Time/Travelling

The last time I was on stage, as an actor, was in Dramalab's 2004 offering of Haresh Sharma's "Otak Tak Centre". Actually, Haresh's play is called "Off Centre" but we had made certain adaptations to the original literature and wanted to rebrand it for a more nusanta-ric gravitas. Anyone can call someone off centre, but it takes some real local knowledge to tell them WOI LU OTAK TAK CENTRE LAH NYAMAH

So it has been 7 years since I walked away from the Malaysian arts scene and reinvented myself as a filmmaker. By filmmaker I mean I work as a 1st AD shooting TV commercials (which means by filmmaker I mean that sell cigarettes to your children). I've also directed a short film, a mockumentary, and a few commercials of my own. I've worked with Oscar winners, BAFTA winners, and more sociopathic losers than I care to remember. I've slept with my models, sucked up to directors, driven very expensive cars, and had more helicopters in my life than I could ever have imagined. They also pay me very nicely. I don't wear a tie to work, I still don't even know how to tie one really. I mostly wear slippers and shorts. I get to use knives. Awesome.

I joined production for three reasons, two of them were the absolute wrong ones.

#1. I was in a pretty serious relationship at the time and my girlfriend kept breaking up with me for very arbitrary (to me) reasons. One of them was GET A REAL JOB (hey acting is a job ok). Production flitted past my consciousness. She eventually flitted out of my life.

#2. I distinctly recalled someone telling me how much directors get paid. Some of them upwards of RM20,000 per shoot day.

#3. I wanted to explore filmmaking and figured that advertising production would be a nice mix of business and art, a 50-50 split of creativity and being able to make my car payments. In retrospect, this is completely untrue. The ratio is more like 99% business, 1% art.

So yeah, you figure out which ones were the wrong reasons. Luckily, the stars were aligned and it has proven to be a career, rather than a pothole or detour on the path to job satisfaction. That being said, when you sell enough cigarettes to children, or fast food to fat people, or skin whitening products to dark Indian girls, the karma is going to build up like plaque on a homeless guys teeth. After 7 years of it, I know how to do my job and I'm proud to say I'm good at it, but I'm tired of being subjected to the inane arguments, the complete lack of logic, the abuses of power, and in some cases, the complete inhumanity of the advertising production, and the larger advertising industry. To call it completely inhumane is not hyperbole either, which is scary. In order to maintain a positive relationship with my skill set, I'm trying to branch out away from TVCs and do other stuff. Last year I shot a big Hollywood feature, this year there will be another feature hopefully... and a return to the theatre.

The nature of this project is quite interesting because in actual fact, it's a student play. So all my co-actors are around 21 years old, in this the year that I hit 30. Thus I am the OLD GUY in the room. It's also in Singapore, so I find myself temporarily relocated to the Lion City for the next 2 months. There are many exciting things about this because I think Singapore is a pretty vibrant place, even if the people who live here AND the people who spend all their time judging it never get a chance to experience it for what it is. Pre-Conceived Notions WIN. House hunting, or rather, room researching in Singapore has proven to be rather difficult because a majority of the classifieds that are going up all say pretty much the same thing:

"ALL RACES OK EXCEPT INDIAN"

which sucks because I am, jeng jeng jeng, Indian. I mean, I'm Malaysian, first and foremost. It's how I argue with these racist real estate agents, home owners, and anyone else who will listen. I'm not Indian. I'm Malaysian... but in multicultural Singapore (and Malaysia, lets be honest) race is how we understand anything about our fellow men and women. If we can't pigeonhole you, then we have to go out on a limb and actually invest trust and good faith in someone. Renting your room out to a smelly, drunk Indian who is going to cram a bunch of his smelly spice-eating friends into the broom closet wouldn't sit well with me as a landlord, considering you guys are all here illegally ANYWAY. Bastards.

Singapore is super green and I can't wait to go for some early morning runs here. I've always been a fan of the neat and tidyness, despite however many robots were killed in the process. I also like the usage of English in signage. As we drove over the Second Link there was a sign saying "BEWARE OF DROP DOWN BARRIER AND CATS CLAW" and it took me a good 45 seconds to extrapolate to the Nth degree what the hell that meant. I'm guessing cats claw is like that anti-tank stuff that pops out of the ground and rips your undercarriage out for being naughty naughty... but it always makes me wonder, how does Mr. Tong Wai Loon, bastion of the West Coast Heartlands, understand and process this kind of signage? I'm not sure he gets what a cat's claw is. I don't mean to put him down, but hey, what the hell IS it?

End of January and I've already started my travels for the year and I couldn't be happier. I could definitely be happier, but I couldn't be happier. The general plan for this year also includes London, Scotland, and lots and lots of Prague. Hopefully there will be others in there too, and the time for me to spend some time in KL before I have to disappear to Europe.

Filed under "Things That Make Me Go Hmmm" was getting on to the bus this morning. I rock up at the bus station and who but Joe Hasham, Faridah Merican, Gavin Yap are all on the same bus to Singapore. They are here to stage a play called "Someone to Watch Over Me". I found it quite apt that on my first morning, first day back to theatre, I run into a gaggle of theatre folk. Imagine how much happier I'd be if I said I was making a return to exotic dancing. Now THATS what I called a bus ride. Better topless dancers than KL theatre folk. No offense, guys.

Excuse the rambly, pointless post. It's mostly just a warmup to a hopefully more active blog for the next few months. All in all, it feels really exciting to be part of a creative process again that has nothing to do with the size of a logo or what color the chocolate milk needs to be (hint: brown). I have full faith in Huzir Sulaiman, the director, to fully kick my mental ass during rehearsals. If I focus and get this right, and by this I mean stay entirely in the moment, I think there is only a better koobz at the end of the tunnel. Normally I'd heap so much pressure on myself about OHMANKOOBZ REMEMBER TO *STAY* IN THE MOMENTTTTTT but even then, whatever this turns out to be, it will be what it has turned out to be.

My posts are a lot less fun when I'm not writing about being drunk, eh?

More details about the play to follow.... later on today or tomorrow that is.

Much Love,

K