DYING GOD

MY FIRST DAY OF SHOOTING - THE HOSPITAL SCENE

When I landed the role as a police commissioner in "Dying God", I immediately read through the script to see what my job would entail. I realized that it wouldn't be too much of a challenge: I had a grand total of about five lines spread over a period of three days of acting. Nevertheless, there were two features that caught my interest.

The first was that, according to the script, I would have a brief dialogue with film and television star James Horan. Though the name did sound familiar, I couldn't exactly place it, so the "Dying God" production assistant told me to look him up on the web, where I'd probably recognize his photo. Without difficulty, I found him at www.jameshoran.com and, sure enough, it was a face that I had definitely seen over the years - and mostly by accident. Other than a few films, including "Gods and Generals", he has been on dozens of television series that you have probably stumbled across yourself: 24, Baywatch, Zorro, Startrek, Hunter, Lost, Charmed, All My Children, Another World, Guiding Light, Enterprise, Star Trek, etc. If you have ever watched TV, then you haven't missed this guy.

Then, moving deeper into the script I had found that my dying scene would be shared with yet another famous actor, one with a name much more recognized than James', or even mine: Lance Henriksen! When I finally got the spelling of the last name correct, I was able to confirm by the web that Lance is someone that I had indeed respected over the years. Fans saw him get shot to death in "Terminator", have his android body split in two by the Alien Queen in "Aliens", to be exterminated in "Alien 3" and then live on to make "Alien vs. Predator", "Hard Target" and a slew of other films that endlessly scrolled down my computer screen. I had always recognized Lance's face in the movies... and always half expected to see cyborg cables spring from his stomach at any moment. So not only would I have the pleasure of being decimated on camera, it would be in the presence of a true veteran.

Shooting for "Dying God" took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina and lasted three weeks on a very tight schedule. I was personally required for only three days. On April 9th, a few days before my scheduled shoot, director Fabrice Lambot invited me to the set - someone's real apartment on 9 de Julio Avenue, the widest in the world -and to meet James Horan personally. Conversing with the actor, I discovered that he was a first-world performer frustrated by third-world production standards. He said he had to hang around the set too much, wasting loads of time lingering for preparations. At the moment, film crew around us were busy preparing an apartment scene that was made to appear as if it had just been ransacked. Suddenly, James excused himself and went into action at director Fabrice's cue. I watched as he pulled his gun from his pants and searched out the destroyed room. After the director yelled "cut!", James and I chatted a bit more. He apparently enjoyed the opportunity to speak to another American in his cultural isolation: except for the other big, imported star - Lance - and James himself, I was the only American in the movie. We exchanged a few polite words, shook hands and then separated until our next meeting on April 12, my grand performance. As I left, production staff was in a heated argument with residents of the apartment building about whether permission had been granted for the use of the premises as a movie set. One elderly lady threatened to call the cops.

My scene took place in the intensive care unit of a budget-strapped hospital constructed by Evita Peron. James was picked up late from his hotel. Shooting began several hours off schedule. The hospital unit had restricted hours and put pressure on the production staff to hurry things up. We were way too noisy for the nurses, for the poor patients. James was slightly huffed and rightly complained over last-minute changes in the script. (For example, my name was changed from Ramos to Gallagher only moments before Horan had to lay his lines at me).

James and I greeted each other and got straight down to work. In "Dying God" I am his superior officer and he's my bad-boy cop. At the director's cry of "ACTION!", I walk into the hospital room and upbraid my bum agent for being such a nuisance and for not wanting to follow orders. He pulls his wounded body out of the bed (he had been shot in the back in an earlier scene) and we share a quick and heated exchange that went something like this: "Fallon! You're staying in here!" I command. He replies that he refuses to be taken off the case, and I respond with something to the likes of, "That's an order!" followed by a few other lines. He then pats me on the chest condescendingly and walks out. Scene over.

After my performance, the director (the friendly Frenchman Fabrice Lambot) told me he was satisfied with my work. He said that the script required further corrections and modifications to convey a particular piece of essential information, so he would try to give me more film time by putting that data into a scene that would include me. This would be in addition to my famous dying scene, where my head would be smashed into a wall by a beastly creature before the gaze of both James and, supposedly, Lance.

After the film shoot, James and I had a more lengthy, relaxed conversation. He proved to be down to earth once off the set. He opened up and proudly showed me a photo of his 7-month-old baby boy. He talked about his Italian wife he had met three years ago, expressed his indignation about the noise and pollution of Buenos Aires (having "grown accustomed to living in a more rural setting outside Los Angeles") and showed a general interest in my descriptions of Argentina's love-hate relationship with the Perons.

I bade him farewell and headed for home. The following week I would return to scream at my rebel cop again, shoot off my pistol at the beast in a flurry of gunfire, get my head smashed in, and live to write about it for your reading pleasure.


