Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Well I had

my big Hollywood moment yesterday, after waiting around for 12 hours on Monday - half that time in costume - only to be told they weren't going to make it to my scene! Looks like a decent enough production, as far as documentaries go. The studio, which is out in Canton (High Output Studios), have actually done a little bit of work for practically every movie or documentary that's shot in New England, so that was kind of cool. I got to see a lot of the principal actors, such as Agamemnon, Menelaus, Odysseus, and the other Greeks; Iphigenia and Clytemnestra were there, too. Unfortunately there was no Paris or Helen, as they were slated to come in later on during the week, but I did of course get to hang out with Homer, who was being played by a English professor who is an actual epic poet and a pretty decent ad hoc storyteller as well. The soldiers were all being played by the members of a local kickboxing club, which meant not only did they look the part of a bunch of muscular and crude Greeks on crusade, but they acted it as well. I guess when you put a bunch of guys in skirts with no underwear you're just asking for it! As for my part, I think I did well, although writing on papyrus with a reed stylus and what I think was black tempera paint in a hand that would look good for the camera was definitely a challenge. At first I had set out to write the Greek with a slow and deliberate block script, but I guess it looked a little too "chiselled" for the director, who's all for authenticity as long as it doesn't mess up the shot. So I improvised, finally settling upon a pared-down version of my regular Ancient Greek handwriting, although I shunned word-breaks, punctuation, and mixing capital and lowercase letters, as these were all features that didn't come into existence until the Byzantine period. The director was pleased with what he got, although I know I'm going to be mortified when I see it again! But that's show business, I guess...

Oh, yeah, and Agamemnon had a mullet. It was his own mullet, not the creation of the hair and make-up department, which only makes it worse insofar as they cast this guy as Agamemnon knowing full well that he had a mullet. I wonder what the word for "mullet" was in Homeric Greek?

So the other big thing I did was make a map, an activity which kept my occupied for about three of the twelve hours I was hanging around the set on Monday. Needless to say, I had no idea that I'd be tapped as the resident cartographer until the Art Director came charging into the waiting room for the actors to find me (he actually did this quite a few times during the day, sometimes to consult me on a detail or two for the scenes they were setting up, but most of the time just to shoot to breeze and ask me Classics-related questions) and asked me if I could draw. I said no, not really, at which point he proceeded to give me an extra animal hide they had on the set, a stick of charcoal, and a photocopy of the Eastern Mediterranean and told me to have at it. The funny thing is that despite my protestations to the contrary, I do actually have some artistic talent, at least when it comes to cartography - I think it's a result of all of those years as a Dungeon Master, obsessively drawing map after map of imaginary cities, nations, and continents. What I came up with actually won some compliments not only from the director, but various onlookers as they watched me work as I colored it using some unused face paint and foundation from the make-up artist's kit (it was, after all, a rabbit skin I was painting!).

Anyhow, I'm about to finish up with the map when one of the production assistants comes out and says they need it for the next scene with King Mullet and the Naked Upskirt Posse, so how about I go ahead and put some place names on it in Greek? Okay, I say, not catching myself in time. So I mark up Athena, Sparta, Mycenae, and Troy with their Ancient Greek names and they take it out to the set, only to have it come back with the Art Director (who originally had given the order to put the place names on it), telling me that the director can't use it. Why? Because the Greeks weren't writing yet, not in the Greek alphabet at least! Of course I knew this, but in the confusion of just doing what I was asked I'd let it slip by. If there was going to be any writing on the map whatsoever, it should have been in Linear B, the reference book for which I just happened to have on me, so I went about trying to erase the Greek names and replace them with their equivalents in the more ancient syllabary. Who knows if they actually ended up using the map or not. Maybe I can ask for it as a souvenir when they're all done with the shooting.

So that's my story for now. Since they were running behind overall, the director decided that he'd have to shoot my writing out passages of the Gospels for his Jesus documentary another time, maybe in a week or so- more to report then, I'm sure. I wonder if Jesus will be sporting a mullet, as well...

No comments: