I’m Cramped!
Yesterday I was to do my first bit of film acting, in Given Identity. I had a great time, but my acting didn’t come to much. In fact, it didn’t even come. I was given a new part when I turned up, with about two hours to learn the lines (admittedly I only spent about one of these hours actually learning them, then I got chatting to some of the other extras). When my time came to say them… well, I was afflicted by a crippling inability to say these lines which I hadn’t properly commited to memory and which anyway didn’t have a lot of resonance for me (funny, because only the day before I had been reading about “You can type this shit, George, but you sure can’t say it.”)
I only had a few sentences to learn. The first one, which I rehearsed a few times, was:
Dig it you hip cats and cool chicks. Betty Bitch and the Thunder Fucks, Go Go Girls, Cats Creepers, the Second Skins, The Pussy Licks we don’t want to hang out with a square.
Well, for starters I hadn’t learned it well enough, and although it was all there in my head somewhere, I had to pause between each band-name to remember the next one, which didn’t work very well. But more importantly, I was supposed to reel these words off in some sort of sleazy way (I imagined Lux Interior, from the Cramps, “this one’s for all you Gucci bag carriers out there, it’s called you’ve got gooooooooood taste!”). I just couldn’t find that sleaze within me, I think because I was too up-tight and inhibited. Apparently every single time I said “Pussy Licks” it was perfect, but the rest just sounded crap. Also, they wanted an American accent (I hate doing accents, it seems foolish and almost always pointless). And to top it all, I had to say the line just after jumping on stage and grabbing a microphone, so I had to work out how loud I was going to say these words, how far from the microphone, to try and avoid distortion and popping. Urk, all too much to think about and I freaked out and did very, very badly. In the end, they didn’t film me doing the part, I just acted as an extra, which in itself was very fun (lots of dancing to the Cathouse Creepers). And, my nerves having failed me so abysmally, I started drinking. And drinking. And drinking. Lots of beer & brandy to loosen up. They certainly worked, a little too well I think. But by then, it was too late.
We staggered out of the Abbeydale Cinema at around 10pm. I tried walking home (a long walk, probably 3 miles or so). But after two half-hour wanders down mysterious back streets, each of which eventually dumped me back about 100 metres further down Abbeydale Road, I decided it was not to be and caught a cab instead. I collapsed into bed, my hair still full of “product” and my face still plastered with make-up, very very drunk.
Yesterday when I came out of Betty Tiger’s yesterday I looked like Lux Interior. This morning, I look like Robert Smith (see below), my face bloated with alcohol. And I feel a right state. And I wish I could act.
