cool French English assassin accent which makes me very envious.

I get along really well with the French guy. I hate when people make stereotypes based on what’s engraved on the outside of a person’s passport. But allow me to do this once. The French make a national sport out of being unlikable and pretentious. This guy is not like that. He is pleasant and laid back. In fact, he’s alright in my book—which is a very short and shallow book.

The Canadian guy is a nice guy too. He has one small quirk that reared its ugly head during the 17 to 19 hour days of filming. He asks a lot of questions (Chinese film directors aren’t used to people asking 50 questions within a two minute period about a 10 second scene). Most of his questions are usually a variation of the same few questions. Let me give you a brief sound-bite of an actual conversation. He usually asks these questions to people who don’t know the answer or can’t speak English.

Canadian Guy (who is stronger than me and will kill me if he reads this): “What are we doing next? What’s going on? What’s happening? Are we done? Was that one OK? Are we gunna do it again? Does anybody know? Should I hold my gun here or here? Where is he standing? Pretty good, aye? Oh, so, what now? I ran too fast, right? Uhhhh? Aye?”

Everyone else: (crickets chirping)

Canadian Guy: “So, anyway, what?”

But he has lots of good qualities. He is a good pool player. He is in great shape for a guy who asks lots of questions. He has all of his original hair. He has only this one little quirk. I’m sure I have a millions of faults. I just happen to be blissfully unaware of any of them.

Due to a lack of foreigners who are as bad as we three foreigners, they chose two Chinese guys to be foreign assassins too. I happen to get along with them the best. I spend most of my time on the set with them practicing my horrible Chinese. One of them does speak pretty good English which helps a lot. We also have a Chinese translator who carefully translates all the director’s instructions into English for us.

Weekend One (Displaced Homeowners Aren’t Quiet on the Set).

So we arrive to the set early in the morning two Saturdays ago. First, we went to Wardrobe. My uniform consists of black cargo pants, black boots, and a really, really tight black tank top. If I raise my arms above my head, the shirt comes past my belly; and I look like Homer Simpson. That deep look of concentration etched on my face during the entire movie isn’t my amazing acting ability at all. It’s me sucking in. The tank top is just too tight. Whatever size it is in Chinese size, I need to the one up three sizes. The wardrobe people seemed to think the tighter the better. I complained a little to which they said: “Yeah, it is tight. Great, huh?” I also was provided with a plastic gun, holster, black hat, black clip on night light, and ear plug microphone.

Next we went to Make-up. The make-up lady told me I was so perfect for the part that she didn’t know how to make me better. She tried anyway. She put camouflage paint on my face. I think this was a new thing for her—the camouflage paint. At first, I looked like a raccoon. Luckily they found some pictures in a magazine of some real human soldiers, washed my nocturnal mammal face off, applied the paint in a soldierly streaked fashion, and declared me more perfect. Next, they applied a tattoo to my arm. A nice man drew a tattoo on my bicep with a blue ball point pen. But if you took a couple steps back and looked at it. It looked exactly like…somebody had drawn a tattoo on my arm with a blue ball point pen. I kept looking at it and thinking, “there is no way I am getting paid.” Luckily somebody showed up with some press-on tattoos about an hour later. The ball point pen marking were washed off, a real looking barbed-wire design was applied, and I felt a little better at my prospect of seeing some money for my trouble.

The first weekend was pretty easy. Even though we were on the set for a long time each day, we probably spent only about four hours the entire weekend actually being filmed. The rest of the time I spent sleeping, reading, eating, joking with the crew, and talking discussing history with the really pretty Hong Kong actress. I also spent my time entertaining the lone child actor in the movie with crazy songs, ethnic dancing, magic tricks (consisting of juggled fire, levitation, and a hunger strike on a large platform above the set for forty-five minutes—during which time members of the crew jeered me with bowls of rice and chicken feet), crazy faces and puppet shows. Hey, nothing’s too good for the kids.

This portion of the movie was set in a poor part of town in a very poor looking house. Rather than go out and built an elaborate set, the movie just moved into a real house in a poor part of Haikou, dug two large holes in it, moved all the equipment outside into the courtyard where three other families lived, and went to work. It was almost surreal seeing people’s underwear flapping in the breeze above an “important” director who is bent over thousands of dollars worth of filming equipment.

A lot of the filming was done outside in the courtyard too, or in the little side street entering the courtyard. A lot of scenes had to be re-shot because people would wander outside their house right into a scene. These homes don’t have indoor plumbing. The only water pump is in the courtyard. During the course of the day the filming was halted by old ladies vigoursly scrubbing their green vegetables near the sound board, venders pushing their carts right through a tense hostage scene, and children taking quick and noisy showers under the water pump before going to bed.

One incident in particular made me happy. An older lady decided it was time for supper. She began cooking her food outside over a small brick oven on a wok. Despite the director and crew constantly shouting at her to keep it down, she went on with her noisy stir-frying. There would be no “quiet on the set” until her family was fed. Finally, the director decided everyone should take a thirty minute break an let her finish. Hurray for the little people!

When it was finally time for us to act we were chomping at the bit. As it would turn out, our entire actions over the course of these first two days consisted of us jumping into holes and climbing out of holes. That’s it. I spend months physically and mentally preparing for this role, and they waste my obvious talent on something that Vin Diesel could do. It’s a travesty. It’s like putting Anthony Hopkins in a role opposite of Carrot Top, or like putting any actor or actress (be they human or animal) in a movie opposite Brendan Fraser. Don’t get me wrong, I’m great at jumping into holes and moderately good at climbing out of them (even though the tank top rides up). But I am especially good at coldly cracking people’s neck with one swift motion or, when it’s my time to exit, gagging convincingly on strychnine (it’s a horrible way to die). Sadly, at this point, it seems nobody in China will ever know.

Two other cool things did happen during this first weekend. First, I did get paid at the end of each day. Secondly, the kid actor was a joy to be around. He is about eight years old. He knows more English than most of the crew, and he has all that wonderful curiosity and energy that only kids possess. Whenever he wanted to know the English word for something, he would point at it and say “What’s your name?” Together, he and I explored the inside of people’s homes and the backstreets of Haikou. All the time, he was constantly pointing at chairs, lamps, coconuts and kneecaps and saying: “What’s your name?”

The next day, I was disappointed when he came back to the set and somebody had corrected him. He was now saying: “How do you say this?” Why would you ever correct something so cool? To be continued… (Coming Soon: Part 3– A Speaking Part In a Dangerous Hole)