Tuesday, November 25, 2008

HIV Chin Chin Niggah

STAGE/SCREEN 78 & 80
-fall 2007, 2008
I'm black and blue, and have a pimple where my skin hasn't been able to breathe.
Either i spent the weekend in a gimp costume, or i've been in a movie.
Koh Yamamoto's new film HIV NIGGAH required two days of shooting. This is the second Koh film i've been in. The first, CHIN CHIN CHAN, was filmed a year and a half ago, and even now is only almost completed (a clip is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4bGPfSSn9c). CHIN CHIN is about an underground NY rock star murdered by an obsessed fan, but the show goes on. I played the brother of the fan, a good ol' Texas boy who gets taken out by sis's shotgun too. It was the first time i had ever been squibbed (that's when they strap gunpowder and blood onto you, and explode it remotely). The shoot was an absolute hoot. We filmed part of it in a Manhattan S&M dungeon. It was a great and goofy time.
NIGGAH is about racism and safe sex. We shot part of it in the very same dungeon, and this time there were clients on the premises, and the background shouts of "Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow...." lent the set a surreal element. I play Mark, a Christian Scientist holy roller pimping out my HIV-infected wife in NY nightclubs. Once again, the shooting was just silly fun. I was one of five actors who have been in both films. I was supposed to have a softcore sex scene with Tatiana, a real-life adult film star, but the scene was dropped due to time constraints. I'm bruised from the fight scene i was in...the Jagger pants i was wearing allowed for no pads, so my knees took a beating.
Film acting is a curious beast, one i'm still working on. Some great stage actors are never able to do film well. We're trained to project vocally across distance, and it can be hard to make the vocal shift to the intimacy of film. I felt like my vocals were projected and forced during this shoot, but that was because i was trying to use a "nightclub" voice, where people talk loudly to overcome the music. I had to imagine the music while we were shooting our close-ups, and i can only hope that the performance i delivered is more natural than it felt. Film acting is more an exercise in multi-tasking than stage acting. Sometimes you only get a few minutes of rehearsal, and then have to do take after take of the same scene, while a big chunk of your mind is focused on simple continuity, making sure that you deliver each take in exactly the same way...the way you grip your bottle, where you grab your partner's arm....maybe you only feel really good about one or two of the takes, but often those takes end up on the cutting room floor, for technical reasons. Actors create stage plays. Editors create movies.
Some of the actors asked me what people are going to think of the film, as it seems a non-stop shockfest of racism, sex, and violence. I'm told them i'm pretty sure Koh's films are comedies, actually. I think Koh (a sweet fellow who acts and produces, in addition to directing) is a bit of a modern day Anton Chekov, writing comedies everyone thinks are tragedies. How else do you explain the fact that the funniest scene i saw was a rape? Actors are the toughest audiences to impress, particularly ones whom you are working with. We know what's coming, so after the first take or two we seldom giggle. But that rape scene, i'm still smiling at the silliness of it days later.
Another beautiful week in the big city.

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