In any event, I went in for two more DVD shoots. The first I did with Ellen, in the incredibly cool Automation Lab at Xinghua University. It was essentially a long hallway, with glass-fronted classrooms on either side. In the classrooms were a variety of robot playgrounds. I kicked myself for not getting pictures.

Suffice it to say, when not choking on my lines, I spent my time peering at the various machines. One room was just bank after bank of mainframe computers. Another room held a small soccer field, scattered with little humanoid robots, like players relaxing on the field after a match. Then there was the Barbie-scale carwash, and the robot-hand display, and several labs full of cool-looking prototyping gear.

The script itself included a Presidential debate between Senator Butler (my favorite, if you’ll recall) and Congressman Santos. A tough job made tougher by the fact that the Senator was an Armenian guy with a thick accent.

For some reason, all my roles that day were either teachers or “coordinators”, so I brought my tie collection.

Since I’m leaving Beijing in about a week and a half, I planned to forgo any new work for these guys, but I was guilted into one final shoot by the new production coordinator. (You know that scene you shot with Bald Guy? It’s not finished! We’ll have to throw out the whole thing!)

Yoyo has unfortunately quit the company, to pursue a lucrative career in tourguiding. I struggled with my lines, as usual. The one skit I nailed drew on my construction background. I played the role of Arnie.
_________________

Place: In a workshop 在车间两男
Role: Employee and manager
Content: The employee doesn’t wear a hard hat, a conversation about safety between the manager and the employee by using modals could and might.

Manager: Arnie, why aren’t you wearing a hard hat?
Arnie: Oh, I don’t need one.
Manager: If you don’t wear a hat, you might get hurt.
Arnie: I don’t think so. I’ll be careful. Besides, it’s too hot in here to wear a hat.
Manager: I know but we have occupational health and safety rules we have to follow. You’ve been briefed on them before, haven’t you?
Arnie: Yes, I have. But..
Manager: No buts, Arnie. The last thing I want is for you to hurt yourself and have you end up in hospital.
Arnie: You’re right. If I get hurt, I might miss work. I could lose a lot of money if I can’t work. My wife and family depend on me. I can’t do this to them.
Manager: Exactly. And you’re one of my best employees. I can’t afford to lose you either. Here, let me get you a hard hat.
Arnie: Thanks.
_________________

My personal experience in construction leads me to suspect this is how it would go down in the US-

Place: In a workshop 在车间两男
Role: Employee and manager
Content: The employee doesn’t wear a hard hat, a conversation about safety between the manager and the employee by using expletives and threats.

Manager: Arnie, why aren’t you wearing a hard hat?
Arnie: Fuck you.
Manager: If you don’t wear a hat, you might get hurt.
Arnie: I don’t care.
Manager: I know but we have occupational health and safety rules we have to appear to follow.
Arnie: But I’m drunk.
Manager: No buts, Arnie. The last thing I want is for you to hurt yourself and have to pay worker’s comp.
Arnie: You’re right. If I get hurt, I might miss work. I could lose a lot of money if I can’t work. My dog and my meth dealer depend on me. I can’t do this to them.
Manager: Exactly. And you’re one of my best employees. I can’t afford to lose you either. Wear the hat or you’re fired.
Arnie: Thanks.
_________________

Chinese version-

Place: In a workshop 在车间两男
Role: migrant laborer and manager
Content: The employee wears a hard hat, a conversation about guanxi between the manager and the employee by using callous disregard for life.

Manager: Ah Q, why are you wearing a hard hat?
Ah Q: I need one. They’re required by law.
Manager: If you wear a hat, someone might think it’s dangerous around here.
Ah Q: It is dangerous. I’m being careful. Besides, my cousin was decapitated yesterday by this machine I’m using right here.
Manager: I know, but we have occupational health and safety inspectors visiting today. You’ve been briefed on causing us to lose face, haven’t you?
Ah Q: Yes, I have. But…
Manager: No buts, Q. The last thing I want is to be embarrassed, or have to pay a bigger bribe.
Ah Q: You’re right. If I get hurt, I might die. My family could lose a lot of money if I die. My wives in Sichuan and Beijing depend on me. I can’t do this to them.
Manager: Exactly. And you’re only one of many expendable slaves. I can easily afford to lose you. In fact, you’re fired. You’ll be beaten on the way out…
Ah Q: Thanks.

We got an email on Thursday, saying that we’d get a second email telling us when to show up. The second email, sent midnight Thursday, told us to get to the hotel by 9:30 the next day. Naturally, we didn’t get this email until 8 the next day, asking us to show up at the “Beijing Hotel, floor 18 conference room”, and to wear “casual clothing- sneakers and t-shirts.”.

