Busking in the subway no doubt. I wish I could say that’s how we met but the truth is it was at a regular old casting session for Chris – the guitar-strumming nice guy to Paddy’s bad. Once you hear Eli Bridges sing, it’s hard not to want him in your life every single day. And the guy totes around a harmonica, which pretty much seals the deal as far as I’m concerned.
But let’s get to his blog post before I gush too much (and when Mr. Bridges is involved, that’s a real danger). Spontaneous combustion personified, Eli makes ‘acting natural’ look easy. Below, he blogs about a day on set when it was not so. Enjoy!
Subterranea
Eli Bridges takes the stage
First and foremost, the cast and crew are all badass and plain ol’ fun to work with which made the whole process easier for someone like me. I haven’t been in too many films and although I could go on and on about the experience of guerilla shooting there were many ‘traditional’ shooting days that were an equal, if not bigger, learning experience.
A portion of the shoot that really sticks out for me was shooting at the Bushwick Starr, a theater that’s pretty much hidden in plain sight (a trait that’s pretty indicative of Bushwick as I discovered over the course of the entire shoot). We were shooting everyone’s final performances – Walt’s tap-dancing, Jules’ burlesque, my song – which I thought would be my easiest two days on set. So far I’d been trying real hard to ‘pretend not to act’ in all my scenes but in this one it didn’t matter – I could just PERFORM and not worry about trying to hide it. A fun time, especially since I could include my guitar. She’s shy and has a tough time with being still on set… but we made it work.
Meeting my own expectations for the scene was far more difficult than I’d imagined (which was a simple in and out – do the scene, play the song, get some lo-mein and coffee back stage and start over). I often play down in the subway stations where music seems easier to come by moment to moment. I just jot down the songs I want to sing, hit up my usual spot(s) and just let loose.
But on set? As soon as I hit my lighting mark I froze. The song had to be performed in the moment for the camera and the sound recorder. When I record a song I am close to satisfied with it is because I can make myself unaware of how it’s being recorded. But here I stand in a single spotlight on a pitch-black stage. There’s Eric hunched over his audio mixer. Total silence except the occasional shuffle as the script supervisor flips through pages in her binder. There’s Bornila, her glasses glinting at the very edge of my vision. And here’s Gabe and his camera right in my face. All of a sudden it just seemed way to manufactured and despite weeks of rehearsal the song just wouldn’t come out. Needless to say, this totally threw me off.
It all leads to concepts of acting – a discussion that came up over and over again on set. How do you erase the sight of the camera and crew right there in front of you and just ‘be’? On our guerilla expeditions it was easy – they were just not there. But in the theater, without the support of fellow actors to play of and react to I just could not do it.
I went outside. Smoked a cigarette in the sunshine and played my guitar. Slowly, I was able to identify the organic place that music comes from for me and apply it to the scene. I had to bring myself back to the subway station. People might stop to listen and they might not, but it doesn’t matter and I keep playing anyway. Because music can and does magnify human emotions and I guess at the end of the day, that’s what movies try to do too. As an actor, my job is to live up on that level as well.
Self-induced break over I returned inside. ”Action!” was called and as far as I was concerned, that goddamned camera just melted away.
Tags: Elijah Bridges
