Dropping into a favourite bar with my buddy The Chairman on Sunday night, I bumped into a young Chinese girl I know slightly (a friend of the bar owner that I met at his wedding a few months back). She was there with another Chinese girl who is apparently some sort of production assistant with a small film company.
Within a couple of minutes they were trying to offer me a leading role in a film.
The character is apparently a retired NYPD officer doing some private detective work in Chinatown. It would appear that he is expected to speak, or at least to understand Mandarin fairly well (though Cantonese would surely be more appropriate).
My Mandarin is negligible. My Cantonese is non-existent. I am probably not really old enough for this part. I am not American. I can't do an American accent. I have no real acting experience (apart from a few workshop games I took part in with a theatre group I was a member of for a while at university....... 20 years ago!).
How desperate are they to fill this role? Very desperate, it would seem!
Note also that the story is supposedly set entirely in America (albeit within Chinese communities in America), yet is to be filmed entirely in Beijing. I don't get the impression this is a production that can afford to spend much time on studio hire or set construction, so I think they're going to be trying to film most of it on location. Any suggestions for bits of Beijing that look most like New York (or San Francisco)?? And I would probably be the only non-Chinese cast member.
A U.S.-set film with no American actors and no American locations? This is quite a breakthrough in film-making!
This sounds like an even more chaotic and worthless project than the last one I nearly got involved in, 4 years ago. Some guy from the Beijing Film Academy was making a film to mark the centenary of the 1904 British invasion of Tibet (I think it was also probably his graduation project from the Academy). Originally they were going to offer me the part of Francis Younghusband, the adventurous diplomat who led the expedition. When I complained about the dire state of the script, they downgraded me to Major MacDonald, the military commander. I complained about the script some more, and they replaced me altogether.
I think I may have pulled off a similar trick this time. The production assistant's initial enthusiasm cooled noticeably when I asked to see the script. "The script??" she boggled incredulously, as if perhaps there wasn't one. The director was supposed to have been calling me today to discuss the project in detail, but..... not a peep. I am relieved.
The money wasn't great (not bad - but probably a bit less than I'd earn in a good spell of 3 or 4 weeks noodling around doing what I do anyway; and taking myself out of circulation for 3 or 4 weeks could cost me work with my regular casual employers for weeks or months to come). And I think I'd rather not be involved with what sounds as if it is almost certainly going to be a steaming pile of crap - even for 2 or 3 times as much money.
Of course, if the director calls tonight and offers me 2 or 3 times as much money, he may unearth my inner hypocrite. Who knows?
5 comments:
You need to go the John Malkovitch route. Accept well paid, but shite movie roles to fund the arty roles you want to do.
Or, in your case, to get drunk.
see, this seems like one of the awesome sides of living in china. AGAIN i mention that awesome book FOREIGN BABES IN BEIJING, which you have spurned in the past. anyway, it made me laugh my ass off. and i've auditioned for asian soap operas. no kidding.
But you didn't get the role, MR?
Or should I be trying to spot you in old re-runs?
Cowboy, you are probably right: getting drunk is the 'arty role' I really want to do.
If anyone ever floats a 'Henry Chinaski comes to China' script, I'm in!
And I didn't think Malkovich had been particularly a whore like that. Isn't it far more conspicuous - and openly acknowledged - in the careers of people like Johnny Depp and John Cusack?
By the way - much as I like Johnny Depp - I really rather think I'd like Cusack to play me on film. You know, if I ever merit a film biography, that is. Unlikely, I know.
I think we've already established that PSH is the obvious choice to play the Cowboy.
Who do you fancy to play you on the big screen, Moonrat?
Malkovich outright admitted to whoring himself for Con Air, so he could make some movie about a Latino revolutionary. I respect that.
Michael Caine, on the other hand, is just blatant about it. He admits he does not read the script of movies that involve shooting in the Carribean during the winter. I read an interview where he had the attitude that he grew up poor, it sucked, and he wasn't ever going back.
Similarly, I just went to LA, it sucked, and if I have anything to do with it, I am never going back
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