Tweet
Dublin part two
My agent, Let's call Him Richard Bucknall because it fits, informed me I was to be picked up and fitted as a 19th century NY stilt lamplighter.
I was like, 'Righto'
I took my stilts with me, they sent a car and I was driven to a warehouse long enough to expose the curvature of the earth lined with racks of costumes designated in centuries of human history.
I was taken to 19 century male and a suitable duds were purloined.
Hat shirt, scarf, pants, suspenders, shoes.
The shoes were going to be ripped apart and the tops cover those on my stilts, I had to give my stilts to some dept briefly to be 'aged' with burlap and rust paint.
I got given a script, TOM CRUISE gets to ask me the time! and I get to talk for the mandatory amount that secures me a wage as a principle actor while not telling TOM CRUISE the time.
These people must have really liked me.
TOM CRUISE: "WHAT TIME WOULD IT BE THAT YOU"D BE LIGHTING THE LAMPS THERE?"
LAMPLIGHTER: "It's a never ending job. It takes all night to light the lamps, and all day to snuff them out."
This quite obviously is riveting cinema and had it not come to rest on the cutting room floor my dialogue would have undoubtedly propelled me into best supporting actor territory. Fame can be so capricious.
It was at this point too I received my laminated go-absolutely-anywhere-on-any-shoot-principle-actors-badge. There were to be scenes throughout Dublin and this plastic card would get me through layers and layers of security to explore.
I flashed my card through outer and inner layer and got into a night shoot between Temple Bar and St Stevens Green where an entire road that travelled 3 sides of a square and the roads, footpaths, lamp-lights, every terraced house, every windowsill, bush and horizontal surface was piled with glistening synthetic room temperature deep snow. Strangely, and this is in the middle of summer, it was hard not to imagine a slight drop in temperature. I strolled around, keeping out of everybodies way and gazing at passing horses and carriages and extras til past midnight.
Nothing left but work the street of an evening and wait for the day of the shoot.
On which I was picked up and deposited in a nearby hotel room around noon, I had my own PA [personal assistant] and I was also a responsibility of one of Ron Howard's 3 main PA's who bustled in, made me feel very important, took me on a little tour, introduced me to Mr Howard.
It was interesting to note that at the very core of this massive complex undertaking with units filming in America and Ireland in multiple locations sometimes simultaneously , that the person directing the enterprise carried no technology on him.
Ron Howard would have one of three people hand him a phone with who he wanted at the other end.
These three people also carried two local communication handsets, presumably different depts so 3 outside lines and 6 direct inside lines.
Ron just strode around grabbing phones off people and talking and handing them back.
What a strange universe.
I was popped back into my hotel room and makeup commenced.
Then I waited about 3 hours, shooting schedules you understand.
I was in two scenes, on in daylight in which I put out a streetlight and MR CRUISE notices me from a window and remarks "I love this country"
The country being America, the scene being Dublin, Hollywood magic.
The other was a night shoot, with the rain and rotting vegetables and tethered faux stray cats etc, where TOM CRUISE and I have our dysfunctional chronological discussion that is itself a searing well honed metaphor of the rawest kernel of the human condition within which nothing makes much sense.
It is my belief that the power of this scene, combined with the all too obvious to me fact that on scene I dwarf TOM CRUISE in the charisma dept are reasons why the editing went as it did. The world was just not ready. It may never be ready.
But that was now and this is then.
I was brought down for the first scene and a ladder was provided for me to get up. I don't actually like using ladders, they are unstable while leaning into them which you have to do while putting your stilts on. But even though I was now being attended to by two personal assistants I didn't want to appear precious so I muddled through.
I was then led to the scene where I was introduced to Mr TOM CRUISE who would be in the foreground in a second story window while I worked the street. The street was covered at it's end by a huge dark canvas to keep the throngs of curious at bay out in the real world.It would move from time to time to reveal the throng beyond.
Mr CRUISE graciously broke the ice by suggesting I go out there on my stilts and make a little money. I countered by saying I'd do it if he held my hat. I made TOM CRUISE laugh. Wasn't difficult.
