If you found me through my website, you know that I’m a writer, living in Beijing. I’ve been doing odd jobs to keep things going (not hard, the cost of living is low, here), and working on my fiction. I’m living the life of a remittance man, like so many greasy Westerners here, but I’m trying to keep my creative life vital.
The most recent job was an acting gig for an English-language instructional DVD.
“If you are a Professional Actor, Don’t bother Applying! We are looking for Native English Speakers to appear in an instructional DVD. Please send picture! 400 yuan for one day.”
Sounded okay to me. I’m not a professional actor. I sent along a couple snapshots, got a nice reply, and grabbed my girlfriend on my way out the door. The auditions started in the Kentucky Fried Chicken near Wudaokuo Station- not an auspicious place to meet, but not out of line with usual Beijing business.
What was ominous was the slightly weightless feeling of arriving early, and watching the clock tick past the agreed-on meeting time. I was supposed to meet a white guy named Da Yang, but texts to him went unanswered. I called, to no avail. All I got was the mournful advertising jingle that you hear when you ring up a pre-paid Chinese cell. (Sounds like “Mama’s Little Baby Loves Shortnin’”) I asked a few folks, including a slick-back American pedophile type, but he just stared back at me, wordlessly.
Finally, I noticed a small knot of Westerners congregating out front. I call again, again get no answer, and go out to them. Yes, they’re here for the DVD. Da Yang, the white guy, is there. Turns out, the pedophile is in with them too. Thanks for all the help, guys.
I talk to some of the other applicants. A nice Turkish couple. A nervous Chinese American dude named Mo. It’s chaos- loud and cold and lonely, like a lot of Beijing. Finally, we’re herded up into an adjacent apartment building. It’s obviously Da Yang’s place, but he obviously shares it with some otherwise uninvolved roommates, who sit quietly on the couch while the director takes pictures and has us read samples of the script.
Mo refuses to read- he’s seen this scam before. Get the voicework you need at the audition and kick everyone out, no callbacks. Ellen and I are game, though, and besides Mo, we’re the only Americans reading for the part. (Mo also suspects that they’re not looking for Asian faces at all, even if they’re carrying authentic California surfer-dude voices). We fill out a contact sheet, where I foolishly list my availability as “anytime”.
After a week and a half of anticipated silence, I unexpectedly get a call Thursday, 9pm.
“Hello, Mister William?”
“Yes?”
“This is the DVD instructional video calling.”
“Oh! Hello.”
“Yes, are you available Sunday?”
Ellen and I had a party planned for Saturday night. A chili cookoff, in fact. Everyone was coming.
“Yes, but only after 10.”
“Okay, then. We will send a car. We will send you the script to study.”
“Great. See you then.”
Minutes pass. A text.
Could you come 9:30 am?
Fine.
We get our script by email that night. It says,
Connect it ,,,then you’ll see Your Lines with color of orange !
This ‘ll be played in the office… so wear your Formal clothes please !
Make sure you can familiar with your lines , and almost can say it without paper ! (last time some guys didn’t familiar with his lines ,and take all of us lot of extra time)
I give the script a cursory look- The ad had said “Not For Professional Actors.” I have two busy days to work, so I rehearse, the night of the party, with Ellen.
The cookoff is a success. We get 4 chilis, 1 scorchingly hot Thai fish soup, 1 bowl of chili dip, and hot chili chocolate. The soup gets the prize, and we hustle everyone out by about 1 am.
We then set the alarm for 9, drop into bed, and are awakened at quarter of six the next morning by a text message:
Can you come at 9 o’clock?
Followed immediately by this:
Take a taxi to this address.
And an aborted phone call for good measure. I turn off my cell. Sleep disrupted, we toss the rest of the morning, get up at eight, and then receive this text:
9:30 is OK! Should we send a car? Or do you still want to take a taxi?
I give them a call. No, we’re already up. We’ll just take a cab. Yes, everything’s fine.
