The Actor who wasn't

"Acting is half shame, half glory. Shame, when exhibiting yourself. Glory, when you can forget yourself"- John Gielgud

Most often we download a torrent or buy a ticket, sit comfortably popping in pop corns and watch a movie. And the moment the credits role, don’t know where it comes from, but even the dumbest of minds starts shooting out criticism that the director could have done this and that the climax could have been altered etc etc. And mostly it’s the actor who gets torn apart despite him just being a projective of the director’s thoughts. But one has to be in the actor’s shoes in order to find out how difficult it is to be one. I’m saying all this coz I’ve been there, done that :p

There is this friend of mine from college whose passion is to be a director and has done a lot of amazing short films for which he has won quite many prizes. One night he came to my room saying that he has come up with a new script and made me hear it. The plot is about a young couple giving guidance, using their own experiences, to a guy who has just fallen in love. The twist comes towards the end (BOOM) that the couple involved had actually committed suicide years back and it was their ghosts which were playing along. I told him that it’s too good after which he gave me the BOOM for real saying that I’ll have to play the male ghost.

Playing a ghost wasn’t totally new to me as it was just recently, I was part of a little documentary named VISITOR where the audience had an ironical feeling of having a good laugh while watching a horror movie. So I was apprehensive not to repeat the act and screw the plot but he managed talking me in. It eventually took more than a week before we actually shot in Coimbatore. The one starring as the female ghost was one of my close friends,extremely beautiful, smart and lovable. The first location was a crowded park, Sunday,surrounded by a dozen of spectators where we had to dance for a 1980’s kind of duet with freaky steps and angles (Equate the embarrassment).

People close to me know how unexpressive a person I am (the kind who remains silent on hearing a joke even when the whole room laughs to tears). So naturally we went for multiple takes just coz of me while she could well have qualified for a lead in a Mani Ratnam movie with the confidence and charm that she exhibited. After almost an hour, I managed something worthwhile by dimming the curious on lookers from my vision and trying to imitate TR’s grooves in Veerasamy. The stuff didn’t stop there but it went on with looking in to each other’s eyes, dancing around trees, close ups wit flowers and more. As we wrapped up, I had accounted for more number of crazy things in a single day than I had done in my entire life.

The next portion of the movie came out extremely well for me as I had to be a human looking ghost giving advises and recalling old days with not much expression and a low tone (natural act). With this we completed half of the shoot but the real challenge was the remaining which had to be shot in the college corridors as I already had a tough time facing my classmates’ pranks since they heard of this thing. Sunday helped, with not many ppl seen in the corridor. I had to go behind her and propose with a lengthy exchange of dialogues (it helped me understand that I wasn’t great at remembering lines as well). Time had the answer and we got it done with the camera guy rotating a hundred times to get it captured (thank God, he did).

But unfortunately we couldn’t complete the movie as we had an indefinite closure of college due to a strike and since then hell became heller with ppl even getting expelled from hostel for shooting short films (which according to the CS HOD is synonymous with hot films). For good or bad, the film remains incomplete and the actor in me stays dormant (thus paving way for the world to live beyond 2012). But what I learnt after this is that an actor shouldn’t be criticized unless you are an actor yourself as he is doing a far better job than what you can. No wonder why they even become Chief Ministers, It’s an art. An art, very few master.