BEIJING, May 21 -- Working on a Hollywood film set was nowhere near glamorous as I had imagined it to be. The production was a major blockbuster partly shot in
Shanghai and a small old town in Zhejiang province.
My job as the Chinese assistant to the action director involved taking his wife to the Yu Garden for sightseeing and later the stunt team shopping for fake Rolex watches and Calloway golf clubs. So many fake golf clubs were bought that the production office issued a memo limiting one set for each crew member to take home on the chartered jet.
Paul, the Canadian assistant to the action director, dutifully followed us around. In his early 30s, his beard and heavy build gave him a mature look when he was quiet. However, most of the time he was loud, wearing a big smile, high-fiving around and always ready to get coffee for everyone.
I kept a distance from him at first, fearing any familiarity would become a professional handicap. Only when the production moved to the small town did we begin to chat more. Out time on the set was mostly spent waiting - for the cameras to be in place, for the stuntmen to rehearse, and then for the stars to rehearse.
"I don't get these Americans," he shook his head as we observed the male star jumping off the rooftop gingerly. "Did you hear that woman there? She refused to walk across the bridge because too many Chinese were on it! And the river. What's wrong with the river? 'Oh people must have dumped all kinds of chemical waste in it. Let's stand as far back as possible.' The water looks fine!" After half a week in China, he sounded more defensive about the country than I was.
"You know, your country is on the verge of becoming something great," he said to me as we walked out of the set to get a bottle of red wine for our boss. "And look at us, man, we in America are so jaded. We are getting things fed to us way too easily. All we cling to now is materialistic stuff. The people in Hollywood, they don't care about filmmaking." He grunted and I nodded.
He had been an accountant before stumbling into Hollywood as a production accountant and later as a personal assistant to the famous action director. I wondered how he was surviving in Hollywood with his constant high-fiving and at the same time, disgusted with what mainstream Hollywood stood for.
"But look at your country," he continued, "there are so many changes happening. Everything is beautiful. Including this town." His voice and our steps on the cobblestones echoed down the narrow street.
We stepped out of the old-town area and into present-day China. The town center consisted of a motorcycle mall and small storefronts selling low-end household goods. The buildings in this relatively poor town were boring square leftovers from the 1970s. Bicycle bells competed with car horns. Dust chased after each vehicle driving by.
"Hi, hello, how are you doing?", he greeted a mother holding a baby boy on the street. The mother turned away and giggled with her friends.
"I like your country, man. Everything here is beautiful," he exclaimed. I was amused - I could understand him liking the old town because its charm was preserved for tourism purposes; but the new town with its chaos and noise and dust?
Yet slowly, his optimism infected me as the days went by. Perhaps I shouldn't be so critical of my own country, I thought. Maybe we Chinese are not as jaded as the Americans because we have destroyed so much of our old traditions and yet are not fully immersed in Western commercialism.
Paul ended up the only crew member I am still in touch with on Facebook. Every once in a while he messages to say hi. "I hope I can come to China again, soon," he said in his last message.
(Source: China Daily)
