So I finally feel comfortable, kind of, talking about the second day of soap opera shooting. It was good, but unfortunately I think I may have exceeded my mandate as a man-date.
Shooting was late because of technical difficulties. Apparently the venue (Night Office, the trendy joint to hang at if you want to differentiate yourself from all the 18-year-olds without money) had exactly enough power to supply the sound system, but not enough to do that and to run the klieg lights as well. So the power kept going out, and shooting started (for me, anyway) about 4 hours late.
I was going to have pictures, but they got screwed in translation. Maybe later.
As I arrived, there were a bunch of guys sitting at the bar, and getting filmed drinking beer and talking. Over and over again. The fellows were only actors for the day; one guy was actually an Assistant Director. The actor has some family problem, and so the AD got put in his place. The guy’s not an actor, but he was supposed to play a drunk guy – so, he figured, I’m at a bar, I have a solution to my acting problem. Not, perhaps, the most elegant solution, but effective. We will see more of this technique used later in the post.
A word about Marina, the line producer. When the power goes out, or anything else goes wrong, she gets to fix it. She’s about 5′2″, and kicks ass. Honestly, she is as efficient as the day is long, and a born problem solver. To see her in action – especially in the Caucasus – is quite wonderful. She imparts energy to everyone around her, and makes them as vested in solving the problem as she is. Of course, it is still the Caucasus, so this only lasts about 30 seconds before that vim is sapped out of them (does one sap vim? ebb? What the hell is the etymology of vim?), but she’s like a hummingbird, or an Aussie sheepdog. But at this point, it’s been a long day, and so she gave the word that the beer needed to be flowing on set.
I should mention that whatever brain surgeon was detailed to go get the beer got this Ukrainian stuff that I keep around the house in 2L bottles; it’s fortified to 8%. The cast was drinking it like it was Coors Light. They made me feel young again.
So anyway, at this point it’s about 2 p.m.: time for lunch, which was khachapuri and lobiani and salad. And beer. The superiority of the Georgian lunch confirmed, we sat on the grass by the roadway and chatted. Nobody asked me the standard questions (Is life in America good? How much money do people earn? How much does a kilo of mutton cost?); we talked about whether Robbie Williams was gay (the word for the concept of gaydar made them laugh like hell, especially as “Gaydar” is the given name of the late founder of the Aliyev dynasty in neighboring Azerbaijan), about who the hell can afford heroin these days; and so forth. Then we had some more beer. And then there was a minor traffic accident in front of us – a 5-ton truck dropped anchor in front of us, because the driver noticed that one of his rear wheels was wobbling in an untoward fashion. This young elitniy Georgian was following too close in his Mercedes and rear-ended him. Both gentlemen got out and began to remonstrate with each other.
There’s a They Might Be Giants song called “Purple Toupee” that goes: “Chinese people were fighting in the park / We tried to help them fight / no none appreciated that.” Well, the production crew jumped out and did just that, pointing out the damage to the rear of the nearly indestructible Kamaz, and asking this greasy banty rooster of a Benz owner if he was going to stand for this sort of impudence. The police showed up, and all was tranquil. And it was time to start shooting again.
The next thing that got shot was an establishing shot of the disco side of the nightclub. So lots of extras got up and danced to techno. Loud, bad techno – I mean, I mostly don’t like techno, but this was the kind of techno you could only like if you had ingested copious amounts of mood-altering whatnots, or if your need to self-identify as hip outweighed any sort of aesthetic survival instinct you might natively possess. Georgians take great (and understandable) pride in their native ability to dance and sing; to hear this musical chyme smeared on one’s inner ear and watch the children of a proud people writhe as if snakebit made me shudder and reach for my drink.
So. Apparently, the idea was this: Shoot some music and dancing, and then have the footage of the dancing (which would be synced to music that was not actually playing, as the volume was dropped to zero after about 5 seconds, making the writhing youth even more heartbreaking a spectacle) to intercut with other scenes. The next scene would be the one I was in, and what would happen would be this.
- The gangster’s wife (Remember Alice?) pulls out her cigarettes and lipstick, does her lips, inserts a cigarette, and searches through her purse for a lighter.
- Into the frame comes a lighter, clutched in a hand, and arm, that (as the camera pans up) terminates in my grinning mug.
- I then sit down, chit-chat, and ask her to dance.
- At which point, we dance.
Now, those of you who know me know that I don’t dance. When I do dance, I am uniformly (a) drunk, and (b) looking like a frenetic bonobo. There is only ever music I like on. I am no kinda dancer.
So I go over to the director and explain my problem. Huh, he says; this is not an insoluble issue. I should sit down with them. I do so; he says something in Georgian to the AD who heads out. The director, producer, and I all chat for a couple of minutes. The topic of conversation is how much Americans drink, and how much it takes to get us drunk. Shortly (and I should have seen this coming), the AD returns with a bottle of vodka. Anywhere you are in this part of the world, you’re never more than a brisk 2-minute walk from strong drink.
So we do shots. It’s the old, much-loved game of tag-teaming the American. I put away a half-dozen stout shots, call it 500ml. And then the director asks me what I think of Nat King Cole? A Nat King Cole-vintage joke pops into my mind (“Who’s got the chocolate nuts?”) but I say, yeah, I like him fine. Good, says the director, because you’re gonna dance to “Unforgettable.” It’s a slow dance; I’m glad you told me you don’t dance well, because this will make you look much better.
Ah, hell.
So I do a couple of takes picking up the young lady, and the director says, you should come check it out – you look good. I walked over craned my neck around a gaggle of prduction crew, and my God, I looked like I was trying to do an impression of an Albainan used car salesman doing an Iceberg Slim, recruiting young prostitutes off the bus.
“That’s the look we want,” said the director. “You look like the reason we shouldn’t let our wives go to discos alone. Some American like you.”
Anyway, so that’s nearly all the longer the prep for my 15 minutes is going to last – although there has been fallout already, as the guy who develops my film apparently develops the still photography from the set, and he says that it was cool to see me leering out at him from the eight-by-tens.
