The American movie—"Shanghai" with John Cusack, Gong Li, Chow Yun Fat and Ken Watanabe—is filming in Bangkok right now. They rented Moon Star studios over on LatPrao Soi 80, and if you go over there, you will see a HUGE set that looks just like a Chinese city in the 1940's.  They've even got an enormous bluescreen billboard behind the set that's bigger than the whole town!

The story revolves around an American spy (played by Cusack) who travels to Shanghai to track down the people who killed his friend. At that time China was occupied by the Japanese, however it was prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor so America had not entered the war against Japan yet. The spy (Cusack) has to inflitrate the Chinese underground while avoiding the Japanese occupiers and the corrupt Shanghai gangsters.

The film was originally being shot in China, but the Japanese occupation is a very sensitive topic and something about the story must have upset the Chinese government, because they kicked the production out of China, hence the reason that a movie about Shanghai is being shot in Thailand, not China.

So last week, I was tutoring one of my students when I got a call from my agent (yes, I actually have an agent, because I've done commercial work before).  He said, "Hey, you want to be in a movie? Come down right now, I've got something for you."

I had to be at my Center that afternoon, but I figured it would be a few hours of work as an extra in the background, so I said, "OK".  When I got to the studio, they dressed me up in a tuxedo and sent me down to the set.  Fortunately, I got to be one of the background extras in the "Casino" set, so I didn't have to bake out in the hot sun on the "Port of Shanghai" set.

They paired me up with a pretty Serbian girl (named Nadia), and we walked up and down the stairs, chatted with other people, stopped to watch games, etc...  All for the sole purpose of providing some background movement to the scene.  Basically, we were moveable furniture, haha!  They would set up the camera angle first, and then grab a bunch of people to stand around behind the actors in any spot the camera could see.

John Cusack and Gong Li were doing a big poker game scene, so they needed the casino filled with lots of action, but since they were recording the actors lines, they didn't want us to actually say anything.  So they'd tell us to walking around and pretend to talk, but not make any noise. Nadia and I jokingly wondered what would happen if a lip-reader watched the movie and could understand what we were saying.  We thought about just repeating crazy stuff like "I am a pirate!" or "I must keeping talking!", over and over again. But then we decided to make up back stories for ourselves and pretend as if the movie was about our characters, haha!

Pretty soon, we had other people in on the act, and eventually when we walked around behind the actors, we were greeting other extras as if they were "Old friends from Hong Kong" or "A buddy from the Great War".  It was all great fun.

However, the shooting was going on much longer than I thought, so I had to call in another teacher to cover my shift at the Center.  When I was talking to my secretary about it, I told her I wasn't going to come to work because I was "in a movie".  She thought I meant as if I was in a movie theater watching a movie, and so she started teasing me about being out on a date (HA! I wish! :-P).  But I said, "No, no.  I'm IN a movie, as in filming-one-at-a-movie-studio, not seeing one in the theater!"  When the kids came in that afternoon, she didn't tell the kids, but she did tell the maid (and the maid told the kids).  They got all excited about it and the next day, they came in shouting, "Teacher is superstar!" and "T.George ben mafia!"  hahah, funny kids!

Anyway, the shooting ended up going to 1 o'clock in the morning! Ouch! I was soooo tired!  The final scene was a big scene in the casino's nightclub. Since Nadia was wearing a bright yellow dress, she was too recognizable from the previous scenes (which is good, because it means we got lots of screen-time), so they made her go sit in the back of the nightclub.  I, on the other hand, was just another "penguin" (as the assistant director kept calling us tuxedo-wearing guys), so they sat me up front with a Spanish "girlfriend" (I'm such a playboy! Hahah!), an Argentinian guy, and a guy from Turkey.

Those two guys were great fun as well.  We pretended to be mafia guys, and even got the crew to give us some cigars to smoke.  During the filming, we had to pretend to be talking again, but there were two very pretty singers on the stage, so the Argentinian and Turkish guys just sat there and stared.  Literally with their mouths open, drooling.  Hahah!  I kidded them about it, but they just said, "Hey, we're enjoying the show!"  And I said, "No! You're supposed to be 'acting' like you enjoy the show, not ACTUALLY enjoying the show!" Hahah!

The cool thing was that the camera was set up right next to us, and Cusack and Li had a big scene right in front of our table, so I'm hoping that'll show up in the movie.  The "owner" of the casino was a famous Thai actress (don't know her name, but I've seen her before), and in one scene, she came up and talked to us, so that might make it into the movie as well.

By the way, while Cusack and Li were shooting their scenes, the people in the film crew were walking around taking pictures of everything and everyone, including Nadia and I.  I didn't think much of it, but apparently they printed out the photos, and gave them to the director.  He circled the people he liked and those extras got invited back for more scenes on Saturday.  Out of the 100+ people in the "Casino", only six people were invited to come back on Saturday.  I was one of those six, wooo! :-)

Tomorrow I will write more about my movie continuing movie-making adventure.  I went back to the studio on Saturday and even got a small scene of my own! Woo!  So stay tuned!