The first problem, as you might imagine, is that there is more than one Beijing Hotel in Beijing. We emailed them back, and we got an address- “33 Chang Avenue”. Cross-Googling them, we divined that there was, in fact, a Beijing Hotel at “33 Xiang An Avenue”. Close enough- we ran down to the subway, hopped on a rush-hour train and found the place. Of course, when we arrived at the hotel, we got into the elevator only to discover there was no button for the 18th floor. So we went to the front desk.

“We’re looking for the movie set. We were told it was on the 18th floor.”

“I’m sorry, we don’t have an 18th floor.”

“We were told to go to the conference room on the 18th floor. We’re actors for the Brad Anderson film. Is it on another floor?”

“The conference room on the 18th floor is very forbidden.”

A-ha.

“We are actors, who were told to go there. Is there a way to get to the 18th floor?”

“I will have to call the director of conferences.”

Ellen gets the phone.

“Yes, we’re actors. We are supposed to go to the conference room on the 18th Floor. We are actors on the film. We are actors. Yes.”

“Go to the 17th floor. There are stairs.”

Thank God. We get back in the elevator, go up, climb a set of stairs, consult with a pair of Chinese conference-stooges who also try to turn us away at first. Finally, we find the film set, in an enormous dining room. A man in an immaculately wrinkled linen suit, hand-whittled owl glasses and a massive Beethoven haircut comes over to us. He’s the costumer.

“So, what have you brought?”

“What do you mean?”

“Where are your winter clothes?”

So Ellen sprints back to our place.

By the time Ellen gets back, the place is flooded with regular extras, three dozen or so 外国人, and a sprinkling of Chinese people, as well. I sat between a Sichuanese lady named Stella, and a Venezuelan woman named Estella. Estella was a white-haired woman in her 60′s and said she was an English teacher, which I found depressingly plausible, because of her near-pathological shyness and imperfect mastery of English. Stella was a businesswoman who lived in Australia full time, and had gotten into the movie for a kick.

We’re finally summoned from the side lounge into the dining room. It was an afternoon of toasting, and pretending to eat the withered food prepared by the props department. I had a nibble of hot-dog, two squares of fingerprint-laden chocolate, two boiled peanuts, and three slices of dried banana on the plate.

Brad Anderson seemed nice, but his affect was almost completely flat, not what I normally associate with a film director. Everyone was fried- the production had been going for 10 weeks, with the majority of shooting happening in Lithuania in freezing weather. Woody Harrelson, a nice-seeming female celebrity who I can’t identify off the top of my head (Emily Mortimer), and another character actor who was pulled in at the last minute, who I also can’t identify.

The whole production crew was Spanish. We sat next to the Assistant director and a guy who I assume was assistant-assistant producer, who gave us an especially hard time about being American in perfect, unaccented English. (“Celsius just makes sense! We PROTESTED after our 9/11! The Spanish got through killing people in our colonies 100 years ago!) Infuriatingly, he seemed to speak pretty good Chinese as well. Basically a good guy. We were seated, very considerately, right behind Woody, so that we would (most likely) show up in the scene. I wasn’t able, however, to get a shot of the famous guys.

We toyed with our food, made inane conversation, and shouted “Amen!” at certain moments.

I induced a possible continuity error by rolling up my sleeves- film nerds take note.

I won’t list any of my own close calls here, but I recall one time, standing on a board, acting as a wedge and counter-weight, while my boss walked the plank, three stories up, trying to get at the sofit.

Or the time he cut the live wire with the aviator’s shears- I told him that I wasn’t sure if it was on the circuit we shut off- I couldn’t trace the wires, because they ran straight through a beam. He was going to cut them with metal-handled pliers, and I insisted he use the insulated shears. The blades welded together from the voltage, and he got mad at me for jinxing him.

I turned them down for this weekend; we’ve got a friend visiting from the US, although the thought of forcing him to come along with us, or even just making him act, occurred to me. They’re pretty desperate- they even sicced Da Yang, the white guy, on me. So if there are any stardom-seeking Amero-Beijingers out there, email me and I’ll hook you up.

The last round of DVD shooting was by far the most relaxing day I’ve yet spent in China. There were the usual confused logistics- it took them three tries to get us the script, they changed the meeting place an hour before we were due, etc. But the location they finally chose was on Tsinghua University campus, in as lovely a spot as exists in Beijing.

Rolling hills, actual grass, not to mention lilacs and forsythia! Little canals threaded through campus, past cute Chinese style buildings. Not really more lush than an average American playground(1), but practically jungle by Beijing standards. The groundskeepers must work overtime, scrubbing fingerprints off the trees.

