Once More Into the Breach, Dear Friends...

When I was 14 and had to choose what extra subjects I was going to do for my GCSE's on top of the core subjects I decided to choose something I'd personally be interested in. And so it was that I picked art, creative design technology and drama.

In my early days I used to love to draw and it was my passion in drawing that allowed me to be accepted into the art class but now that I was doing it as a GCSE the rules changed - I was very much of the comic book background but now that I was studying it I had to learn art as whole and was constantly criticized by my teacher for my two dimensional Stan Lee inspired drawings. Even when I was sketching Salvador Dali at an art exhibition it still came across as two dimensional in my lecturers eyes. And painting? Bugger that. I was never good at painting. I liked pencils and pens and these new crafts just didn't compute.

Creative design technology was another subject where I wasn't wholly competent in. Whilst I had the creativity, knowledge of physics and the illustrative skills to design something, making it was another matter entirely. I had great designs, beautiful blueprints, intelligent and original machinations... and yet I couldn't even saw a piece of wood in half properly. In the end, my lowest grade of all during GCSE's was this subject.

Drama was something else, though. From an early age I was fascinated with film and acting - studying drama was the closest I could get to that field when it came to my GCSE's. A lot of the class was made up of kids who took the subject just to get an easy pass but I enjoyed every minute of it. I remember how often we'd all end up doing mostly comedy based sketches when given our own free reign to create something and I'll never forget our first full on performance of 'Sweeney Todd' (minus the singing since none of us could hold a note to save our lives).

When I was in university there was a drama society, and again I joined for the same reasons - closest I could get to the process of filmmaking. There would be actors and lights and writing and directing, hell, the only thing missing was the damn camera. In the first year we performed a comedy the director wrote which involved me running about in just my boxers for the entire third act and having water poured all over me, foot trodden on and smacked across the face by all the girls my character sleeps with in the play. In my second and third year I wrote and directed instead and it would be the first time I'd write something full length, first adapting Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" into a Kevin Smith inspired R-rated comedy and moving the story of "Alice in Wonderland" to a university student housing where the Cheshire Cat is a playa, the Mad Hatter, March Hare and Doormouse are drunken rugby players and the White Rabbit is a hot part-time waitress dressed in Playboy bunny mode.

Anything to get the punters in.

I bring this all up because since that last play I hadn't been involved in theatre at all. The entire time I've been back in Malaysia for good I've concentrated on the filmmaking side that I'd always wanted to pursue. I had acted a couple of times, yes, but only on screen where everything's split up.

Then, a few months ago, the Dorian rang. His friend, Ines, was doing a play as part of her finals and was looking for actors so he suggested me using, of all things, my cameo in Ghost Season 2 as my audition tape.

The play was called 'Potential For Violence' by Alex Broun and she needed someone to play The Man - a politician who is abducted by The Boy and tortured throughout the play, played by Ollie Johanan.

I scanned through the script and saw that my lines didn't really start till halfway through the second scene and I didn't have any major monologues in comparison to The Boy who had pages of speeches to memorize. I figured this should be fun. Never really thought about the whole 'torture' aspect much, though.

Not till rehearsals.

Throughout the entire play I'd have my hands tied behind my back. For the first two scenes I'd be blindfolded and for the first scene even gagged. By the second scene I'm blindfolded and tied, lead up a chair where a noose is tied around my neck and then pushed off.

Really should've thought this through, huh?

Regardless, it was a great experience. I'd almost forgotten after all these years how different theatre acting is, especially since I'm tied up and usually in one position throughout each scene. I remember video-ing the first scene where I'm blindfolded, gagged and tied to a chair and even though I was really feeling the moment and the scene when I watched the playback I realized that to the back row I'd look incredibly stiff. Body language, projection, legs apart, nipples out, roar - all the things one usually tries to subdue in favor of realism when acting for the screen, especially during close-ups. But we have no close-ups here. No close ups, no cutaways, no stunt men, no re-takes.

And as stressful and tiring and painful to the body as it was, I loved every minute of it.

For all those that came, thanks for watching. To the directors, thanks for having me. And to Ollie, thanks for being a great actor to work opposite. Fingers crossed I'll get to 'tread the boards' again.

My nipples could do with more exercise.

Acting, Or Something Like It

Howdy, campers. Once again, I've been MIA for work reasons - in particular, working on 'Cahaya', the upcoming feature film written and directed by Johan John where I was a producer, a role I've never played before. But the post on my role as producer will have to wait as I'm not in the mood to write about that yet. No, what's on my mind are the other roles I've been playing over the past six months... as an 'actor'.
My first steps towards being a filmmaker were in acting. Drama was one of my GCSE's and around the same time I started writing scripts, both for the drama class as well as for my English language class where the teacher allowed me to hand in scripts for my coursework as opposed to the usual assignments.
In university, same thing - started acting first in the drama society as well as teaching improvisation before writing and directing two of my own plays.

