I am chased off at gunpoint

Some time ago I was approached to act in a soap opera. I had all the attributes they were looking for - I’m a guy, I’m an American, I’m (relatively) young. The role I’m playing is one of… a young American guy. So far so good.

The idea of the scenes I’m in is that there’s a Georgian mafioso whose young trophy wife is unhappy in the marriage. She goes to a bar, and picks up a young American guy (that’s me). She takes him home, invites him in, and then up comes here husband’s associate, who berates her and chases the young American guy off at gunpoint. I figure, this is all pretty much within my range as an actor, inasmuch as it involves me just kind of doing that thing I do. There’s no onscreen (or other) kisses, just me learning my lines and not bumping into the furniture.

So I get taken to the set last night at 9:00 p.m. The location is a back yard upon which several apartment buildings open (one enters Soviet buildings from the rear or the side, more often than not) and we’re shooting the return-to-and-chasing-off-from-her-place scene. There are funny things going on: guys hawking up lungers in their pre-sleep ablutions; people listening to Russian television (which we had to stand very very still as the sound guy recorded it for atmospheric noises) and, since post-Soviet folks are incapable of listening to any broadcast or otherwise reproduced sound at anything but full volume, various tech people scrambling to get the dumb bastards to turn their sets down; the lighting supervisor moving around like a praying mantis, or Peter Crouch doing tai chi, checking lighting on his hands at different angles; the singing and khachapuri between shots (the guys on the lighting cranes hauled their khachapuri up to them with the power cords from the lights, causing much shouting from the lighting supervisor).

There were also some amusing things in the script, or lack thereof, that I thought betrayed a certain cultural misunderstanding. Like I said, I play an American who a Georgian gangster’s wife picks up in a bar; she takes home, and invites him in. So what does he do? He refuses.

Remember the phrase “my range as an actor?” I’m playing an American who turns down a trophy wife’s come-on. I have yet to meet an American who will do this sort of thing. This is not American I know. But what the hell, learn lines, no bumping into furniture.

So the next improbable thing that this American does as he takes his leave is… to quote Shakespeare. I confess I can rip off a couple of lines of Shakespeare, okay, but what kind of American quotes Shakespeare’s love poetry to women? English people, okay, fine; Doctor fucking Octopus, okay; but (a) I think it’s generationally inappropriate, and (b) the Shakespeare I know is mostly from things like Lear and the Tempest, and that’s not really a turn-on for the ladies, unless they’re the gothic kind of ladies. My last attempt to read poetry to a lady was met with “Fuck off and leave me alone.”

I then misquoted “My mistress’ [eyes] are nothing like the sun; Coral is [far[ more red than her lips’ red” - and yo, shout out to my man Sting, God help me - just as her husband’s mafia crony comes over and chases him away with a gun. Little or no acting necessary here. Only problem, really, was that at the beginning of the scene, the trophy wife and I step out of the car, move to the back, and I crack a beer, and take a swig. Again, no acting necessary. Problem is that we did, like, 10 take of this at the beginning of the night; and by the end of that I wasn’t drunk as such, but there were certain hydraulic necessities that couldn’t be ignored. Were there honey buckets? There were not. No problem; drinking and pissing on walls is a skill set I have mastered. Unfortunately, while we were in an urban area, which you would think would afford a variety of nooks and corners in which a fellow could TCB, they were all occupied by crew who were doing sthe sort of thing that crew does when they’re not working. I briefly considered hitting a level of insouciance I rarely achieve while sober, and pissing on someone’s leg, but it wasn’t really in character for the Shakespeare-quoting American. Fortunately, lots of folks here drive big SUVs, so I pretended to admire a Mercedes and all was, again, well.

I got home at 4 a.m. and crashed. Woke up at 4:30 this afternoon; I suspect the jet lag will not be helped by this. We shoot again Sunday or Monday, and I promise I will have pictures. Took some with the phone, but they are crap.