The crew started setting up in a corner of this park, and immediately lost themselves in the usual anarchy. It was compounded in this case by the complexities of outdoor shooting- car alarms, curious passerby, and thieving magpies.

I had only two pages of script, this time, and profited from the chaos, relaxing on the grass and reading Tarzan of the Apes. I fell asleep at one point. As usual, we worked with a fairly gracious lady, and a jumpy, irritated guy, both college kids. To be fair, though, I was just as irritated as he was, the first time I worked for these guys. He’d done some acting back in the states, so unlike the previous losers, his objections were based in reality.

Of course, Ellen got stuck with four pages of nonsense, playing, as usual, the jerk. Can you guess which character she’s playing?

…

Christina: You just want to sit around and hang out? That sounds boring. Come on, let’s give each other manicures. Your nails look kind of bad. You could really use one.
Ashley: Well, I’m not so sure. I think manicures are a waste of time.
Christina: They’re not and you really need one. Just let me give you one and you’ll change your mind.
Ashley: You know what? (sigh) I’m not sure if I can come this weekend. How about this? I’ll call you when I figure out my schedule.

…

The hardest line I had was this-

…

Mark: Oh, that’s Guarav, he’s on the college debating team.

…

What it all amounted to was long nap in the park, a free lunch, and about a half-hour of work. I learned all about the rhythm method from my fellow American Man Actor, who was a devout Catholic. He pointed out an angle I hadn’t bothered to figure-

“It has a high failure rate because it’s really hard to keep your hands off each other.”

1) You can bet I felt like a rube taking Mandarin classes at Beijing Language and Culture University, whose campus is as seedy and decrepit as they come. This particular corner of Tsinghua reminded me strongly of Brandeis. Of course, the Chinese are delighted when you can draw those sorts of parallels.

Two weeks ago, we spent the day in a rented coffee shop in Haidian district. Would’ve been a nice day, except the guy they pulled off the street to star opposite me was an enraged securities broker from Philadelphia.

According to him, “I don’t need the money- what I do, I earned enough in the first four months, you know, to live here, check it out for a while.”

This little bald guy was mad because he had thought he was here to do voice acting, and read off a script. Nobody told him ANYTHING about memorizing ANYTHING. And he wasn’t going to wear no fucking makeup, either. I suggested, privately, that he leave. He didn’t need the 500 yuan. He could just apologize and go.

In classic Western Creep style, he insisted on staying. But no makeup (“I shaved it- it’s supposed to be shiny”) and no memorizing.

As I explained before, the torturous problem with making this instructional DVD has been that you’ve got to speak your lines word for word. This is hard to do without rehearsing, and really hard to do when an a seedy waiguoren is fuming in your ear about the injustice of it all, or relating sexual adventures gleaned from the personals in That’s Beijing.

On an hybristrophilic note, he got the makeup girl’s number on the way out.

Interestingly, whoever wrote the script had a startlingly clear grasp of modern American political debate. I played the liberal, my girlfriend the conservative.

（F2）大英 Unit 11—1
一男一女在楼道、室外或咖啡厅谈论两个总统竞选者前一天的电视辩论。

Michelle: Did you see last night’s political debate between the two presidential candidates?

Jay: Yes, but I was disappointed in Congressman Santos. I wanted him to talk more about the issues and less about Senator Butler’s character. I don’t like it when the candidates get into a character debate.

Michelle: Well, I think the character of the candidates is important.

Jay: I’m not saying character isn’t important. I just think politics is mostly about issues, not about character.

Michelle: I disagree. I care about political issues, and I’m a conservative. I want a president who can keep me safe and I think knowing a person’s character can help me know who will keep me safe.

…

Michelle: Congressman Santos seemed to take his duty to defend the country seriously. Plus, I saw a picture of him kissing his wife. This makes me think he is a good husband. And I know he goes to church. I like leaders who believe in God. If he is a good soldier and a good husband who believes in God, I think he has the right character to be President of the United States.

Jay: But Senator Butler is known for his character. He is a liberal Senator and has always supported liberal issues.

Michelle: Sure, it’s easy to support the issues that your party supports, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he has good character. It just means he’s smart enough not to make his party mad.

Jay: Okay, maybe, but he has been a leader in his state for 20 years. Many people in his state support his ideas and respect his leadership. Doesn’t that make him a good leader? Isn’t that important to you?

Michelle: Well, I would like a respected leader, but I would rather elect a leader who can keep me safe. I think Congressman Santos is the best leader for the issues that matter most to me.

___________

It’s eerie, isn’t it?

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?