Hulk
Albert’s had me in and out Make-up tests for his new Hulk movie for weeks now. I volunteered to help out while in complicated a state of bliss and/or terror in the green room after one of The Bear’s shows. Loitering around after everyone had left, the conversation of work had inevitably and unfortunately reared it’s head. Making my usual excuses and quips we slow-danced around any real conversation. His life was chaos, haphazardly funnelled into a series of brief, rambling, flash-bang like moments. We got along. In the half dozen or so brief encounters we’d had in small, dark, chaotically wallpapered rooms we’ve bore witness to at least three minor miracles, affectionately named The Long Wait, The Stolen Watch and St. Francis’ Ghost.
It’s enchantingly unclear what either of our professions were, seamlessly changing month to month.
He dresses well, cleanly, he shakes hands solidly and affectionately rememberes psudeo-comfortable moments in peoples lives. Next to a poster of a main claiming to be “Luke Mannohans” he explained to his vision, the twenty-second elevator pitch for what he called
“The return of awe”
He’d drunk a little too much of something much too little and whatever I’d mixed with my bloodstream 30 before the show had begun it’s ninetieth minute panic.
My thoughts’d blended together as I peeled back into a timid, back-alley present. Unable to curate any fresh thoughts other than the old reliable yes or no, I parroted and poetically rephrased all of his arguments back to him. Agreed with him about the recent air-strikes in Iver. Mumbled over Protests and killings and The General Malaise. We agreed that nothing good is ever on TV, that movies are boring, except for the ones we’d enjoyed. Albert had seen a clip, in which a mountain of dung was poured over 15 Malaysian teens as punishment for shoplifting, he told me how funny it was, I agreed comatosically limply. Far in the corner, lit from below by the flashing of her phone. The curly haired bassist from ‘Marnie’ was brought to my attention.
“That’s not funny!” I jumped out of my skin.
“It’s sad” she stared at us. I stared back. I didn’t know what to say. Neither did Albert. I suppose that we both knew she was right. She looked towards her phone and continued to thumb over images of made for tv stars in cosmetically challenging frames, with glimmers of CP-talk rattling around the valleys near her iris. Me and Albert paused, unsure of how to continue. I’d smelled the gasoline fumes coming out the back of this conversation a mile off.
“I got the gig for this Hulk film”
Had I known what helping out was going to look like I would’ve thought a hell of a lot harder about accepting the gig. I had been painted nearly every damned shade of green known to man by two charmingly zen Airbrush Artists named Bella and Becca. Over the course of two months I’d cried nothing but green tears and gained a metastatic disgust and disillusionment with the visions of a pathetic, pale, wasted body under acerbic white lights in 4K Ultra HD mirrors.
We’d been in and out of meetings for months with agency reps and studio heads flopping between artichoke-greens and grassy-glades trying to achieve what Albert was calling
“A real Hulk”
In a coffee shop from a distant future he tells me
“you know, you might not think it but your body and physique is exactly what I’m wanting for this new take on David Bruce Banner.” I am a man of significant height and very little width so to hear this from Albert puzzled me through an arduous shoot into the hands of a test screening I had absolutely no faith in. It’d been a exhausting process but seeing myself up there on the big screen, looking like a monstrous behemoth stirred a strange embarrassed excitement in me. So much rage and muscle and anger, I had felt so small in the room we shot it. I couldn’t understand how no CGI would be used and yet I looked massive, my jaw was like rock, my chest perfectly hairy, my hands the size of a torso.
“the magic of cinema my friend” that had become Alberts catchphrase. Everytime I tried to talk to him he would just silence me and proudly exclaim,
“The magic of cinema.”
He had become far more sporadic and jittery during my last few visits, carte-blanche are dangerous words to a man like him. The budget… Exceeding his and anyone’s expectations. Despite money flowing steadily out, they had absolutely nothing to show for it. His assistants seemed exhausted and confused, his girlfriend looked unwell and his vision for the project had all but disappeared.
Needless to say I was on edge in Screening Room C. Albert and his nascent ability to change the air pressure through fidgeting, sent a chill over the dailies. His minimalist loungewear clung to him in unusual places and his swinging metal chain-link bracelet tangled in a swath of arm hair caught my eye every other second.
My phone buzzed during a difficult run of poorly improvised conversations between two actors that started to make me question everything I knew about human interaction. It was Cara, The Spaniel had won it all for $70k. Before I could read anything else Alberts assistant Brix burst in to the room weilding a large red fireman’s axe.
“Is this a good axe?” He held it in his hands with strength, poised ready to chop at any second.
“no” Brix turned out the door professionally and Albert looked at me with Devout stipulation. His eyes flicked toward the light of my phone and gently I locked the screen, wedging it under my bum. There was still a good film somewhere in all this footage, I prayed that Albert could find it.
He whizzed us forward to the next scene, one where the guy playing Banner was trying to explain his condition to an exquisitely made-up woman in a bar.
