So there I sat, enjoying a quiet evening alone, taking a brief reprieve from catching up on my Kantian philosophy reading and seeing to it I was up to date on my dossier of upcoming birthday shopping. Suddenly there came my cell phone's all too familiar dreadful screeching vie for attention.
Now, it's not my fault that my luddite distrust of all technology made after 1970 has reduced me to a series of Pavlovian dread reaction to that which, for most of the civilized world, constitutes simple everyday stimuli. Basic, inoffensive events which have long since been assimilated into the daily course of affairs for people from all wakes of life. But this thing had something like, eight awful pop songs to choose from as ringtones, and no option at all to retrofit it with a traditional, neutrally oriented series of rings and/or dings. Not, at any rate, without having to transfer funding through whatever duplicitous network of future devilry these sorts of things rely on to facilitate their evil.
So, I settled on one of my vile default options, any and all of which are reduced to an aural pulp of electronically distorted amelodic bleed-over through the thing's inadequate speakers. The result being that every attempt of someone on the outside to initiate contact with me in the past 2 years has inadvertently incited an intolerable penetration into the very base of my limbic neural networks; this has, over time, exasperated my already self-destructive introverted tendencies into something along the lines of a borderline sociopathic disdain for all forms of human contact.
Fuck the future, is what I'm trying to say here.
But goodness! How I have deviated from my intended subject. So yeah, my phone (fuck it and all things of its ilk- that's the last mention of it, I swear) rang, my world got just a little bit dimmer. For beyond the intolerability of relying on such a fiendish little monster for survival in our culturally ruinous generation of severely overpriced consumer pabulum (hail Satan), I know that any ensuing conversation to be heralded by this hateful fanfare will fall into one of two categories: the innocuous inquiry into the state of my Food Situation, or a summons to go and Do Something. The later category is somewhat vast, and may indicate matters related to work, school or our invidious side projects. This was one of those situations.
Sure enough, it was Kyle. Apparently he was in the process of editing Ghost Fucker.
"Goddamn Ghost Fucker's almost in the can," he rasped. His years of insatiable chain smoking had relegated his once pristine voice to an inhuman suppurating moan.
After a fit of god awful coughing and wheezing, he continued:
"Nick's up here doing ADR. Getcher ass up here; you botched more than a handful of lines yourself, you sad sack of shit."
Viewers, I have never counted myself among the histrionically inclined. The bits I managed to carry out for the ghost video were my absolute best effort, and those were only reached after a lengthy and arduous process of humiliating retakes. It normally takes something along the caliber of a life-threatening flash of terror to motivate my vocal projection beyond more than a few decibels of my usual, unassuming monotone. But then it's been some time since the prospect of a sudden death has elicited anything but a relaxed sigh from me.
However, seeing the situation for what it was, I realized I'd best go up to the "studio" (read: Kyle's extremely small bedroom) and try to rectify whatever egregious affront to the art of acting I'd most recently committed.
"Okay." I said. "Just let me finish documenting my charity donations for next year's tax forms and-"
"NO. You get your candy-assed dogsbody up here and fix your shit, NOW. Your fruity little philanthro- philantic-"
-he pressed on valiantly but the sentence degenerated into a fit of wracking coughs, just terrible to listen to-
"Just fuckin' get up heeeeere!" was all he managed to eek out, at last.
So, moments later I'm waiting tentatively outside Kyle's door. From within I can hear some manner of ghastly screaming, like unto a thing of apparition. It was only moments ago that he called me, and he said Nick was over, but still I was seized by the dreadful premonition that he was actually in the process of killing a prostitute, and I to be the one to catch him in the act.
Fortunately, as I pressed his door forcefully through the detritus snow of mysteriously unused cellophane wrap and months old A&W containers that coated his floor I saw that it was merely old Nicholas Ruggles, screaming as he was directed into a studio mic to provide the tormented screams of the ill-fated Danny from our masterpiece Ghost Fucker.
Nobody seemed to notice as I walked in. Curious, I watched as footage from the video played out on Kyle's studio-strength iMac, the sine wave diagram of Nick's aberrant screaming trailing back for what must have been a solid fifteen minutes of recorded space. Holy shit, I thought.
Finally, Nick ceased his tormented howling, which I suspect by this point had little to credit to any acting prowess.
"Am I done now?" he said.
Kyle sat, silently chewing on some Skoal, staring hatefully at the monitor, his eyes underlie in the eeriest way. At length, he spoke:
"Give me 30 more seconds."
"Fuck thirty seconds!" Nick screamed, or hissed, or came as close to screaming as he could through the tattered remains of his vocal chords.
"I've been at this for an eternity! It's FINE. You have plenty to work with!"
