It’s a Dirty Job

Me as the stuttering, homeless Pookie

         Anyone not involved in the film industry imagines it is the most glamorous thing in the world.  I can assure you that, red carpet awards ceremonies aside, it’s often quite the opposite.  In fact, at times, dumpster diving seems more glamorous.  Case in point…

          On one particular project, The Great Venice Robbery, most of the characters, including yours truly, had to wear a lot of special make up.  One fellow had all of his exposed skin made up to look sun-damaged to the point that he resembled a leper about to peak. Another was a Goth punk channeling the love child of Marilyn Manson and one of the guys from Kiss.  I started off relatively clean, but by the second half of the film, I was the dirtiest, stickiest thing since the Tar Baby.  Imagine hanging around all day with filth and tacky goop all over your body.  Did you want to go to the bathroom?  Eat lunch?  Hahahahahaha.

           To top it off, we were filming right smack in the middle of a record-breaking heat wave and, of course, we were scheduled to shoot the chase scenes on the worst day of all.  I and the lucky lady chasing me—in a fully padded bodysuit to make her look like a Ninja roid monster—ran through various locations in Los Angeles as spectators scratched their heads.  So I was filthy, covered in sticky goop and sweating profusely in the worst heat known to mankind for our particular locale.  Then I had to run into a chicken-grease covered homeless guy and get knocked over into more dirt.

          Sounding glamorous, yet?  Are you ready for your close up?  I’ll tell you:  the only thing I was ready for was a shower and three days in traction.  The crazy thing, of course, is that I loved it.  As awful as a lot of it sounds, I was doing something I really enjoyed.  So there’s the moral:  if you’re willing to be a disgusting, uncomfortable pig in order to do something, you must really love it.  If that’s true for you, then you’ve got the bug, my friend.  In that case, I can only say—as the demons in The Evil Dead would say—

 
         “Join us!”