Don’t Act, Reason #31: You’ll be proud of things you shouldn’t be, like appearing in soft-core porn.

It’s so painfully easy to lose perspective when one is completely desperate.  If you’re like me, and most people these days who dream of acting for a living seem to be, then you long to be in the movies.  Ah, to be a star of the silver screen!  Imagine seeing one’s own image standing thirty feet high!  Imagine working with living legends like Helen Mirren, Bill Murray, and Jessica Simpson![1]  As the years pass and you watch your dreams of movie stardom get replaced with dreams of making your rent while paying for daycare at the same time without worrying every damn second of every damn day, you will find yourself auditioning for anything that even resembles your prior-to-burnout aspirations. 

             My theatrical agent got me an audition for an “independent movie” called Teacher’s Pet.  (It seems that what was once called a “B” movie is now called “independent.”  Somehow, Pulp Fiction and Dumpster Baby are now classified as the exact same kind of motion picture.)  The movie was described as a remake of a Rose McGowan sex thriller called Devil in the Flesh.  I had never heard of it.  Unbeknownst to me, it was a somewhat popular late night premium cable movie.  I have no idea why anyone would want to remake a late night premium cable movie, but it was happening.  And the same people that had made the Rose McGowan version were making this new version.  I didn’t understand these logistics but I didn’t really care either, since this was my first shot at a secondary lead in a feature film.  It was clearly trash, but I am a great lover of trash cinema, and I figured doing it might be as much fun as watching it.  I was absolutely right, for once.

            The movie starred Jodi Lynn O’Keefe, the hot little number that previously had played Don Johnson’s daughter on Nash Bridges.  (They were dating at the time, I was told.  Ewwww.  On many levels.)  She was an expert at tongue acting, and could express sixteen different eroticized emotions simply by flicking her tongue in one direction or the other.  I loved it.  And if she licked her teeth…well, watch out, because shit was getting crazy!  She was a femme fatale, albeit a low-budget version of a femme fatale, and I played one of two cops hot on her trail.  The other cop was my father; I was the none-too-bright son he was trying to groom to take his position as sheriff.  I got more screen time in this project than I’d ever had previously, but I didn’t have many lines.  I was mostly supposed to just stand next to my father and look like a dimwit.  We were the comic relief of the picture (although comic relief was probably not necessary.)  Because I had no lines, I made my job about doing everything I could think of to upstage the actor playing my father.  In one scene, he questioned a bartender while I trailed behind him constantly eating alcoholic beverage condiments such as pimento olives and maraschino cherries.  In another, while he questioned victims of vandalism, I picked up the rock that had been thrown through the window with my bare hands, thus contaminating the evidence.  In still another, as he questioned a suspect while seated on a sofa, I leaned forward every time he did and then leaned back every time he did, imitating perfectly his every movement.  Quite often I was asked, “What the hell are you doing?” by the director, but he was amused enough to let me go ahead and be silly.  (They were paying for comic relief, so I was doing my job as far as I saw it.)

            At the cast and crew screening, everyone got a good laugh from my antics.  My wife, who attended the screening as my incredibly hot date, laughed throughout the entire picture, especially at the serious parts, because the movie was so over-the-top exploitative.  She particularly enjoyed the gratuitous nudity, of which there was a lot and it often brought gratuitousness to a whole new level (for example, in one scene the two female leads are talking in a college locker room and at the end of the scene, for no apparent reason, a forty-year-old stripper walks by in the background, buck naked.)  I got somewhat embarrassed that my wife was laughing at all the inappropriate places, but she maintained that if we were watching a movie that inappropriate at home, we’d be guffawing all the way through as well.  It was just that we were surrounded by the people who had actually made the film, as opposed to a group of our snarky friends.  She thought I was lame for being embarrassed.[2]

            The rest of the world got the chance to watch Teacher’s Pet (which was renamed Devil in the Flesh 2, thus changing its status from remake to sequel) when it premiered on HBO as the week’s Friday Night Guilty Pleasure Movie.  Because I thought I had done a very good job in the movie, I told my family to check it out if they could get to someone’s place who subscribed to the channel (my family doesn’t waste money on television.  They read books and stuff like that.  I’m the black sheep of the family, I suppose.  Although I have before read a book.  Once.  And I do subscribe to Fangoria Magazine, but mostly for the gory pictures.)  My father called me the day after the premiere, sounding displeased.  “Watched that Devil in the Flesh 2,” he told me.  “There’s a lot of nudity in that film.  And you looked bloated.”  Stellar review, I thought.

            The only friend of mine I know who saw it was this guy who called me on a Sunday morning to tell me that he had been up in the middle of the night channel surfing for masturbation material, when he had stumbled upon Jodi Lynn O’Keefe getting it on with “some dude.”  He had really enjoyed himself until the scene ended and suddenly he was staring at me in a cop’s uniform instead of a hot naked chick.  Apparently, I’m an erection killer.  (Ewwww.  Again.  On many levels.)

            I still think my work was good even though somewhere between the audition and the last day of shooting, I sort of lost sight of the fact that I was essentially working on a glorified porno movie.  Oh, well. 

I like porn.

 

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[1] Simpson!  What an incredible actress!  She actually chose to play Daisy Duke as a blonde instead of a brunette—bold, bold choice.  Very brave.

[2] Yeah, I know.  She’s right.