ORIA – Part II: “Stop being a ninja”
continued from Part 1…
but not to worry, John said.. another actress had been signed at the last minute, but because her dates did not match the schedule already in place, there would be some rearranging to do. in fact, i’d meet this new actress within the hour because the two scenes we’re shooting tonight involve only the two of us.. that’s when it hit me. less than an hour to go and i hadn’t learnt my lines yet.. not that i learn my lines well ahead of time anyway. once bitten, twice shy, as they say. i’ve had experiences working with theater and film projects alike, where in my eagerness and want for perfection i would always be the first actor to memorize all my lines as soon as i get the script.. then i get too used to them, and when it’s time to shoot.. the lines change and the new lines are now harder to get accustomed to. then it’s a whole new process trying to get rid of the lines already in your head and replacing them with the new ones. even if it’s just a couple of words or a line that’s missing from the original, it throws off my balance.. makes me too conscious.. and suddenly i find myself “acting”.. no actor should ever look like he’s “acting”. as Michael Caine says in his book…
Actually, rehearsing can be a good test of your spontaneity: if you’re running lines with another actor and the assistant director comes up and says, “Sorry to interrupt your rehearsal,” you’ve failed. If he comes up and says, “Sorry to interrupt your chat,” then you’re on the right course. Your lines should sound like spontaneous conversation, not like acting at all.”
– Michael Caine
that’s where theater and film are such two totally different worlds. the exaggeration of theater has to be completely forgotten and left behind when you’re in front of a camera. the lens can catch the slightest twitch of your face.. it can gaze into your eyes like no woman can.. it can feel the slightest breath you take. the camera, when it’s on you, is a stalker, and it lets you know it. you can’t run, nor can you hide. but why would an actor want to? (if he did, he’d be called a director.) i remember my first film.. my first scene where i actually had to speak the very first lines of my acting career.. i had to come down the stairs, pick up the phone, and utter the words “i have some news that’ll give your spurs a spin!”. sounds simple enough. try that when you’re new to this make-believe world of movies and the camera is 2 feet from your face. you feel like you’ve just lost your virginity. that’s how innocent you are. that’s how villainous a camera can be. i gave 22 takes for that scene. somehow the S’s in that sentence wouldn’t get past my lips.. i remember spitting accidentally, my mouth became drier than the gobi desert, so i drank 2 glasses of water, now my mouth was as wet as florida’s wetlands.. i slipped my words, i fumbled the receiver in my hands, i nearly knocked the phone off the desk, i was sweating, i accidentally looked into the camera (a cardinal sin for any actor, which i was to find out much later).. pretty much anything you can think of doing wrong, i did it. and all this time i had people around me.. actors and crew, looking at me, whoring myself out, trying to act. i wondered what they were thinking of me. i remember having nightmares that night that i’d get a call from john telling me i would never work as an actor ever again, and that i’m fired from his film. i’ll never forget that. a trip down memory lane.. sorry folks, i digress… the point here is that a camera can rape you without you even realizing it…
7:15pm
no sign of the new actress yet.. i’m told she’d be playing Jade’s character.. take my stuff to an empty room and started looking over the lines.. but JP walks in.. i ask him about my costume.. he points towards the costume rack.. i think to myself “that’s a lotta friggin’ costumes.. which one is mine?”.. so after checking with john what i’d be wearing (there were multiple, since some of the others are wearing trenchcoats, ties, and fedoras as well) i put it aside and start looking over my lines…
7:45pm
feeling confident about the lines.. look at the time.. where the fuck is this actress? go to john.. i find out she’s been stuck in a rainstorm and got delayed leaving.. it’ll take at least another hour for her to get here.. lovely. got some time to kill.. continue chatting with john. i ask him about the characters in this flick.. he mentions they’re all characters from different movies he’s seen growing up..
Hudson (played by john himself) – Aliens
Murphy (ted taylor) – Robocop
Vash (me) – Trigon
Kimble (ryan kaufman) – Kindergarten Cop
Hart (chris duncan) – Angel Heart
Ray (liam smith) – Ghostbusters
Oria (monique dupree) – The Orion (neverending story)
9pm
back to rehearsing my lines.. still no sign of the actress.. decide to log onto PFC and see what’s going on.. it’s a long shot.. i’m in west virginia.. can’t possibly have any wireless signals around here.. yup, no luck.
9:30pm
i decide i’ll go ahead and try on my costume.. those combat boots look like they need some getting used to. close the door, take off my shoes.. then pants.. hopping on one leg trying to take leg out.. and out of nowhere, the door swings open.. in walks a pretty brunette with hazel-colored eyes and a bit of a southern accent.. “so this is what it feels like to be caught with your pants down” i think to myself.. quickly put on my pants.. with a sheepish grin, i shake her hand.. she introduces herself as jesalyn. john barges in.. tells us to get into costume asap.. jesalyn and i start running over lines as she’s doing makeup..
10:30pm
costumed up, and ready to go.. jesalyn took forever getting her makeup on.. “so glad i’m a guy” is all i can think at this point.. i can barely sit still thru foundation and powder.. no idea how girls do it. lights are being setup as we speak and john walks us thru the blocking..
11pm
a couple of blocking rehearsals later, we start shooting.. funny thing is the schedule had us ending at 11pm.. but here we are, just getting underway. no worries. prime time is my time. i’m a night owl.. all my energy is now at peak. i’m ready to go.
ACTION!
[i walk in from one end of the hallway, she walks up the stairs]
VASH: Is Hudson still alive?
JADE: Did you know?
VASH: It is not his fault. The inner beast cannot be controlled by him. He has to train to learn how to power it and keep control…You have –
CUT!
john (to me): curry, that was good, but stop being a ninja.
(me and some others start laughing)
me: what??
apparently i was too.. sensai-like. i dunno.. i didn’t mean for it to be like that.. the language is too “pure”. i had to give it more of a human touch, he said. he didn’t want me being very “proper”. point noted. on we go. a few technical glitches, line corrections, bloopers, fight choreography, closeups and wides later, we wrap for the night…
2am
time to wash up and hit the sack.. this ninja needs to be up in 5 hours so he can get ready and drive 2 hours to work… this is gonna be fun.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Hey Striker Boy,
Man… good post, very good… padh ke bohot maza aaya… so had a good time shooting hmmm? “it can gaze into your eyes like no woman can” so very true… and a very romantic way of putting it also…
The Michael Caine book is great. There’s also a wonderful video (produced by the BBC, I think). Fabulous for both actors and directors to watch.
Hey Ninja loved it…Gobi desert and Florida Wetlands…:d. For a sec i thought it was Gobi Dessert and was like :o never ate…keep going Ninja…