He was playing it sexy and bored and ruffled and distant.
It wasn’t working for me.
He had no chemistry at all with his co-star, it was like watching concrete set. Banner isn’t sexy, not on purpose. Talking to him over lunch, I saw in the moments before a burgeoning smile that to Albert Banner and Hulk are two different people. A man cursed with the company of a beast. What can I expect, Albert hasn’t shown any ability to self reflect, to accept any weakness in himself. I guess that’s his strength. I let the monotone drawls of their unpalatable, half-way-somewhere, American accents wash over me as I reflected on my own walled in Hulk and silently wished upon a falling star. Caught in the wing mirror of a motorbike, on a reel of silver coated film, projected as big as a man, that I could express myself so absolutely.
Brix burst back in with a silver axe. It was shorter and more stout, more like a woodsman’s axe.
“Is this a good axe?” He swung it around as though he was hacking his way through rubble.
“no, the other one was perfect but it was red. I like the silver”
“we don’t have a silver one of the red one.” Albert moved from sat to crouched, perched like a leopard over the back of the red cinema seat.
“what do you mean you don’t have a silver one? You have a red one yes?” I took my phone out from under my thigh and began to scroll, nothing interesting, I just pretended to tap away until Albert was done.
“if you have a red one, you have a silver one Brix”
“we don’t”
Albert looked to me for assistance but my phone tactic had worked perfectly, he looked back at Brix sliding his glasses off his face and sighed.
“take off the red Brix”
“how?”
“Jesus… sandpaper, chemicals, I don’t fucking know, google it.”
The Pinhole Killer was first mentioned in the news toward the end of last summer, a woman had been found in a dumpster near an estate in Archway. Every inch of her skin had thousands of tiny millimetre-thick circles cut away from it with professional precision. After a cross media censor-request everyone was forced into calling him The P.K. Every death receiving mass attention, millions of posts everyday with some new intel or theory or thought piece. People act publicly horrified and privately enamoured. Photos of the victims bodies become viral images, spread through teenage think-tanks into menopausal static. It’s unlike anything anyone has ever seen before. The way the bodies slump. It’s just horrifying.
The most astonishing thing is the lack of blood. Flash photography of these corpses, passing light through flesh and fat in emaciated hues, in living rooms and alleyways never contain any blood. Horrific Artworks strewn over defiled street corners.
As Albert finished his tirade on Brix my thumb slipped over the unmute button and a harsh newsreaders voice bled out of my phones speakers.
“new evidence has appeared surrounding The P.K” I quickly locked my phone and looked up to apologise when I saw Alberts face. I wasn’t sure what was about to happen.
“get out” he directed to Brix.
“are you good man?” I spoke as I stood to meet Albert, I don’t like when people stand above me.
It’s enchantingly unclear what either of our professions were, seamlessly changing month to month.
He dresses well, cleanly, he shakes hands solidly and affectionately rememberes psudeo-comfortable moments in peoples lives. Next to a poster of a main claiming to be “Luke Mannohans” he explained to his vision, the twenty-second elevator pitch for what he called
“The return of awe”
He’d drunk a little too much of something much too little and whatever I’d mixed with my bloodstream 30 before the show had begun it’s ninetieth minute panic.
My thoughts’d blended together as I peeled back into a timid, back-alley present. Unable to curate any fresh thoughts other than the old reliable yes or no, I parroted and poetically rephrased all of his arguments back to him. Agreed with him about the recent air-strikes in Iver. Mumbled over Protests and killings and The General Malaise. We agreed that nothing good is ever on TV, that movies are boring, except for the ones we’d enjoyed. Albert had seen a clip, in which a mountain of dung was poured over 15 Malaysian teens as punishment for shoplifting, he told me how funny it was, I agreed comatosically limply. Far in the corner, lit from below by the flashing of her phone. The curly haired bassist from ‘Marnie’ was brought to my attention.
“That’s not funny!” I jumped out of my skin.
“It’s sad” she stared at us. I stared back. I didn’t know what to say. Neither did Albert. I suppose that we both knew she was right. She looked towards her phone and continued to thumb over images of made for tv stars in cosmetically challenging frames, with glimmers of CP-talk rattling around the valleys near her iris. Me and Albert paused, unsure of how to continue. I’d smelled the gasoline fumes coming out the back of this conversation a mile off.
“I got the gig for this Hulk film”
Had I known what helping out was going to look like I would’ve thought a hell of a lot harder about accepting the gig. I had been painted nearly every damned shade of green known to man by two charmingly zen Airbrush Artists named Bella and Becca. Over the course of two months I’d cried nothing but green tears and gained a metastatic disgust and disillusionment with the visions of a pathetic, pale, wasted body under acerbic white lights in 4K Ultra HD mirrors.
