It‘s 4:15 am. Woke up, I get dressed, pack my bag and I go to my first day as Background actor in the upcoming film of The Smashing Machine, directed by Benny Safdie and stars Dwayne Johnson about the story of the UFC fighter Mark Kerr.
When I got to set, it‘s a massive construction of one of the scenes from the trailer, a huge ring in the middle and everyone is trying to contain their emotions. When I looked around, they were trying to resemble TOKYO in the PNE in Vancouver. How crazy. Then, i saw… him. The one. The only. BENNY SAFDIE. He was directing the scene, we as background actors were directed by him. I WAS DIRECTED BY HIM. Lights, camera and action, i was there, dressed in character without any lines, of course. But that experience was magical.
Benny was really kind with his cast and crew, the way he used everything in his power to have the tecnical crew included was in another level. LUNCH TIME.
No signs of the biggest star - THE ROCK.
For lunch, was an exciting menu blending hawaian style food, although, Dwayne is in a strict diet and he can‘t eat. Sorry, Dwayne. But me, I enjoyed, like I was doing some supporting character. Then, we proceed to do another scene, but let me tell you, all the scenes that we were shooting was with Dwayne‘s stunt guy, he was not on set. Apparently, Dwayne has a request to only film certain amount of hours on set and then returned to his trailer. But after we shoot that scene, DWAYNE arrived in a big black SUV like a rock star. Full makeup, baby oil in his chest and proceeding to be directed by the great Benny. The two has the best chemistry, they understand each other and Dwayne was kind to us. He‘s super chill and often he cracked jokes with one of us. I was lucky enough, because as a background actor, I kept thinking: WHAT IF I DO SOMETHING TO STAND OUT ?
Then, I started to scream and laugh like no other in that spesific scene. And some people say that my laugh is funny and contagious. Well, it worked. Dwayne just turned around to me and we exchange some words for 2 minutes and then Benny laughing his ass off, approached me and told me that he will edit this film, but my minute of fame could be included in the movie if it fits the tone, I was loss of words. I was more excited to meet Benny than Dwayne, but that‘s a personal opinion for me.
When it was time to go, Benny was talking to the crew members, and I decided to approached him, I know that in industry standard that could be considered kind of rude, or not professional. It was my only day on set, and I needed to do this. Anyways, I know we all signed NDA‘s, but I will say that I talked with Benny for over 10 minutes about filmmaking and it was worth everything. I didn‘t care in those minutes about my problems, I was talking to BENNY SAFDIE. How crazy is that?
I said goodbye to everyone and proceed to go into my next adventure.
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