Kaua'i, Hawaii. July 2007.
My body gently swayed. I lounged in a hammock tied between two palm trees. Distant crunching and sloshing sang the siren call of a cerulean sea. But nothing could take me away from the siren beside me, who looked suspiciously like the stewardess on my flight headed here. Her grass skirt rustled as she shuffled up to me. She leaned over and pressed a tall cool glass filled to the brim with a pina colada to my lips. I craned my neck up to get a better taste as the frothy drink ran over my tongue. My eyes were getting their own little treat as the coconut shell bra barely handling her dangling fruit did less than they ought to and more than I could thank them for.
She pulled the glass away, but then bent in even closer. If the coconut milk mustache I had was any indication, my tiki cup was about to runneth over.
When the hammock starts a-rockin', don't come a-knockin'!
Her warm breath tickled my ear; more than just the hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention. Then she said something that opened my eyes. "Wake up."
Huh?
"C'mon, man. Stay woke." Hula girl, why was your voice suddenly so manly?
Blearily, I blinked away the blackness as reality brought me back. That line of moisture on my lip? Sweat. The sound of the ocean and rustling of her skirt? Tyres crunching over wet soil and vegetation. My beloved hammock? The back of an open-air jeep bouncing from side to side as we trudged our way through a jagged jungle on the way to set.
"Ah, good. You're awake." Donald Glover sat opposite me, greeted me like Ralof on that rickety old cart.
"Fuck your juniper berries." If you've never experienced one before, this was the definition of a rude awakening.
"...what kinda dreams are you having?" My co-star made his debut.
"Sweet ones. Why'd you wake me up?"
"Because I wanna know if we're there yet."
"So, you ask the sleeping person?"
"No. I asked the only other person I know here." Poor guy was still nervous and not a little star-struck, being around the big shots his fist time out as an actor. Evidently, however, that same level of fearful respect didn't extend to me.
We were in the last car in the train of vehicles trekking across the island on our way to near the center where the set was. Those dreams I was having were images from a brochure. Thus far, I'd not had any time to explore a single beach or ogle a single bikini-clad bombshell. And what a shame, too. I'd specifically watched Lilo and Stitch on my flight and was eager to meet a real-life version of Nani.
I knocked on the little window that peeked into the driver's cockpit. Ben, Stiller not Wyatt, turned around and opened it. "The gallery would like to know how much longer we must suffer this indignity?" Clunk. Nothing could have punctuated my question better than the sound of my own thick skull banging against the roll cage when we hit a hard bump.
"If you'd done like Downey and your nanny, Bas, and taken the chopper, you'd have reached an hour ago."
"Ben, dude, I don't think there's a single sane person on this entire island who's willingly going to get their butt out of bed at 5:00 a.m. I've only been married like a year, bro. I don't want to divorce my wife because I woke her up way too early on her vacation. Her mother is with us and I know damn well she'll complain about me." Jack Black, his hair freshly dyed and his skin freshly fried, spoke up from next to me, looking like Guy Fieri after a meal at a Szechuan restaurant. Red, sweaty, huffing, and puffing.
"Wait, we had that option?" You did if you were one of the A-listers. That's why Cadbury got the VIP treatment with RDJ.
"Come on, dude, at least turn on the radio and play some tunes. We're dying back here."
"Just tough it out, guys. We've only got another half hour to go." And suddenly that sweet air conditioning I'd been savoring quietly was denied to me once more.
I'd rather not suffer in silence, and listening to some tunes sounded like a good idea. Also helped that I could play a little hazing the newbie and just maybe by getting Donald a little comfortable with Jack, I'd actually be able to take a nap the entire way through next time. "Hey Jack, did Donald ever share how he got the part of Alpa Chino?"
"Don't be that guy, Bas. I'm like a super musical dude and everything, but even I don't go around tooting my own horn." How could he didgeridoo me like that?
"Not my intention. Go on Donald, find your voice. It's how you got the role in the first place."
"Oh? A fellow musician!" Jack was suddenly feeling tenacious.
"Oh, um…well yeah, sort of. I haven't really put anything out yet, but I do it in my free time."
"Don't sweat it, bro. I get it. The artistic process takes a while. Just keep trucking on! So tell me, what did you show the casting director? You sing? You play an instrument?"
"It's for Alpha Chino, so I rapped I guess."
"That's rad, dude. Did you do like a cover? Or something from the original backlog?"
"Yeah, Donald, give Jack a quick performance. Why don't you lay those bars you sent me? What was it again?" Stealing me away from my fantasy before she could show me the Kahiko meant that you'd be dancing the hula for me now instead.
"I love pussy. I love bitches. Man, I should be running Peta…" Bit early to start the mumble rap craze, don't you think Gambino?
Jack had clearly caught on to my needling and decided to give Donald his own stitches, too. "Aw man, I wish I'd been there. We could have totally duetted."
"No reason we can't make up for lost time." My mouth was made for percussion because of all the bombs I like to drop. "Jack, you've got the melody. I'll drop a beat, and Donald take us away."
The wind between Jack's fingers melded itself into an imaginary trumpet that he immediately began blowing. "Zippity shamowow doo doo bop bow!" Which I complemented with my own terrible beat boxing
"I made a mistake waking you up, didn't I?"