TOM CRUISE was at this point in couch-hopping love with Nickole Kidman, his co-star and probably prone to glee.
Then to work, first had to get the gait to where the director wanted it. "Not the rock and roll walk Martin, you do this all day remember."
apparently my gait was just too damn upbeat.
So a number of times I walked up and put out a lamplight while above TOM CRUISE voiced his love for 19th century NY.
I was then thanked and bundled away with my personal assistants who led me to the catering area for a bit. I was not able to take my stilts off and would not be able to until all this was over so I grabbed a plate of food and went and sat on the edge of a roof of a nearby parked car.
This car was right next to the catering area and vehicles are a good height and I'm careful not to scratch or dimple anything, I've been doing it for years without ever damaging anything.
So I'm sitting calmly, having just spoken and worked woth TOM CRUISE and RON HOWARD and just about to do further work with these gentlemen while nearby my personal assistants hover when I am approached by a man who leans in close to me in my ultra coddled state and says in a low and sinister and lilting Irish way
"How would you like it if I broke one of your fecking stilts off and shove it up your fecking arse." "That's my fecking car you're fecking sitting on."
I was flummoxed, I had felt myself to be in such a cucooned envirionment, I had looked so openly into his eyes as he began to speak that his well designed aggression went shockingly deeper.
Holding my plate I stood up and, ignoring the offduty cop doing extra movie security work whose car it was I walked to my nearby PA who was at this point innocently cheerful.
I told her, "Please, two things. Get me somewhere to sit and get this fuck," I pointed, "out of my face immediately."
These two things happened in relatively short order and I comforted myself in having had my first, alltogether concise, Hollywood hissy fit.
Scene two was in heavy rain at night on a cobbled road at a vegetable market where stray cats hid from the rain under abandoned 19th century stalls and I was trudging through the muck on stilts downhill, lighting the lamps.
TOM CRUISE, looking both handsome and beaten to a pulp stumbles up from under a table and asks me the time to which I meander and then walk on.
Piece of piss as we say in NZ. [meaning 'easy']
RON HOWARD and the head voice-coach come up for some first time, last minute instructions. The voice coach was a cuddly smug prick who would tell me to "soften my R's" and then titter at my attempts.
Finally from my 19th century costume I pulled a very contemporary Dictaphone out and offered it to him in front of the director and told him, "I'm a mimic, you say it and I'll be back in 5 minutes with it" he declined, I didn't like him.
Every take would be prefaced with "Rain on [the pipes above are turned on and the rain pours down over a 50 ft spamarea]...and...ACTION."
The whole scene, one which has never been shown, which was probably looked at once and the cinematic intensity was just too searing for the story arc at that point or perhaps someone hung themselves in the background and that scene was used for evidence or coffee was spilled or the meaninglessness of the exchange was objected to by some concussion awareness charity or it was deemed to be the worst line of tortured Irish accent TOM CRUISE uttered in the movie or my accent triggered staggering dissonance or....
Tom Cruise did his bit and I did my bit and Ron Howard yelled Rain on, and action, and we went through it 4 or 5 times. Then TOM CRUISE went back to his trailer and I got the director with his own secondary recording unit and repeated my lines to him under his direction for 15 mins or so.
"It's a never ending Job, It takes all night to light the lamps and all day to snuff them out." around 50 times.
The whole shoot had been about 12/13 hours. I still had my security good for the rest of the movies production and there was to be a wrap party that I thought I'd crash with my stilts on but sadly I had a wine festival in Germany that weekend already booked.
So it was back to Grafton Street until my agent let me know the cheque was ready. I wished my little street protection unit all the best and then down to London to pick up Hollywood cash and fall in love with a strange woman who wore mustaches for effect and who had a dried foetal foal in a glass case in her bedroom.
When the movie came out my father noted that in the credits my name was three above the prostitutes. I am in the background but am the subject matter in one scene and in another my stilts walk past the prone handsome beaten form of TOM CRUISE.
