10/27 Friday

Today was an especially crazy day.

Colm took off from work today because he was invited to act in a TV show for CCTV (China Central Television). The TV series that Colm was invited to be on is called "Waiting at the Airport" and is about things that people do/see while in the airport. In this particular show, Colm would be playing the part of an American who came over to meet a Chinese girl he had met online. The driver took us to Kai Fa Qu, where the studio was. The studio happened to be right near the Cummins Distribution center in Kai Fa Qu.

We came to an enormous complex that looked like an airport terminal (how fitting). It was very hard to find the entrance to where the studio was, as most of the building was unmarked and abandoned looking. Finally we saw a bunch of people standing outside a door in the rear of the complex, and asked them if the place behind them was indeed the studio. They said it was, and Colm and I got out and went inside. The inside of the building, as we entered, was totally gutted, aside from some rickety tables and chairs set up on the floor. We were taken upstairs, only to meet more dimly lit gutted space plus a few doors opening into smaller rooms. Through one of the doors was something that resembled a dressing/make-up room. There, where it was better lit, we put our stuff down and were introduced to the director and some of the actresses for the show.

Colm was given the script for the scenes he would be doing, and we were both taken aback by the amount of lines he would be memorizing. Mind you, the script was all in Chinese. Some of the characters were ones that neither Colm nor I had ever seen before. Colm's friend, Mei Xue, who teaches at the School of Dance in Beijing, came along and was able to help him with the script. Colm managed to talk to the director about the length of his lines, getting permission to simplify and shorten many of the tougher parts. For the next hour or so, Colm studied his lines and practiced them with some of the actresses.

The set, which was on the ground floor, could be seen from an overlook on the second floor. It looked like an airport, complete with VIP lounge, restaurant, bar, duty free shop, snack shop, travel agency, and police station. There were airport signs hung out all over the place, pointing in the direction of luggage, terminals, gates, bathrooms, and security. At one point, when I was actually on the set, I had to wonder if it really had been a scrapped airport. The building even had the look of an airport, and the signs looked authentic enough. The duty free had real wine bottles in it, and the snack shop real food.

When Colm started shooting, the crew moved the cameras and lights to the Police Station section of the set. After that, they moved to the travel agency, and the bar. In the police station, they shot a couple scenes in which Colm had to be crying (trying to locate the girl he met online), so they put some drops in his eyes that induced tearing. They tried to shoot in smaller clips so that Colm could memorize his lines more effectively. Colm proved to be a good actor and was able to perfect the clips after a couple of takes.

I talked with one of the male actors who asked if Colm had ever been in any movies in the US. We also talked about my experience in China so far, and how I learned to speak Chinese.

As I mentioned before, the complex looked abandoned, and I was very surprised that CCTV had a studio in such a dilapidated building. I was more surprised, and horrified, however, to find a bucket of dead fish in the bathroom. This further set the studio, in my mind, into the ranks of 'ghetto'.

At around 7:00 pm, I went with Colm’s driver to Dominos to get pizza for the 2 Cummins interns who had come to watch, as well as for Colm and myself. I wanted to order 4 pizzas but ended up getting 5 plus a sampler box of appetizers. There was a promotion going on that gave you 2 free pizzas if you ordered 3, or 1 free pizza if you ordered 2, so I had to either get too little or too much. We could always eat the leftovers for breakfast/lunch/dinner over the next few days.

Colm ended up acting for over 8 hours (we got there at around 1:00, and got out after 10:00). I was tired from just watching and taking pictures. The other actors and actresses would have to stay until around 2:00am in order to finish the particular episode of the show.

After leaving the studio, Colm, the interns, and I went to a club that was holding a masquerade night (a pre-Halloween celebration), but we didn't have any costumes. The lack of costumes didn’t matter as long as we paid for tickets. There was free champagne with the entrance charge, and the place got drunk bone-dry by around 1:30.
After dancing until around 2:30, we ate leftover pizza out of the back of Colm's driver's car. We saw the interns off, and returned home tired and content.