My first acting role in a Hollywood film!
On September 1, I was called by one of my acting agents, Zheng, to go to an audition for a Hollywood movie part on the 3rd. On September 3rd, I auditioned for the American film “Diamond Dogs” with Dolph Lundgren, who was to play the lead role of Ronson. I auditioned for two parts, the role of Lassiter(which eventually was cut by the director), and the role of Jim, the lead body guard who would be defending the enemy of Ronson, Chambers. The film was a low budget film with a Chinese producer, a Canadian director and the internationally known movie star Dolph Lundgren. The film had about a dozen other acting parts, half-foreign and half-Chinese roles. All these roles were auditioned for and selected in Beijing. I was very happy that I was chosen for one of those parts. On September 12th I received a call from the movie's producer and was told that the director was interested in me, but Zheng, my agent was acting too much. The film would be shooting for about 5 weeks in Inner Mongolia, and Zheng was asking for about 60,000 rmb. The producer told me the most that they could offer me is 15,000 rmb. I am not good at bargaining, but I asked if it could be 20,000 rmb. He said no, and I with some hesitation accepted the 15,000-rmb offer. It wasn't as much as I deserved, I but I was also screaming for a chance like this, so I took there offer [note: a month later, after I was almost done filming, Zheng, the agent who took me to the original audition, tried to get me to pay him 20% of what I had made! I politely declined and said I was the one who they bargained with, and he didn’t help me at all with that part. If he had asked for 5%, I might have considered it, but 20% was too much to ask.] The filming was to start on September 19th. On September 15th, the director called me into his temporary office to offer me a sweetened proposition: Would I like to play the role of Dolph's body double in addition to playing Jim? I had no experience being a body double or stunt performer before, but I was a weight lifter and former college football player, so I said yes. The pay would be increased to 23,000 rmb for the 5 weeks. I had many questions in my mind: What exactly would I have to do? Ride a horse? Fall off a horse? Take punches? Fall out of a moving car? I did not know exactly what to think and I knew that the director was not going to tell me exactly what I had to do. After all, the start date was less than a week away and they had no stunt double for Dolph Lundgren. After that meeting, the fight coordinator, Barry, immediately took me outside to a grassy park across the street to see if I had the right “stuff” to be a body double. He asked me to show him a few punches and kick moves. I did my best Karate Kid impersonation and whiff-kicked the air with a flurry of aggravated, infuriated power. Once I finished my shadow boxing presentation, I could tell by the look on his face that he was not only un- impressed, he was downright worried, because I obviously had no experience in fighting and they had no one else to do the job. After that, he shrugged his shoulders and said he needed to show me how it's done. He shoved me aside and gave me a brief class on how to do a quick right-left uppercut punch and then a high kick to the face. After a few tries, I started getting the hang of it. He said, “You’ll do, just go home and practice in front of the mirror a couple of times.” Therefore, that is what I did: I went home and practiced. As the day of reckoning finally arrived, September 19th, 2006. I was ready to head off to film my first big movie role in my life. The first day of filming for Diamond Dogs was a cool, late September day. I could feel the tension and excitement in the air as cast and crew readied themselves for the long experience ahead. I, personally, was also about to make my goal of making 20,000 rmb a month!
Before I left for Inner Mongolia, I had one more modeling job to do. It was a one day, 1000 rmb job in north Beijing for Eau Ravie, a French makeup company. I just had to greet guests coming to a one-day event put on by Eau Ravie at a French mansion in a suburb north of Beijing. I got to where a white tuxedo and ended up working for only about 2 hours and spending the rest of the time chatting with the meilis(may-lees), or pretty Chinese girls, that were also hired. Since I had a plane to Inner Mongolia to catch at 9 pm that night, my agent, Ellen let me go at 5 pm.