Dublin was fun.
I was like, 'Righto'
I took my stilts with me, they sent a car and I was driven to a warehouse long enough to expose the curvature of the earth lined with racks of costumes designated in centuries of human history.
I was taken to 19 century male and a suitable duds were purloined.
Hat shirt, scarf, pants, suspenders, shoes.
The shoes were going to be ripped apart and the tops cover those on my stilts, I had to give my stilts to some dept briefly to be 'aged' with burlap and rust paint.
I got given a script, TOM CRUISE gets to ask me the time! and I get to talk for the mandatory amount that secures me a wage as a principle actor while not telling TOM CRUISE the time.
These people must have really liked me.
TOM CRUISE: "WHAT TIME WOULD IT BE THAT YOU"D BE LIGHTING THE LAMPS THERE?"
LAMPLIGHTER: "It's a never ending job. It takes all night to light the lamps, and all day to snuff them out."
This quite obviously is riveting cinema and had it not come to rest on the cutting room floor my dialogue would have undoubtedly propelled me into best supporting actor territory. Fame can be so capricious.
It was at this point too I received my laminated go-absolutely-anywhere-on-any-shoot-principle-actors-badge. There were to be scenes throughout Dublin and this plastic card would get me through layers and layers of security to explore.
I flashed my card through outer and inner layer and got into a night shoot between Temple Bar and St Stevens Green where an entire road that travelled 3 sides of a square and the roads, footpaths, lamp-lights, every terraced house, every windowsill, bush and horizontal surface was piled with glistening synthetic room temperature deep snow. Strangely, and this is in the middle of summer, it was hard not to imagine a slight drop in temperature. I strolled around, keeping out of everybodies way and gazing at passing horses and carriages and extras til past midnight.
Nothing left but work the street of an evening and wait for the day of the shoot.
On which I was picked up and deposited in a nearby hotel room around noon, I had my own PA [personal assistant] and I was also a responsibility of one of Ron Howard's 3 main PA's who bustled in, made me feel very important, took me on a little tour, introduced me to Mr Howard.
It was interesting to note that at the very core of this massive complex undertaking with units filming in America and Ireland in multiple locations sometimes simultaneously , that the person directing the enterprise carried no technology on him.
Ron Howard would have one of three people hand him a phone with who he wanted at the other end.
These three people also carried two local communication handsets, presumably different depts so 3 outside lines and 6 direct inside lines.
Ron just strode around grabbing phones off people and talking and handing them back.
What a strange universe.
I was popped back into my hotel room and makeup commenced.
Then I waited about 3 hours, shooting schedules you understand.
I was in two scenes, on in daylight in which I put out a streetlight and MR CRUISE notices me from a window and remarks "I love this country"
The country being America, the scene being Dublin, Hollywood magic.
The other was a night shoot, with the rain and rotting vegetables and tethered faux stray cats etc, where TOM CRUISE and I have our dysfunctional chronological discussion that is itself a searing well honed metaphor of the rawest kernel of the human condition within which nothing makes much sense.
It is my belief that the power of this scene, combined with the all too obvious to me fact that on scene I dwarf TOM CRUISE in the charisma dept are reasons why the editing went as it did. The world was just not ready. It may never be ready.
But that was now and this is then.
I was brought down for the first scene and a ladder was provided for me to get up. I don't actually like using ladders, they are unstable while leaning into them which you have to do while putting your stilts on. But even though I was now being attended to by two personal assistants I didn't want to appear precious so I muddled through.
I was then led to the scene where I was introduced to Mr TOM CRUISE who would be in the foreground in a second story window while I worked the street. The street was covered at it's end by a huge dark canvas to keep the throngs of curious at bay out in the real world.It would move from time to time to reveal the throng beyond.
Mr CRUISE graciously broke the ice by suggesting I go out there on my stilts and make a little money. I countered by saying I'd do it if he held my hat. I made TOM CRUISE laugh. Wasn't difficult.
