"GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!!!"
I spent a most enjoyable several hours being grabbed and tossed around by this man last Saturday night, in the streets of the Tenderloin, San Francisco. We were shooting Scene 2 of HARRISON MONTGOMERY by Momentum Cinema, directed by Daniel Davila. Surprisingly, it was quite enjoyable, especially when he yelled the line shown above. Mainly because of the wonderful, wonderful voice he has! It's a deep, dark, NYC-accented fantasy of a voice.
The character was the Bouncer, played by Rolando Abasolo, and I dedicate this entry to him. It was around him that my character's life swirled. I depended on his tolerance to let me stay at the bar, gulping down as much alcohol as I could fill myself with. Unfortunately, that night he'd had his fill of me and violently pushed me out to the street's inhumanity. I didn't go willingly, I put up a fight, causing his grip to leave several bruises on my skin.
Rolando was brilliant. Between takes he'd suggest certain things to me to improve my reactions, which was great. I really appreciated it. Then each time we got our cue "TWO!" he burst into action and became that merciless bouncer who didn't give a flying shit for this drunk piece of scum. (Previously, he had kindly voiced his concern that he not hurt me in the process, but I told him "make it real", which he did. Within reason, I hate any indication of falsehood; it's like cheating the audience.)
We shot from about 10pm to around 1am, with many rehearsals and about 10 takes, all for a scene that will end up being about 1 minute long. This director is obviously a perfectionist when it comes to shots! It took many go's to get exactly the experience he wanted with the camera traveling down the track placed along the sidewalk near the intersection of Taylor and Turk.
Probably the weirdest and most wonderful thing about the experience was that the characters we were all playing in the scene (drunks, druggies, hookers, dealers, homeless) were in-reality, between takes, wandering through the set right in front of our faces, sometimes interacting with us. In the windows of the apartment house directly across the street there were many people staring or hanging out of the windows watching the show we provided. So they were watching us, and we them. Wondering which was reality. Occasionally there was a comment yelled from the windows, like "action". But surprisingly they were very quiet when the camera was rolling. Perhaps because we were so entertaining! It was dreadfully brilliant inspiration. A wonderful experience. Having 'lived' several hours on the street there, I will never again look at the Tenderloin in the same way. There are real people there now.
Though it did get pretty cold at times that night.
I also was completely overjoyed to meet Keith Stevenson, who's charming wife Benita also had a small role in the scene, with their 2 sons. It was wonderful having a chat with him during the dinner break. He's originally from Bombay (Mumbai) and has done several Hindi films there, including one of my favorites from about 15 years ago, AKAYLA, starring Amitabh Bachchan and Jackie Shroff.
His role as villian "Tony" Braganza in Ramesh Sippy's AKAYLA (1991).
Nowadays he's looking very happy as Advertising Manager at Mendacino Brewing Co. !