MY SECOND DAY OF SHOOTING - THE POLICE STATION SCENE

The script of "Dying God" was altered. Last-minute adjustments helped clarify a few script confusions, and true to his word, Fabrice Lambot chose to use my character as the vehicle for speaking those changes. Therefore, my presence in the film was expanded by a full minute or two. The scene takes place in a police station.

I met cast and crew in a very poor area of Buenos Aires, at a dilapidated but incredibly still-functioning police station. Lambot and I, along with a fellow actor named Samuel Arena (he's "Duncan", another of my agents), brainstormed the details of the new script in a small room. Within 15 minutes we had created the dialogue that would reveal key facts in a natural manner, and we practiced it a dozen times to make it realistic. We kept breaking into laughter over the constant use of the word "fuck" throughout the script and its appearance in our scene as well. When we had it down, the techincal crew called us into "my" police commisioner's office and before the camera. The place was small and the camera was in the face.

The scene can be summed up like this: Duncan bursts into my office complaining about this bad-boy cop (James Horan) he has been forced to work with. He says he can't stand the guy anymore, that he's a drunk, always late, in a bad mood, etc. Defending my dirty yet result-winning cop, I ask Duncan if he has any idea what that poor guy has been through, warn him that it's election time, and that I don't want him to make any waves in the department. Pulling rank once again, I lay down the law and say that I'M the boss. He resists a bit more. I finally bark him an order and throw him out of the room. It's the typical "angry boss with hands tied" stuff. End of scene.

They filmed close-ups of Sammy saying his lines, then angled the camera at the other side of the office and filmed my close-up, repeating my same lines. We kept cracking up anytime we came close to the word "fuck", and we had to repeat the scene over and over. Of course, in post-production they will edit the two angles together so it looks like one fluid conversation (I hope). Unfortunately, I didn't have time to take any pictures of this moment: I was too busy trying to get my lines straight with Sammy. Nonetheless, I will definitely take pictures of the factory where my imminent death scene occurs and promise to post them here!


MY THIRD AND FINAL DAY OF SHOOTING - DEATH AT THE ABANDONED FACTORY

I took a train into a seamy side of town and taxied out to the deserted factory zone. The area is spooky, crammed with factories that weren't able to make it through the roughest Argentine economic times: shattered windows, collapsing walls, rusted machinery, invading weeds, eerie silence - in sum, the perfect place for screaming, murder and mayhem. And no complaining neighbors.

Once again I met actor James Horan, director Fabrice Lambot, the entire technical and production crew (lighting, sound, catering, props, costume, make-up, etc.), the FX guys, the other actors who would be participating in the coming scenes (prostitutes, an Indian chaman, agents), and the tall guy who plays the monster who would kill me. Everybody was milling about, hanging out, or preparing sets, and some were trying to keep warm around a small trash fire. I scurried around the site to take in this great place and shoot a few photos while awaiting my scenes. I also learned, to my great dismay, that Lance "Aliens" Henriksen had already shot all of his scenes. The script had suffered further changes, leaving me without my final encounter with the big star. He had been jetted back to the US only two days earlier, and the budget-strapped "Dying God" could finally loosen its belt a notch. So Lance would not appear in this film with me.

As usual, there was time to spare. Hours passed where nothing apparent happened. Klieg lights were being set up and cables strung about. A scene was shot of women being dragged across the floor by the feet (they were actually lying on hidden narrow planks of wood). The chaman screamed and chanted his Guarani jibberish around a ritual fire. In the afternoon, arguments broke out between technical crew and production. All filming halted for hours, with complaints about unpaid overtime and budget restraints. Though I was summoned to the factory for 10am, I didn't go on until 5pm.

In the meantime, I hung out in the make-up and costume trailer, where there was a heater. As just about everybody used the trailer for a gathering point, we had a good time. James was making do with the lengthy wait in his own little closed-off, private sector in the back of the trailer. We spoke there at length about his Argentine experience. He griped a little about Lance's preferential treatment (Mr. Alien had had a trailer all to himself, apparently arranged by his agent, James told me). He was tired and just wanted to finish his job and go home. He had already been in Buenos Aires for three weeks. His parting comments to me was, "I don't know what distributor is going to want to touch a film that has a rapist monster with a three-foot penis!" That just about summed up his discontent with the whole project.

It was now my time to shoot at the monster. In short, it goes like this: My unruly, bad-boy cop (again, Horan) has already arrived at the scene of the crime well before me and is now about to pop a cap at the creature. I suddenly burst into the factory with my Agent Duncan and another cop and open fire over James' shoulder. When I pull the trigger, I take both the monster and James by surprise. Then, Duncan’s gun just happens to jam at this most inopportune moment. (For some reason, they didn’t want too many blanks to be fired here: Safety? Noise hard on the ears? Not enough blanks? Unnecessary expense?). In all the confusion, the angry monster approaches to tear us all apart. “CUT!”

