Films, new jobs, nonetheless blasé

I guess that this week should have been a big week.
I acted in my first ever movie.

It's called 'Nippon no Aozora' (Blue skies over Japan), and is basically about the McArthur treaty - the post WWII negotiations between Japan and America over future military capabilities.
I was just an extra. But a good extra, you know. Not just walking in the background - I have a 10 second scene which features me giving Hershey bars to Japanese kids. I'm a member of the Military police. They even gave me a 40's hairdo, and brickloads of make-up, as if I'd been in Okinawa for a month.


I didn't even shave properly. I didn't bother to look at my scene in the script. What was I thinking? There's no doubt that I had one eye on my PS3 video. It may be sad, but that made me think more than a movie debut did. Will I be in the IMDB now? It comes out in March. I think I'll wait for the DVD. It would be too embarrassing to burst out into laughter when I appear in the cinema. I always gaffaw when I see myself on TV (apart from when I've been edited out, of course).
My distracted performance was even more compounded by the rather strange direction. The Director didn't speak directly to me. One of the AD's told me a basic outline, but the actual cut was different. Very confusing. Add to this the random factor of kids, who did something different in every practice shot. Also, I had no specific lines, but I was free to say anything that came to mind, as long as I told them exactly what I said later for the Japanese in-movie translation. My mind was so preoccupied with all these variables, that I'm not sure if I even remembered to do an American accent! We only did one cut. No second chance. I was so disorientated that I forgot my coat. And then we drove to the station, and I realised that I was still wearing the military trousers...
I guess that acting in movies is kind of hard. I'm also convinced that good directors make bad actors look good, and vice versa. Let's hope that I get better directors in the future!

I've had a number of interesting costume roles lately. As a special Christmas gift to my fans around the world, next week I will compile a video of all my cameos that have been screened in the past month, but weren't big enough to warrant it's own video. It'll be a bit like those disappointing Christmas comedy specials on BBC; AbFab or whatever.

As an appetizer, here I am, taking names and kicking some quite serious butt-ocks.

"Hey, you - shut up!!"

"Your ass is mine, cowboy!"

But that's not all. Starting today, I started a one-week course teaching English to Japanese Government Tax Workers. Not just general English. Specific, tax English. For 110 minutes each lesson. All day, every day, same 10 students. It is dry. The English is impossible to teach. But the money is very good.
I sincerely hope that this will be my last English teaching job - my soul seems to have had it. Money or no. This doesn't make me happy. Dressing up as a policeman, for 1/3rd the money... bring it on!