As you might expect, I've gotten pretty damn comfortable with naked (or nearly naked) female bodies by now, both my own and others. Not that I wasn't before I had my own boobs - I was down for naked chicks any time - but it's different now. I still feel a level of appreciation that I doubt any girl who has never been a heterosexual man can truly understand when I wake up in the morning and see myself naked in the mirror, and when I'm in a changing room or something (but, like, not in a pervy way). I've been naked with guys and found that I really like being picked up, squeezed, and given a little taste of a guy's strength - not really rough, but definitely not hesitant. I don't freak out at guys' dicks, whether they're visible and erect or just a promising bulge, though that admittedly took a while.
And yet, spending two days in my underwear shooting my scenes for Ernesto's sort was weird. I'm playing some sort of high-end escort, so I actually had to do way more with my hair than I usually do, with a wave and some chestnut coloring, on top of wearing my fanciest matching set of undies that isn't actually sheer enough to let people see my nipples or landing strip. I also brought a nice dress to just sit in a heap on the floor (I'm half-tempted to send Ernesto the receipt from the cleaners). The make-up lay not only did my face so that it would look properly lit on camera, but also so my lipstick would look like it had been super-red the night before but just faded enough now. I have fun getting this body all dolled up, but the whiplash between folks treating me like a prop and then wanting me to show human emotion on a set is not really something I enjoy being on this side of.
Plus, you're half-naked around a bunch of people. It's a student film, so there aren't a bunch of assistant directors and stuff, and there's only one other cast member in my scenes. He's a local professional - I suspect that student shorts are a non-trivial part of his income, along with local indies and whatever he can scrounge up in New York - and is odd going from flurry to businesslike and back when Ernesto says "cut!" or "action!", especially since I get the feeling he thinks I've only got this part because Ernesto is fucking me (and correcting him to "no, it's because Ernesto fucked me once" would just undermine someone who is nervous enough). Even besides him, though, there's still a lot of people in the room, and that is okay for them to be watching me intently while the camera is recording, but kind of looking away until I've got my robe on while everybody sets up and tasks about what we might try in the next shot, is kind of screwy.
Annette laughs at me feeling weird about that, since she figures is about what I deserve for "I, Fembot" being such a super-sexualized thing, which is rich because she got me to pull a bunch of stuff out as more creepy than sexy. Maybe she's right; I know the first auditions, before I did that little acting gig, had me really enjoying that I could ask a girl looking for a job to show me her tits, on how sexy she could walk in stiletto heels, that sort of thing. It's part of the story, sure, but as someone who used to get told to fuck off by hot girls on the regular, it feels really damn good. And it led to hiring someone who I think is going to kill it, even if she's done way more work as a burlesque dancer than an actress. If nothing else, I know that nobody is going to watch her scenes in my movie like they might watch mine in Ernesto's and be like "meh, whatever, she's like a six" (probably because they just don't like Asian girls).
And that carried over into casting the other roles (aside - even casting a short film is fucking agonizing, since you've got to do it for every damn person in the foreground and there's like a thousand people and lining up schedules so that people can read together is a pain in the ass and the only thing worse than the idiots who can't figure out what you want from the character are the smart ones who find something you miss that means you might have to adjust everything else...). Like, I don't need to see the best friend's cleavage or the abs of the guy who gets killed twenty seconds in, but I wanna, especially if I've just been looking at guys to play the nerdy inventor and trying to determine if they're just the right amount of schlubby.
And that's before you take into account all the producer crap I've taken on because, I dunno, it seems like cheating to hire someone to do stuff and I get a certain amount of satisfaction in spending Chen-ai's money. After haggling with a building owner who should be fucking thankful that I want to rent his lab space for a few days, or putting what seems like too big a deposit down on lights, I deserve a few perks, whether it be checking out a hot girl or seeing if one of the guys would like to discuss his part further over drinks. I start to understand where Harvey Weinstein was coming from until you remember that he would bend me right the fuck over a table and probably not bother with a condom.
So I'm trying to be better than that, but, honestly, there are days when, after cramming so much of getting ready to make this movie around my actual classes, I honestly wonder how Ernesto manages not to be a dick on set without having to worry about that scenario nearly as much.
Ah, well. Shooting starts the day after Christmas, which means I've got an excuse not to go back "home".
-Jordo/Missy/Yuan-wei
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