EXTRA WORK part one

Last week I was an extra in a music video clip for a Japanese jazz singer.  As many people who survive on extra work can and (unfortunately) do, I now consider myself a professional actor.  This is not because I am good or even because I have been paid for my ability to be foreign, wait in a room, have two legs and will sit down and stand up when asked to.  The reason I now consider myself a budding thespian is that I have had recourse to say the following at least once in my life

whats my motivation?

i cant work with him!

whats he like to work with?

here's my card

which agency are you with?

My role was to play a sailor in ye olde bar.  I got paid $300 to wait around for half the day in a sailor suit with three other foreigners and on set, pretend to tell jokes, get raucous, and carry on like drunken sailors eventually dancing with my sailor com padre. Which is where the problems started.

I've been sailor drunk before and when i do I do not happily jig about. Instead I sway, close my eyes, occasionally stare at people, repeat myself and look like I'm about to die of a rare blood disease that makes your skin a light shade of blue. Meanwhile sailor number two; who i was supposed hit ye olde dance floor with drew his inspiration from Gilbert and Sullivan.  For the visually literate, there are pirates that look like this


and pirates tha look like this



And before i hear you say "weren't you meant to be a sailor not a pirate?" Id like to remind you that if your watching the hunt for red October and a fish swims past the submarine window you don't think to yourself

"wait that was a yellow fin, they're only found in the pacific, i thought this was a film set in the the Atlantic ocean!"  

Your thinking

"how the hell is Agent Ryan going to board this submarine" and  "Sean Connery's so awesome.  I wonder if i could look cool in a beard like that"  

My point is both sailors and pirates come from the sea and presumably after knocking off work they would go to the same discos where some kind of exchange of dance moves would take place.  My question is simply one of aesthetics; were we trying to achieve dirty realism or camp comedy?

Regardless, i was awful.  I was in an autopsy video once in which i pretended to be a bereaved older brother and i knew that was out of my range. However this just proved what a narrow range I actually have.  Man standing up and man sitting down I can do. Ask me to kneel and I'm lost. So you know Im not subjecting you to any false modesty They asked me to pour a bottle of of ice tea into a glass about seven times.  Clearly the first six had been an unconvincing performance of "man pouring bottle".

Afterwards I scored a ride with my Gilbert and Sullivan sailor, a short bald Canadian man in his fifties who then gave one of the worst performances of a human being I have ever been witness to.

To be continued.