–
The opening shot of the movie would be a Spielberg oner. A single camera would take a long continuous shot, bouncing from one main character to the other to introduce each of us in sequence.
["Lay that shit down, come on!" Robert Downey Jr. was in full - and I mean full - get up, as sergeant Lincoln Osiris waved down the replica Huey cobra on a crane arm. Clearly, he'd spent more time in the sun than we did because he was looking very tanned. "Fats! Run your motherfuckin' ass. We've gotta lift off now!"
The camera zoomed out to show Jack Black as Fats gunning flailing extras with his heavy machine gun. The camera rolled back on its track as it followed a rushing Fats to his next marker. He flopped on his belly behind a mound of dirt, narrowly dodging a bullet that struck the soldier beside me, bursting his head open and raining blood from his skull like a water fountain.
"Holy shit!" The cameras snapped to my panicked, blood and mud-stained face. My name might have been Brooklyn, but my accent was more general American.
"Listen here, you baby-back-bitch!" Fats snatched the lapel of my uniform and shoved his face into mine. Both of us steadily being drenched by the red corn syrup mixture. "Get command on the line, scream firepower, and get us some boom boom now!"
I ripped the radio pack off the dead soldier, clambered to my feet, and began running back to the chopper. I pressed the receiver to my face and yelled. "We've got VC on the LZ! Send in the angels. Let's rock and roll!" I hit my marker, and right on time, the VFX team detonated the underground charge a few feet away, sending up a pyre of dirt and smoke. The explosion knocked me off my feet, but not the glasses off my face.
In order to keep the Harry Potter look from becoming too distracting, I'd instead been kept as baby-faced as possible.
The camera shakily rose with my torso. "What the fuck!" Until out of nowhere, a Viet Cong pounced on me with his bayonet and stabbed me through my prosthetic stomach. "AAaaAAhHH!" The VC made spaghetti bolognese of my innards for an uncomfortably long time as my fake guts were mangled.
Gunshots loudly popped as my assailant was gunned down. In the same motion of him falling over dead, the camera panned to Donald as Alpa playing Motown. "That's for Brooklyn, muthafucka!"
I scooped up my organs. "I think I can put it back in!"
Fats in an impressive show of strength hauled me up on his shoulders as the three of us desperately made our way back to the helicopter under a spray of bullets. I kept yelling and reeling in my trailing intestines until Fats deposited me onto the bed of the chopper.
While the cast kept giving their shouty overdramatic lines, I continued to play with myself. "What is this? Is this a kidney? Where does it go? Do I need both?" With growing alarm and delirium. I turned my head to the side, spotted something across the battlefield, and shakily pointed one blood drenched finger between my arguing platoon's line of sight. "S-sarge, it's Four Leaf."
Ben Stiller as Four Leaf rag dolled himself out from behind a bush as an entire infantry of VC riddled him with bullets.
We all tearfully watched and lamented as he failed to die despite a full ammunitions cache unloaded into him with a spray of a hundred squibs.
"Survive!" No breaking for RDJ. "Cover me! You limp-dick fuckers!" Osiris, with only a single pistol, sprinted off on his march of heroes while his plot armour got him safely to Four Leaf.
The crane jostled, and the helicopter fuselage lifted off the ground and we weathered the hail of incoming bullets. Fats slipped out of the helicopter and, with the help of his incredible strength (the harness) latched on to the landing gear.
While Osiris and Four Leaf had their dramatic moment, the camera captured them, bringing our rollercoaster ride to an end.
At least until Four Leaf transformed back into Tugg Speedman, the failing action star. "Hey can we call cut?"
"Hey what's going on? My butt is hurting!" Jack let go of the landing gear and began singing on his harness below us. "It's riding up my crack."
My American accent fell away, and I added to the chaos of the scene by ditching Brooklyn and becoming Barnaby Cunningham. "Mr Cockburn, sir. Are we cutting?" I dropped an octave, pretended I was a shadow minister in the British cabinet, and adopted the affected accent of the aristocracy.
"No!" Steve Coogan shouted at me. "Get down, you're dead!"
"Very well." I laid flat down, stuck my tongue out, and posed like a chalk outline.
"Chino!" Alpa Chino pulled out a cell phone and can of Booty Sweat from one of his many pockets. "What? No no no l, listen! Hell no, I didn't pee on that girl! I was peeing, and she walked past. Not my fault she stayed there!"
My kidney left my hand and hit Alpa on the side of his head. "Would you mind terribly providing that young woman's contact information?"
"Yeah, fam. No problem. Don't listen to her when she asks you to eat asparagus, though."
"Action Jackson can't cry so we need rewrites now! Ain't that just great?" Osiris couldn't be referred to as Kirk yet because the DVD commentary wasn't done.
"C'mon Kirk, I'm ready to do the scene!" Speedman flailed his blown off prosthetic arms.
"What the fuck is going on!?" Fats kept swinging.
Danny McBride, as the demolitions expert, also entered the fray as all the actors spun their wheels in different directions, driving the director into a hopping rage. "Shit, shit, shit!"
"That's this signal! Go, go, go!"
The jets would be added in post, but as the mountainside we were on exploded into a ballistic festival, their payload was very real.
"Mother nature just pissed her pants!"
"Holy fuck!"]
Now that's how you start a movie off with a bang!