We’d been in and out of meetings for months with agency reps and studio heads flopping between artichoke-greens and grassy-glades trying to achieve what Albert was calling
“A real Hulk”
In a coffee shop from a distant future he tells me
“you know, you might not think it but your body and physique is exactly what I’m wanting for this new take on David Bruce Banner.” I am a man of significant height and very little width so to hear this from Albert puzzled me through an arduous shoot into the hands of a test screening I had absolutely no faith in. It’d been a exhausting process but seeing myself up there on the big screen, looking like a monstrous behemoth stirred a strange embarrassed excitement in me. So much rage and muscle and anger, I had felt so small in the room we shot it. I couldn’t understand how no CGI would be used and yet I looked massive, my jaw was like rock, my chest perfectly hairy, my hands the size of a torso.
“the magic of cinema my friend” that had become Alberts catchphrase. Everytime I tried to talk to him he would just silence me and proudly exclaim,
“The magic of cinema.”
He had become far more sporadic and jittery during my last few visits, carte-blanche are dangerous words to a man like him. The budget… Exceeding his and anyone’s expectations. Despite money flowing steadily out, they had absolutely nothing to show for it. His assistants seemed exhausted and confused, his girlfriend looked unwell and his vision for the project had all but disappeared.
Needless to say I was on edge in Screening Room C. Albert and his nascent ability to change the air pressure through fidgeting, sent a chill over the dailies. His minimalist loungewear clung to him in unusual places and his swinging metal chain-link bracelet tangled in a swath of arm hair caught my eye every other second.
My phone buzzed during a difficult run of poorly improvised conversations between two actors that started to make me question everything I knew about human interaction. It was Cara, The Spaniel had won it all for $70k. Before I could read anything else Alberts assistant Brix burst in to the room weilding a large red fireman’s axe.
“Is this a good axe?” He held it in his hands with strength, poised ready to chop at any second.
“no” Brix turned out the door professionally and Albert looked at me with Devout stipulation. His eyes flicked toward the light of my phone and gently I locked the screen, wedging it under my bum. There was still a good film somewhere in all this footage, I prayed that Albert could find it.
He whizzed us forward to the next scene, one where the guy playing Banner was trying to explain his condition to an exquisitely made-up woman in a bar.
He was playing it sexy and bored and ruffled and distant.
It wasn’t working for me.
He had no chemistry at all with his co-star, it was like watching concrete set. Banner isn’t sexy, not on purpose. Talking to him over lunch, I saw in the moments before a burgeoning smile that to Albert Banner and Hulk are two different people. A man cursed with the company of a beast. What can I expect, Albert hasn’t shown any ability to self reflect, to accept any weakness in himself. I guess that’s his strength. I let the monotone drawls of their unpalatable, half-way-somewhere, American accents wash over me as I reflected on my own walled in Hulk and silently wished upon a falling star. Caught in the wing mirror of a motorbike, on a reel of silver coated film, projected as big as a man, that I could express myself so absolutely.
Brix burst back in with a silver axe. It was shorter and more stout, more like a woodsman’s axe.
“Is this a good axe?” He swung it around as though he was hacking his way through rubble.
“no, the other one was perfect but it was red. I like the silver”
“we don’t have a silver one of the red one.” Albert moved from sat to crouched, perched like a leopard over the back of the red cinema seat.
“what do you mean you don’t have a silver one? You have a red one yes?” I took my phone out from under my thigh and began to scroll, nothing interesting, I just pretended to tap away until Albert was done.
“if you have a red one, you have a silver one Brix”
“we don’t”
Albert looked to me for assistance but my phone tactic had worked perfectly, he looked back at Brix sliding his glasses off his face and sighed.
“take off the red Brix”
“how?”
“Jesus… sandpaper, chemicals, I don’t fucking know, google it.”
The Pinhole Killer was first mentioned in the news toward the end of last summer, a woman had been found in a dumpster near an estate in Archway. Every inch of her skin had thousands of tiny millimetre-thick circles cut away from it with professional precision. After a cross media censor-request everyone was forced into calling him The P.K. Every death receiving mass attention, millions of posts everyday with some new intel or theory or thought piece. People act publicly horrified and privately enamoured. Photos of the victims bodies become viral images, spread through teenage think-tanks into menopausal static. It’s unlike anything anyone has ever seen before. The way the bodies slump. It’s just horrifying.
The most astonishing thing is the lack of blood. Flash photography of these corpses, passing light through flesh and fat in emaciated hues, in living rooms and alleyways never contain any blood. Horrific Artworks strewn over defiled street corners.
As Albert finished his tirade on Brix my thumb slipped over the unmute button and a harsh newsreaders voice bled out of my phones speakers.
“new evidence has appeared surrounding The P.K” I quickly locked my phone and looked up to apologise when I saw Alberts face. I wasn’t sure what was about to happen.
“get out” he directed to Brix.
“are you good man?” I spoke as I stood to meet Albert, I don’t like when people stand above me.