“What we gonna do right now is go back… WAY back…” - Jimmy Castor, Troglodyte

So, last summer I was in L.A. and I had this crazy experience of acting in a scene in a major Hollywood-style film. My friend Colby Parker Jr., in the pink shirt above, was one of the two editors on the Will Smith superhero-film HANCOCK, directed by Peter Berg.

Long story short: I had asked Parker and Berg if I could be an extra or something. While I was in L.A., Colby and I went to visit the set around midnight and Berg came through. “How do you feel about being a valet?” he asked. Fine. He sent me down to wardrobe and make-up. I saw Will Smith’s dual trailers, one for ‘maxing and relaxing’ and the other a portable gym on some real Ivan Drago levels.

The scene being filmed had Hancock pulling up to a curb outside of a restaurant and being showered with accolades and thank-yous, as he had banged out some crazy rescue or something. It was a continuous “one-shot” being filmed with a SteadyCam, and Berg directed me to stand by the valet podium and lurch out as the camera passed me, and tell Will Smith: “Hancock, that shit was intense!”

Berg walked away and that was it. No run-through, nothing. “Action.” The SUV pulled up, Jason Bateman, Charlize Theron, and Big Willie step out, and I lean out and blurt my line. Sort of. Apparently I said “That shit was insane!” but no one really cared. We did three takes and that was that. As you might expect, Will Smith was a really nice guy. Really cool in fact. I told him I had been a fan since ‘Live at Union Square,’ which was staying true to my more underground leanings from the era while still saying something nice. Did not bring up ‘You Saw My Blinker’.

Make-up for the valet

On location: Berg in control, with the hapless valet working out his line.

…

Well, many months went by and Colby let me know that less than a minute later in the film, some guy says “insane” to Hancock and it’s playing sort of weird when you hear the word a second time so soon. So he suggested that if I was going to be out in L.A. in the next few weeks, we re-do the line at the upcoming ‘additional dialog recording’ (ADR) sessions. According to Colby, you can slip all sorts of different words in to a scene without the average person noticing as long as you end the audio at the same time as the person finishing their line. Hmm.

OK, cool, I could manage that. I was heading out there anyway and I didn’t want some schmuck re-doing my line. Upon getting to L.A., Colby and I headed to Sony Pictures and went the the ADR session, where they were recording this guy named Maetrix who played one of the villian’s henchmen. He finished and I got to do my line.

It was the thing you might have seen where the movie is played back on a screen in front of someone and the actor says his or her line over and over again, with an elaborate microphone set-up. It took a while but with Colby’s ‘direction,’ I eventually “hit it,” if you can even “hit” something like a spazzy valet telling a superhero that he’s the man. The final line ended up being “Hancock - that shit at the bank today? Intense!” (Sorry about revealing that key line, if you consider that a ’spoiler.’)

We finished and went to a meeting that Loic Villepontoux and I had set up between Peter Berg and Pharrell and the rest of N.E.R.D., who was in town for the Kanye West ‘Glow In The Dark’ Tour and mixing their ‘Seeing Sounds’ album in Hollywood. I think there was some thought that those guys might find some music that could be worked in to Hancock, but I guess there wasn’t really time to fit all that together. It was a cool time though, we got to hear a lot of the album and Lupe Fiasco stopped by.

And that was about it. It lasts about two seconds and you can barely hear me. But I made the credits…

…and now I have an IMDB page.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 09:33 and is filed under culture, Surreal, hip-hop, Film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.