With that, he staggered away from the mic rigging and proceeded to imbibe voraciously from a bottle of what appeared to be imported water; the name on the label was in French or something. For the longest time, Kyle sat silent, motionless. He never took his eyes from the screen.
"It'll have to do" he said, at last.
I had been standing somewhat awkwardly off to the side this whole time. At the moment I was still wondering What kind of asshole buys imported bottled water? when Kyle suddenly turned and noticed me. His already hateful glare turned to pure malice.
"YOU!" he bellowed.
I snapped to attention as he rose out of his luxurious chair. Coughing violently, he gripped the edges of his desk for support as he lurched toward me. With one hand he supported himself tenuously, as with the other he levied a trembling, accusatory point of his finger in my direction.
"YOOUU! You shiftless-… NOBODY!"
His knees buckled. Falling to the ground, he turned and opened a low drawer on his heinously cluttered workstation. Rummaging through with grim urgency, he spared as much of his attention as he could on me, shooting downright venomous glares as he coughed more and more violently.
Finally he found his prize; spitting out his chew he slapped some kind of portable breathing apparatus onto his face. He took a few deep, deliberate draws of life-giving air through the filter, strength seeming to return to his maligned body. The blood left his face, returning him to a nearly human complexion. At last he stood, and looked at me.
"What can I help you with, boss?" I offered in as sunny a tone as I could manage.
On some level I knew it was hopeless to try and bring levity to this particular situation. Nick could be heard in the background, clearing his throat so as to help his threadbare voice find purchase on any attainable tone. Pulling the mask off his face only briefly, Kyle hissed:
"You goddamn hashed a line at the 2 mark, you piss bag!"
He paused to take a few deep breaths, both because the reaper was pawing at one thoroughly overdue payment and so as to calm himself down.
"Get on the mic and FIX IT."
"Okay?" was the best I could offer. I couldn't recall which line he was referring to specifically.
Kyle sensed this, and shook his head in disgust as he ambled over to the computer.
"It's the one where you say, or were SUPPOSED to say, anyway, 'Danny did you see the- OH SHIT!'"
I recalled the line. "Okay," I said. "What do you need me to do?"
A seemingly rage-induced coughing fit seized him as he tapped away at the keyboard, cycling through the esoteric windows of his editing program.
"Say it again, and this time try not to completely fuck it up!"
He cued up the clip, played it through once. Indeed, the line delivery was pretty spastic. The last few words garbled together so that it sounded pretty indecipherable. He reset the video, turned on the mic and shot one of those bitter glares my way. Holding the rebreather to his face, he prompted me to begin with a point of his severely shaky finger.
"Danny," I began, though already I could tell I was fucking it up, "Did you see the… OH, shit…!"
All told, it was a pretty miserable read. I gestured that I'd like to try it again. Kyle merely turned, struck a key, saying nothing, and turned back on me. I began again:
"… DANNY!" I belted with way too much force to be convincing. "Did… did you see the… OHSHIT!"
Again, even I could tell it was a bad read. From behind me I heard Nick let out an exasperated sigh. Kyle turned silently to face the monitor again, the only sound was that of his labored breathing.
"AGAIN." he said.
I repeated the line. This reading prompted Kyle to get up out of his chair and pace back and forth a few feet before stopping, and with an alcoholic's rage he began punching the wall.
As the abuse of his masonry went on, Nick said "Just say it normally, don't think about it so much." Sage advice, but easier said than done, I'm afraid.
When Kyle finally calmed down, he resumed his position at the computer, set up the recording track once again.
"Just keep saying it over and over UNTIL YOU GET IT RIGHT."
He hit 'record.' This was it.
"DANNY DID YOU SEE THE- OH SHIT. DANNY, did you see the- OH, SHIT! Danny? Did YOU SEE THE- Oh, shit…"
Again and again I tried, and again and again I failed ignominiously. Finally, after what seriously must have been like twenty takes, we got something that was useable. Sub-proficient, but useable. By then Kyle had mangled his precious rebreather in his hands, his jaw was still contorted with seething rage.
"That will HAVE. TO. DO." he said, refusing to look at me or Nick.
"Okay," I said. 'Well, I guess we'll leave you to your magic!"
"Get the fuck out of my room," was all he offered in response.
Nick and I took our leave, our only hope that work was done on this particularly challenging project, and I hoping that I would not have to soldier my way through too many more lead roles. An aspiring wordsmith though I like to think of myself, I am a far cry from being the doughy white guy equivalent to a Takarazuka top star.
I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into the making of an amateur comedy video on the internet. I hope somehow these videos will generate enough revenue to buy Kyle a new rebreather, those things cost literally like two hundred dollars.
Good night!
~Keith R.
No comments:
Post a Comment