TOM CRUISE was at this point in couch-hopping love with Nickole Kidman, his co-star and probably prone to glee.
Then to work, first had to get the gait to where the director wanted it. "Not the rock and roll walk Martin, you do this all day remember."
apparently my gait was just too damn upbeat.
So a number of times I walked up and put out a lamplight while above TOM CRUISE voiced his love for 19th century NY.
I was then thanked and bundled away with my personal assistants who led me to the catering area for a bit. I was not able to take my stilts off and would not be able to until all this was over so I grabbed a plate of food and went and sat on the edge of a roof of a nearby parked car.
This car was right next to the catering area and vehicles are a good height and I'm careful not to scratch or dimple anything, I've been doing it for years without ever damaging anything.
So I'm sitting calmly, having just spoken and worked woth TOM CRUISE and RON HOWARD and just about to do further work with these gentlemen while nearby my personal assistants hover when I am approached by a man who leans in close to me in my ultra coddled state and says in a low and sinister and lilting Irish way
"How would you like it if I broke one of your fecking stilts off and shove it up your fecking arse." "That's my fecking car you're fecking sitting on."
I was flummoxed, I had felt myself to be in such a cucooned envirionment, I had looked so openly into his eyes as he began to speak that his well designed aggression went shockingly deeper.
Holding my plate I stood up and, ignoring the offduty cop doing extra movie security work whose car it was I walked to my nearby PA who was at this point innocently cheerful.
I told her, "Please, two things. Get me somewhere to sit and get this fuck," I pointed, "out of my face immediately."
These two things happened in relatively short order and I comforted myself in having had my first, alltogether concise, Hollywood hissy fit.
Scene two was in heavy rain at night on a cobbled road at a vegetable market where stray cats hid from the rain under abandoned 19th century stalls and I was trudging through the muck on stilts downhill, lighting the lamps.
TOM CRUISE, looking both handsome and beaten to a pulp stumbles up from under a table and asks me the time to which I meander and then walk on.
Piece of piss as we say in NZ. [meaning 'easy']
RON HOWARD and the head voice-coach come up for some first time, last minute instructions. The voice coach was a cuddly smug prick who would tell me to "soften my R's" and then titter at my attempts.
Finally from my 19th century costume I pulled a very contemporary Dictaphone out and offered it to him in front of the director and told him, "I'm a mimic, you say it and I'll be back in 5 minutes with it" he declined, I didn't like him.
Every take would be prefaced with "Rain on [the pipes above are turned on and the rain pours down over a 50 ft spamarea]...and...ACTION."
The whole scene, one which has never been shown, which was probably looked at once and the cinematic intensity was just too searing for the story arc at that point or perhaps someone hung themselves in the background and that scene was used for evidence or coffee was spilled or the meaninglessness of the exchange was objected to by some concussion awareness charity or it was deemed to be the worst line of tortured Irish accent TOM CRUISE uttered in the movie or my accent triggered staggering dissonance or....
Tom Cruise did his bit and I did my bit and Ron Howard yelled Rain on, and action, and we went through it 4 or 5 times. Then TOM CRUISE went back to his trailer and I got the director with his own secondary recording unit and repeated my lines to him under his direction for 15 mins or so.
"It's a never ending Job, It takes all night to light the lamps and all day to snuff them out." around 50 times.
The whole shoot had been about 12/13 hours. I still had my security good for the rest of the movies production and there was to be a wrap party that I thought I'd crash with my stilts on but sadly I had a wine festival in Germany that weekend already booked.
So it was back to Grafton Street until my agent let me know the cheque was ready. I wished my little street protection unit all the best and then down to London to pick up Hollywood cash and fall in love with a strange woman who wore mustaches for effect and who had a dried foetal foal in a glass case in her bedroom.
When the movie came out my father noted that in the credits my name was three above the prostitutes. I am in the background but am the subject matter in one scene and in another my stilts walk past the prone handsome beaten form of TOM CRUISE.
Dublin was fun.