We arrive at their office, and after a brief wait in the spring sun, they send a runner down and collect us, hustling us up into what’s obviously their production offices. Having worked with a small documentary company, I was familiar with the setup. No sense in renting an office set if you’ve got your own. Just unplug the phones that day and go for it.
They’d set up a little cubicle farm in reception, with laptops and production bibles laid out like someone else’s paperwork. And there was the pedophile, in a tie, interviewing a young redheaded American in stiff, but unaccented, English. Two big video cameras churned away, and a crew of a half-dozen Chinese tape heads busily attended to the proceedings.
The most unusual thing about the cramped, grubby set-up was the toilet. Instead of a lever, or a massive chrome button, it had a key, like a motorcycle, sticking out the side of the commode.
YoYo, the production translator, was apologetic about the whole time issue- “I’m sorry, I don’t know American culture.”
We got hustled off to the boss’ office to study our lines. There’s always a lot of waiting around when you’re doing any kind of movie, so we’d brought books too. We read through our lines, went off book, did okay, and then the redhead came in.
So we spoke for a while, and we all rehearsed our lines together.
“Don’t worry” she said, “You can usually prop the script up out of sight.”
The pedophile took off, and while they broke down the set, YoYo came in for a chat.
“That man is so strange. He wants to be treated special- did you hear him? Everything has to be his way- he needs chocolate in the morning, he needs to be driven home- he lives 5 minutes away!!”
I told YoYo that he was acting like actors in the US. But Ellen and I, I told him, we were just writers.
Before our first scene, they brought lunch. So we had a nice Chinese lunchbox there on the boss’ desk, trying to keep sauce off our tailored office duds. A meatball, greasy little nuggets on sticks, shredded potato in vinegar, some kind of spicy chicken, eggplant, rice and rolls. I only finished half, and Ellen even less, but it was good.
Our first scene came after that. An easy job for me, at least- I was Mr. Jones.
…
Mr. Jones: Well, you said that you had something to discuss with me. What can I do for you? I’m all ears.
Ms. Biggers: Well, Mr. Jones, as you know, we are involved in Angels Project, a nonprofit group that provides after-school programs for low-income high school girls. Our mission is to encourage teenage girls to be involved in fun and challenging com
munity projects….
Mr. Jones: I understand. As a man, it’s hard for me to relate to this issue. Do you do something comparable for boys?
Ms. Biggers: We don’t, but there is an organization similar to ours that does. It provides activities such as tutoring for fatherless boys in the inner city.
Mr. Jones: That’s good. I know it’s difficult to be a girl in this society, but it’s difficult to be a boy, too…
The girls were, of course, thrilled with the sexual politics of this scene, but there was a practical problem. We’d been given 2 days to learn three pages of this claptrap. Word for word. It all had to match the textbook, after all.
Ellen got it pretty much cold. The Texan and I, though, struggled the whole way. I could recite the scene, and hit every important point. But if “I know it’s difficult…” becomes “I know it is difficult…” they stop the scene. As if dubbing didn’t exist. Back to the top. I felt like Marilyn Monroe.
(last time some guys didn’t familiar with his lines ,and take all of us lot of extra time)
What had been an annoying job suddenly became a test of wills. I was caught. Ellen would give a perfect reading, a full paragraph of tortured claptrap, and I would screw up my single line. The poor girl from Texas gave up, after a while, and just read straight from the script, held before her by a hunched PA. On average, I could go about one sentence before gaffing.
A pleasant morning became a long, stuffy afternoon. At every slack moment, I worked on my lines, trying to get them perfect. But, of course, once the camera was rolling, it would all collapse. Adding to the strange Rube Goldberg feeling (which I always have on sets), we were being directed in shouted Chinese from the next room.
Of course, as we left that night, to face the rubble of our post-chili party apartment, the director told us in English,
“We’ll call you next time.”
(1) I’ve always wondered about the justifications for the way things are run on a set. Actors are coddled to an absurd degree in the US. In China, apparently, actors are truly cattle. Why not be a mensch and split the difference? Everybody’s got a tough job, right?