And then, of course, there was 'Ciplak'.

Since then I didn't really get any acting roles. I remember when I wanted to play the 'supercop' in the terrorist episode of 'Ampang Medikal' that I was directing only to have the executive producer tell me I wasn't 'classically handsome' enough to play the role.

Directing the second series really took its toll on me, both physically and creatively, and so I thought for the beginning part of 2009 I'd chill for a bit from the directing side until I figured out something to write that I'd really want to direct, and in the mean time do more writing and acting. On the writing side, there were seven episodes of season 2 of Ghost which I also directed an episode for (which was episode four). On the acting side, things have been a bit more... varied.

Around January I got a call from a friend of Reverend Ed's who was directing season two of 'Hartamas', a series on NTV7. One of the actors pulled out and they needed someone within the next couple of hours to play one of the roles - 'a real rocker dude' was the brief I was given. I didn't have anything on and rushed over where they duly dressed me up like this:

The episode aired recently and I caught it on youtube which you can find by clicking here. It's a slapstick sitcom with some soap opera drama in there as well. What do I think about it?

No comment.

What I will say is this - watching the episode made me think about the acting roles I've been playing this year and I'm not sure what to make of it, though I can say the feelings aren't positive.

After this I was offered a role on a friend's telemovie, 'Puaka Topeng Putih' (you can click the title to see the trailer though I'm nowhere in it) where I played an emo guy who's brother is accidentally pushed off a cliff by a bunch of girls and one year later I get my revenge by wearing a white mask, wielding a machete and walking very slowly.

Sound familiar?

To save money they got one of their interns to double as me for all the masked scenes and I just turned up on the days my character had lines. Wasn't much in the script for me to play with as an actor besides cry at a steering wheel after hearing that the girls, all at least a good foot shorter than me, pushed my brother off a cliff. Their reason? He ratted on them to the teacher.

After that was a role on season two of Ghost in one of the episodes which hasn't aired yet so I will tell you nothing for fear of the producers sending a SWAT team into my house to silence me before hacking into my main frame and deleting all reference to the role in question.

...shit, sorry. Been watching too much 24, got a bit carried away there.

The next role was a cameo in Johan John's movie 'Cahaya' where I played an asshole husband (pic on the right). I was hoping I'd get to cameo as a more interesting character but then again, I had a shit load of work to deal with as a producer so I doubt I'd have had time to put any work into a proper role.

Last but not least, there's the most recent role I've played which was in Jordan and Dique's short film. I got the call about it whilst I was still on the 'Cahaya' set, then when it was closer to the shooting date I found out what type of character I was playing:

An old religious man who catches two kids making out in a car and tries to stop them until an army of riot control police pop up from behind which is why I'm in the pic above on top of a car. This was probably the most fun to do, though a very weird choice of casting I must say. Never thought I'd be hired to play that.

Watching the 'Hartamas' episode got me thinking about all these roles - a stoned eighties rock drummer, an emo serial killer, a CENSORED, a jackass husband and an old religious man - tiny little roles peppered in with not much for me to really bite my teeth into and 'act' in. Sometimes it's the role, sometimes it's the script and sometimes it's just the way it is.

To be fair, all of the roles except for the short film one were for TV, which may explain why the short film was the most fun, but it'd be nice to do something where I can say "ok... this is gonna need more than just pulling a stereotype/archetype from out of my ass". I'd like to be able to do some theatre but doubt I'd have the time for rehearsals.

I'm not sure what to think of all this except that I'd really like the opportunity or chance to really act in something again. I know one of the simplest solutions would be to write something I could act in which I also direct, but here's the thing - the character I played in 'Ciplak' was one that was close enough to me for me to be able to pull him out at the drop of a hat. I wrote him that way because I knew I'd be playing him and I didn't want to be too swamped as a director. One thought is to write something for me to act in but get someone else to direct but I'm not sure what at the moment.

I miss acting. I miss getting into a character that's foreign to me, trying to figure out how exactly I should play it. I miss going through my lines, rehearsing, reacting to another actor and getting the ball really rolling in a scene. I miss that, and I hope I'll get to do it again soon.

And hopefully before I reprise my role as 'Gajah'.

Acting: The Art of Waiting

It was almost six in the morning and the wig fell off from the back of my bandana. The hair and make-up being (I say being due to the persons gender being, shall we say, nondescript) was tired and sleepy but now the being had to stir and fix the huge head of fake hair scalped from some strange being from days gone past. The streets of KL were orange and the crew were fixing a car rig to the last director's Mercedes. Inside, one of the actresses was fast asleep, waiting her cue, whilst another actor had gone past the point of no return and was professing his love for NKOTB.

