Slapping John Cleese

My infomercial shoot with John Cleese was yesterday, in Pasadena (The product we were infomercial-ing for, for those of you interested in such things, was The Book Of Inside Information. But we could have been selling Crack For Kids, for all I cared - I was just psyched to be working with John Cleese.).

My call time was 10:30 a.m. And as I like to do for these things, I gave myself a lot of travel time - So much so that I got there a half-hour early, even after missing an exit and driving around Pasadena for a time.

(I often have some "directional drama" in getting to shoots - I'm a man badly in need of a GPS. But this time, the drama was due to a flaw in the directions and not the flaw in my brain; a fellow actor told me a number of people made the same mistake I did - following the directions we'd been given - with the same exit-missing, driving-around-Pasadena result).

Once I arrived at "base camp", there really wasn't anything for me to do - my scene as "Gas Station Manager" didn't shoot till after lunch - so I basically just "hung out", drinking Diet Coke, writing in my "book journal", and chatting at length with "Chriss" (And yes, I'm spelling his name correctly), the actor playing the "Bookstore Manager", in a scene that shot right after mine.

I'm not sure exactly what time it was, but maybe an hour-and-a-half or so after I got there, a van pulled into base camp, and John Cleese emerged (They'd just finished shooting a scene at a nearby grocery store).

When we made eye-contact at one point, I smiled at him, clearly recognizing him, and he gave me a wink.

He came over to where Chriss and I and a group of extras were gathered, but no formal introductions were made - We just made small talk about, honestly, I don't remember what (Except I do remember he was annoyed with the clasp on his watch band, and how badly it was designed).

When he retired to his trailer (He was the only one who had one), Chriss and I giggled like little girls over the fact that we were actually working with John Cleese.

Intellectually, I'd known I was "excited" to be working with someone like John Cleese. But it's one thing to know it, and quite another to actually be on the set, and "there he is...and I just talked with him, like we were just a couple actors on a shoot....!" (It was all I could do afterward not to squeal with delight).

Then we had lunch (I had salad, chicken, and more Diet Coke; I really wanted dessert - pumpkin pie - but I refrained).

My scene was the first thing up after lunch, so in short order, I was made-up, put in wardrobe, then driven to the location (a nearby Shell station).

It took a little while for them to set things up, but not that long - after they figured out how they wanted to block the scene for camera, they had me run through it with John's stand-in, and when the Director was happy with it, they called John to the set.

When he got out of the van, he approached me, we shook hands, and that was when I actually introduced myself.

He said, in a haughty tone, "Well, I certainly hope you're quaking in your boots, working with a big international superstar like me" (Or words very much to that effect).

I smiled at him and said, "I sure am".

Then he said, "Now I want you to slap my face".

Which threw me a bit (I wanted to be agreeable, but at the same time, I didn't want to break the star), so I gave him the very lightest pat on the cheek I could manage.

To which he responded, "Harder than that...".

I said, "What is this, Raging Bull?". But I patted his cheek, a little more firmly this time, and he was satisfied - "I just wanted you to know that you can knock me about...".

(I thought about it afterward; What would it be like, to be so famous, so beloved, that part of your job on a set is to calm down the other actors you're working with, because they're that excited to be working with you?)

At one point, he conferred with the director, then came back to me to tell me they were changing the script - He'd decided one of my lines was redundant, too much like stuff in other scenes (Which it was). He was also changing my first cue (Instead of asking me "Are your prices up or down?", he was changing the line to "Are your prices up...or are they up?". Which I actually thought didn't make sense in the context of the scene...but I certainly wasn't going to argue the point, since he's John Cleese and I'm not).

They walked him through what he was supposed to do a couple times (At one point, there was a bit of tension, because he was using a teleprompter, and he wasn't happy that it was mounted on top of the camera - He was concerned about the "eyeline" and thought he'd look as if he were reading), we did one or two run-throughs together, then we started shooting.

I wasn't keeping count, but beyond having to stop a couple times for technical issues (Extraneous noise and such), and once because John blew a line, I don't think we did more than three complete takes before they'd gotten what they wanted (As the director and crew were conferring as to whether the last take had been the take, John looked over at me and nodded his head, as if to say, "Yeah, that was the one". Which, frankly, made me want to break into song).

They briefly debated whether or not they needed to get any single shots of me, but decided it wasn't necessary, that the funny stuff was us being in the shot together...and we were done.

All told, the actual filming had taken maybe twenty minutes or so. It was over much too soon (Even John joked afterward, "That's it...?").

Everybody seemed very happy with me - I got lots of pats-on-the-back - and that made me very happy with me.

So my bit was done, and they were done with that location, so we got in the van to go back to base camp.

I was in the front seat, when to everyone's surprise, John came over, to ride back in the van with the rest of us.

(I got out to give him the front seat, but he piled in the back, and we were off.)

Back at base camp, we were kind of milling about - I was waiting to be checked out - and I told John I'd just watched the YouTube video of him talking about Sarah Palin (He's not a fan), which led to him doing a performance, just for Yours Truly, of the poem he'd recently written about Sean Hannity (Afterward he said, "Pretty good, huh? Rhymes and everything").

And that was the end of my time with John Cleese.

In very short order, I was signed out, and winging my way homeward (Happily, without directional incident).

All-in-all, a very good day.

I'll probably write more about this tomorrow - I actually want to write about "Chriss", who recently played a major role in An American Carol (He played JFK) - but for now, I think I'm going to see what's on the tee-vee...