FX king Gonzalo Pazos had to show me how to handle my gun for the scene. (This was the same FX team that I had happily worked with in Albert Pyun's “Left for Dead”). “Keep your arms straight," he said, "with left palm cupped under the butt of the gun and fingers wrapped around the knuckles of the right hand, aim at the heart without hesitation or trembling.” When I got it down, he put two blanks into the cartridge, told me to keep my finger off the trigger until filming starts and then passed around cotton for everybody’s ears. The shots reverberated violently through the factory, and the shells ejected with a clinking noise onto the floor. Just like in the movies.

In the next take (which takes place by my side, though I do not appear in frame), my agent Duncan gets his guts ripped out of his stomach by the monster’s hand. To do this, FX taped a plastic bag to Sammy’s stomach. I watched them fill it with cow intestines and theatrical blood. Under the coaching of the camera operator, the director, and Gonzalo, our beloved monster practiced reaching into Sammy’s shirt several times to yank out the guts (without actually touching the bag for the time being – one small stain and we’d all have to wait until wardrobe cleaned and dried him up). Sammy practiced convulsing his body and put on a convincing show of wide-eyed and breathless shock. When all was ready, FX poured some blood into Sammy’s mouth (“Relax your lips more naturally,” said Gonzalo). The camera positioned itself behind the monster’s shoulder, and Fabrice shouted, “Action!” It all looked pretty ugly on the director’s monitor. Sammy spit blood, and the monster reached in and grabbed the guts, tossing them to the floor with a splat. Fabrice shouted “print” and everybody applauded.

Now my famous death scene approached. It was FX man Gonzalo who directed me on this one once again, not the director himself. I had to kneel on the floor next to a concrete wall that had a rusty, sliding metal door dangling over it. First I practiced smashing my left shoulder into the door without actually hitting my head – but getting pretty close. With proficiency, I moved on to practicing the slide down the wall in a shocked and unconscious stupor.

As I worked on this, the FX team rigged up a hose that they taped behind the door at the level where my head was supposed to slam. The mouth of the tube was fixed to the hidden edge of the door, between the door and wall, to the place where I would “bash” my skull. They ran the tube down to the floor and exited it off camera, behind me. The team then connected that far end of the tube to a can of compressed gas and filled the entire hose with a juicy blend of thick theatrical blood and glossy globs of cow brain. The director and camera operator positioned themselves behind the monster’s back and sought the most favorable angle so that the he would not obstruct my grand finale. They had him practice punching my head, missing me by millimeters, so that we would get the timing down between his sailing fist and my blasted reaction.

When Fabrice shouted “action!” the monster swung his fist towards my face. I flew as directed into the door, slamming my shoulder with a great bang of metal against concrete. But nothing happened. No blood spewed. I looked behind the door and the tube was still pregnant with guts. I stood and Gonzalo announced that the compressed gas hadn’t been ready to blow. Fabrice cried that the camera was still rolling. "Let’s do it again!” he shouted. I quickly knelt to prepare myself for the punch. It suddenly drove toward my face and I crashed into the door. The tube spewed on cue all over the wall. I slid down into my coma. “CUT! and PRINT!”

During this scene a member of the crew was kind enough to catch it all on a small digital camera. I have included a link to YouTube where you can watch the two-minute sequence of failure and splattered success. Click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZVA42W8CS0

Those watching the monitor had said it looked all right, but Fabrice and the camera operator weren’t very happy with the small amount of brain that could be seen twirling through the air. To remedy this, Gonzalo had me collapse onto the floor into a comfortable position. He then freely poured a jug of “blood” around my head and into my hair. The FX team brought over some more cow brain and slapped it against the wall above me until it stuck in place. At “action” the camera patiently waited for a chunk of brain to slip, drop and splat next to my head. Since I was dead with my eyes open, I could see that the camera panned down the wall as it followed the slipping brain, stopping to rest on a close-up of my face. “CUT!” and a round of applause. Wardrobe and FX cleaned me up, Fabrice congratulated me, and I said my goodbyes.

Dying God was released in the United States in September/October 2010. I appear for a brief flash in the trailer, at the 1'30" mark, right when my head is getting smashed. You can see the trailer at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw1T6mW_U70

My participation in “Dying God” had come to an end. I did see a nearly completed version of the film early in 2008 and was saddened to see that my grand smashed pumpkin-head scene had been shaved down to a fleeting flash of a moment. Nevertheless, my hospital and police station scenes remained intact. The movie is bloody and disgusting, so I'm not quite sure how I'm going to get my mother to watch it.