"So," I thought, "this is what it's like to be an actor in Malaysia."

Four days ago I got a call. Kitty was resting on the sofa and I hadn't much to do.

"Hello, is this Khai?" said the voice on the other line. I replied with a yes and asked who it was. It turned out to be a director friend of my vocalist who was shooting the second season of a TV series and at the eleventh hour one of the cast members pulled out.

"We need someone to play a real rocker dude," was his description of the role.

I hadn't acted in a while. During the last TV series I was shooting there was a part I wanted to play, that of a cop in a hospital. I told the executive producer that I wanted the role as a cameo for the episodes I was directing.

His reply was, and I quote, "but the character needs to be classically good looking."

"Oh! So you're saying I'm ugly?!"

"No, lah... but this character is going to be flirting with Alia and it has to be believable."

Ok. So not only am I a hideous fucking Chud, I also have no chance with an actress like her. Thanks for the compliment, buddy.

My hopes of acting have pretty much been shot down for roughly the same reasons, and this was an opportunity to act again, which I hadn't done in a long time. Hence, I agreed.

I'd heard talks of the show, and from the information I had gathered I knew it was pretty youth oriented so thought that the role would probably involve me being some emo-rock dude or something - hair to one side covering half the face, dressed in black, etc.

I then arrived on set, got into make-up, and ended up looking like this:

Okay...

My character's name was 'Gajah', and was the equivalent of Silent Bob to the other actor's Jay, silent and in a world of his own, swatting flies with his electric fly swatter. They rolled for a take, I swung up in the air on my cue to swat the fly...

...and broke the fly swatter in half, the top part flying towards the cameraman and boom guy, barely missing them together with the 42" plasma TV.

And so it went. I was to appear in two episodes, and in the second episode I had quite a bit of dialogue, including a moment where I had to sniff one of the other actors for no apparent reason. I had worked with some of the cast members in the last TV series I shot so it was a bit of a reunion. Food was your typical crew food on a local movie set, and I hogged the chicken as usual.

And what did I discover, being on the other side of the lens? Two things:

The first thing I was amused about was how a lot of the more seasoned actors seem to have two modes - the 'daily bread' mode and the 'true actor' mode. I had seen some of these actors in independent productions before, and knew how they could act, be subtle, be good. This was their 'true actor' mode.

That mode was not to be seen on this set.

Instead, you get the 'daily bread' mode - a whole different style of acting, a method that you'd call 'TV acting'. So often people berate the acting style on TV for its over-the-top-ness but here's the truth - if people didn't want them to act that way on these shows, they wouldn't be acting that way, because God knows they can act a whole lot better.

Case in point of this was when we were shooting at Central Market. My character and his 'Jay' are out on the streets, busking. A blind man playing a flute is earning more dough, so my 'Jay' grabs his money. The blind man turns out to be not so blind, gets up and yells blue murder. Everything was, as you'd call it, done in the 'TV acting' stylee.

Whilst we were shooting this scene there were a whole load of on-lookers. One of them was an elderly woman with some groceries who had no idea were shooting and thought that someone really was stealing money from a blind man. She was a regular old woman, probably from a working class background (for want of a better term) and when she realized what it was she stuck around to watch...

...and laughed at the scene every time. She was loving it. It pegged me on to just how different tastes are between different social groups. Though the script seemed so incredibly low-brow to me, that's me. The makcik watching the scene would love every second of the show.

(There can be further argument about this - how non-exposure to things a bit more 'high-brow' or 'intelligent' is unavailable hence its appreciation cannot be nurtured, etcetera etcetera, but let's not get into that know.)

The second thing was not so amusing. In fact, it was downright tiring, and it's given me a new found sympathy for actors.

I discovered the waiting.

The waiting is not fun. Between scenes, between set-ups, you just wait. You could go through your lines, but it's not too hard to remember. My main fluffs were mainly due to Malay not being my first language. Though I can speak it, reading from a script proved to be a bit tricky because a lot of times the words wouldn't roll off of my tongue properly. Just certain words, but if I got stuck on the word, it would fuck me up. Most of the time I'd get the script 5 minutes before I shot the scene.

It's those moments when you're waiting that just outright kills you. It makes you want to be a diva and demand crap because it feels like eternity. You read a book, you take some photos, you go for a walk, but you're still waiting, and sooner or later you have nothing else to do except wait.

The waiting is a killer. Hollywood has trailers. Lucky bastards. We have stools and a makeshift ashtray made from a cut open plastic bottle filled with a bit of water.

So the question remains: would I do more acting? Six hours from now I'll be back behind the lens, shooting the current TV series I'm doing. I love directing, regardless of all my complaints, and I have complaints about acting too, but it's what I started out doing before going behind the lens and I wouldn't mind doing it again.

Only this time I shall bring a portable DVD player.

And maybe some porn.