September 19th –October 23rd: Filming Diamond Dogs. When I landed in Hohhot, it was late at night on the 19th. I couldn't see much outside of the windows, because the city isn't very big for one thing and it was also foggy. The van driver drove me to the Ziyu jiudian (Ziyu hotel), where the cast and crew were staying. It was a decent Chinese hotel with a massage parlor and KTV and two restaurants all inside. The sign above the front desk claimed that it was “5 star”, but I highly doubted it was that highly rated. It was not that nice of a hotel. I think the management put it up betting that no one would care enough to ask them for proof. During the course of the stay (5 weeks) at Zi Yu, I enjoyed many times over the special massages that you could get on the first floor, for only about 50 rmb (9 dollars) an hour. In America, massages start at 60 dollars per hour, so it is a luxury reserved for one's birthday or when a friend buys a massage for you as a special gift. In China, it is a normal activity, like going to the gym. In China, massage places are on every corner the way hair and nail salons are on every corner in American cities. There is a lot of competition, so the rates are very low. Massages come in every kind of variety too: using oil, mud, men masseurs, women masseurs, “happy endings”, foot massages, and more.
On the first day of filming on September 19, the call time was 5:30 am, for makeup. Breakfast was at 6 am on the second floor and we had to be in the vans and buses with our gear by 6:30 am. I had been given a crew cut, so I looked like a military officer. As we arrived at the site of filming, everyone was confused as to what to do. Everyday on the set it seemed like organized chaos with Dolph and the director speaking English and most everyone else speaking Chinese. Often times I not only served as actor and body double, but as interpreter. One of my goals as the film started shooting was to find every opportunity I could to speak in the film. In Hollywood, every actor knows that getting to speak in a movie is a big deal. Therefore, in almost every scene I would say something I thought could work… something that wouldn't be edited out. On the second day of filming, we were on location at an outdoor bar. The scene was where Dolph, Chambers, I and the other two bodyguards come into a bar and see Doph's ex- girlfriend singing. Before the scene started, I told the director I wanted to say something, and he said, “Just say something like, ‘what’s going on.’” Therefore, the scene started and as I followed the lead actor in, I said, “What’s up?” to Ronson (Dolph). Dolph, after the scene was over asked me, “What did you say?” I said, “What’s the deal”. He said, “Was that in the script?” When told him no he asked me why I said it. I said, “The director said I could add in a line.” He immediately stormed off to the director and I could hear him say something about not letting these bad actors ad-lib. I was taken aback by his pompous attitude, but I wasn’t abated. As the days of shooting wore on, I always was adding in small lines. I gradually gained more confidence and Dolph gradually got more permissive, and I think respected my courage. At what point, though, we had a misunderstanding on a line and he got particularly irritated. It was an important scene, one in which Chambers’ butler dies in the back of my jeep, after a run-in with the bad guys. Dolph tells me to say into the walkie-talkie, “Pull over,” then pull the jeep over, and then as Ronson approaches the jeep, say, “he's dead”. We started filming, and I said my line and pulled the jeep over. Ronson approaches me and the dead guy and I say “he's dead.” Dolph immediately calls “CUT!” and says, “Why are you always stealing my fucking lines!?” I said, “I thought you told me to say it”, and he just said, “No, that's what I say!” So, I let it be because that was the way Dolph was. The Chinese crew of the movie had a nickname for Dolph: “Da Xin Xin”, which means “big gorilla.” They called him that because not only he was big with extra long arms, but also he had a habit of getting very belligerent and swearing any time the cast or crew made mistakes. He would curse people out and talk about how poorly run the movie was. Some days he was nice though, so I didn't mind him too much. As the movie wound to a close I thought about all the lines I had thrown in to the film and said a silent prayer to myself that at least a few would survive the editing room. As the movie isn't out yet as of this printing, I have no way of knowing what my first Hollywood movie debut will look or sound like. October 23 was my last day of shooting on Diamond Dogs and I boarded my plane back to Beijing.
, but the idea is good and the movie is well done. You can feel that is executive produced by Dolph.
