than the normal studios crank out in a whole year? It’s this whole other industry.
I had a guy last night talking about doing this whole joke show built around me where they set up the camera in a mall or something, and I sit someplace unobtrusive. Then when someone walks by, I make them cream, and they get it on camera. It’s like America’s Funniest Home Videos, but for late-night cable. He’s talking about calling it The O Show. It sounds like it might really be something, so I’ve got calls in to some agents.
I’m not saying I’ll do it, but who knows, you know? It might be the beginning of something.
Confessional: Jamal Norwood aka Stuntman
Okay, I’m not offended that you haven’t been paying attention to me, Jamal. There’s been a lot of crazy [bleep] going on outside our headquarters. To quote the prophet Lebowski, “a lot of ins, a lot of outs, a lot of what have yous.”
American Hero was down to two teams—you had the Reds, which would be Curveball, Rosa Loteria, and me. And you had your Blacks, which would be Dragon Girl, the Candle, and Jade Blossom (though I’ve gotta tell you, it’s pretty darn funny for me to be on the Reds and not the Blacks. First time for everything, I guess).
And now there’s just us Reds. We’re getting to the big finish—the run-and-jump, my TV writer buddies call it. Anything can happen, but I feel good about my chances.
First, though, you need to know something about the nature of television, movies, and illusion.
It’s like this:
I’m a good-looking guy, right? I could be aw shucks and Huck Finn about it, but facts are facts. I’m muscular, I’ve got regular features, I’ve got a good smile. I’m not Jade or Rosa, of course, they’re girl-pretty, which is a whole different universe. For a guy, I’ve got it all going—and in the right direction. I’m not Lohengrin, but Lohengrin wasn’t Lohengrin, was he?
That said, I don’t like watching myself on-screen. Partly it’s because of the pain. On a movie set, when everybody else watches dailies, they’re looking at the lighting or making sure some car or airplane isn’t in the shot by mistake, or whether the girl’s hair looks right, or if you can actually see that cold sore the makeup team tried to cover—or if Stuntman got that good windmill action going on his fall from twenty stories. Every now and then, someone wonders whether the lines you heard were from the script. But not very often.
I’m the only one sitting there with the bruises or the sucking chest wound that’s still healing. What’s in my mind, watching yesterday’s work, is how [bleep]ing terrified I was leaping off the top of a building . . . seeing the ground coming at me and knowing it was going to hurt like a mother[bleep]er.
’Course, watching dailies can teach you things. One of my first jobs—even before I got out of ’SC—was on a very famous TV show about a group of teenagers in a very rich part of the greater Los Angeles area. I was supposed to be the flip street mad cool buddy of the thirty-year-old guy playing a high school junior—the one who opened the gang’s eyes to racism, if you can [bleep]ing believe that. But I get gunned down in a drive-by.
There wasn’t a lot of stunt work in this—just a fall I had to take in the middle of Curzon Street. But I got to hang around for three days and watch the gang at work—which is using the term loosely, because these were the laziest actors since Frank Sinatra. If they were on the set one minute past 6 P.M., they were on their cell phones complaining to their agents.
Because they were so lazy, there wasn’t a lot a director could do to cover a scene. Get the master shot, get one angle, get the reaction. Move on; time’s wasting.
The first time I saw dailies, I thought this was the worst acting and production I’d ever seen.
Then I saw the episodes on the air, and they were magic. Well, not magic, exactly, but functional. Like most television. Music and effects helped, of course, but the editors had found the all the right angles, had cut just before the actress did something goofy with her eyes, all of that.
It was not only cool, it was educational.
I have to keep that in mind when I look at the assemblies of American Hero. Because I don’t