Latest / EST's "Truth Be Told" / "Face" by Susan Kim

Transcript

"Face" by Susan Kim · EST's "Truth Be Told"

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome back to EST's Truth Be Told, Season 2 of Love and Theater.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're so happy to have 14 new stories, each performed at Ensemble Studio Theater, as part of the live event Truth Be Told, a true story night created by Susan Kim and David Zelnick, full of amazing, profound, and hilarious true stories.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: This story is from the theater and is from Susan Kim and asks, how low would you go to break into show business?
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's a story about dreams, hopes, and low-budget reality.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: When I was 15, my idea of a pop star was Edward Alby.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: Honestly, I would have I would have worn his face on a t-shirt.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: My friend David and I would sachet around our high school, imitating Liz, imitating Betty and Virginia Wolf.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: What a dump.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: I actually met Albie years later when he was a guest at the O'Neal and I was a star-struck playwright.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: His room was down the hall, and after he left, I came this close to going through his garbage for, I don't know, use Kleenex or nail clippings.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't, okay.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: The point is, I'd always worshiped not just theater, but anything with actors and a story and an audience, plays and movies and cartoons and TV.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I wanted to learn it all and be a part of it somehow.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: I poured over the best plays of the year and the 430 movie and theater in America, and I marked up the fall preview issue of TV Guide like I was picking classes.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: Which I was kind of, right?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: I then reviewed everything I saw from my high school paper in my regular feature, Kim's Column.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I'm afraid I spelled that with the capital K.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: And yes, this really does make me the biggest nerd you will ever know.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: This was all what I considered a career path, although there were obstacles, and the biggest was a funny, complex little woman I like to call mom.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: Korean parents were different back then because before there was squid game and K-drama, performing arts meant opera and Schubert song cycles and sending your younger, more talented daughter to Juilliard.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: Showbiz just wasn't in the picture like at all, but I had to say something.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: My mother and I were online at McDonald's, so I figured her guard was down.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: I worked up the nerve to tell her I wanted to act, and all she said was, well, it's not a very dignified profession.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, footnote.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: In Confucianism, the ancient social code that explains both why Koreans have achieved so much yet are still so irritating.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: Acting was considered one of the lowest possible jobs next to butcher and prostitute.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: And to any Korean, the only thing worse than death is losing face.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: Or as my mother called it, losing your face.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: So what did I do?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: Well, obviously, I ignored my mother.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I was a teenager and I was American, not Korean.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: Did I even have a face to lose?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: So in college, I did everything.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: I wrote 1x and I stage managed and did improv and designed sets and gave a very searing performance in the Maria Irene Forness play Pfefu and Her Friends.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: I was one of the friends.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: I had just turned 21 when my boyfriend, who had graduated the year before, got work on a film, so naturally I jumped at the chance to work on it too.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, it wasn't a play, it was a movie, and I wouldn't be acting, I'd be a PA, but the real problem was the film itself.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: Do any of you remember Mondo Cane?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: That was a low-budget Italian movie from the early 60s, the first of a sub-genre of so-called shockumentaries that purported to rip the veil off and expose the crazy things roiling beneath polite society, like cannibalism and devil worship and bestiality.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: So the film I was hired on, This is America Part 2, was Mondo Kane's cheaper, tackier, even shittier great-grandchild.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: Aimed at a European audience looking for even more reasons to look down on Americans.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: The film itself was one very small step above porn, and in fact everyone on it came from porn.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: The director, who was also a lapsed Jesuit priest, the director of photography, the associate producer, a former fluff girl.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: You can Google that later.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: The production manager.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: Or K.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: And you know what?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: I kind of felt the same way.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: So when I got to LA, the crew had already filmed several segments.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: The shooting schedule was great because each segment title told you exactly what it was.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: So, yes, I had missed out on quadriplegic leather bar and uh black belt karate nuns.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: Disappointing, disappointing.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: Still, filming had just begun.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: I was in Hollywood, baby, and I was raring to go.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: The first segment I worked on was Cocaine Church.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's about a church in Hollywood where the priest served cocaine instead of the usual host.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: And in case you're wondering, no, that church did not actually exist.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: And also, what are you a moron?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: My job was to track down large quantities of Manitol, a diuretic commonly used to cut cocaine, something I had somehow not learned as a theater and English major at Westland.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: And then chop it all into white powder.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: Strangely, I love my job.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: Then I had to find extras willing to stand around snorting what was essentially baby laxative for hours on camera for no pay.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: Easier than you think, and again, kind of thrilling.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: I was good at this.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: We then drove out to the desert to shoot nude skydiving wedding.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: And then down to San Diego to work on cremation urn, burial by rocket.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: I had already built the rocket about yay high from a kit, which was harder than you'd think.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: It took forever to light the fuse, and when we did, the whole thing took off in a giant loop and then exploded in mid-air.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: Kind of like the Challenger, minus, you know, the actual tragedy.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: Although it did set the hillside on fire, which we had to stamp out.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: Good times.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: So Captain Sticky was the closest thing we had to a real story in that he wasn't made up, at least not by us.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: Captain Sticky pre-existed the movie.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: He was a guy who liked to dress as a superhero and drive through the streets of San Diego looking for evil.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: Mostly, I think he just wanted to show off not just his stickmobile, which was basically a continental, but more importantly, the Stickettes, who were these two blondes who were impossibly tall and busty and clad barely in spandex and boots.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: So most of the shoot followed the captain solo, as he cruised the burbs looking for evil.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: Meanwhile, the rest of the crew and I had been sent ahead to prep the main location, which was Sticky's lair, a fancy ranch house on a ritzy block.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't his.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: The actual owner was this cheerful, kind of dumpy lady in her 40s who was thrilled her house was having its 15 minutes of fame.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: So we were still waiting for the stickettes to show when the Stickmobile drove up.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: As the associate producer tried to track the two women down, and this was long before cell phones, the director had to restage first one and then all of the interior scenes.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: This left the exterior shot, the one that the producer had insisted on, Captain Sticky driving into his driveway and being greeted by the Stiquettes.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: I had retreated into the equipment van because there was really nothing I could do.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, I was kind of dozing off when I heard voices.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: Bill, the director slash ex-priest, was standing outside.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: So you think she'll do it?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: Bob, the director of photography, replied, maybe she's a good sport.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: I looked in the rear view.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: Bill, looking more agitated than usual, was clutching a red, white, and blue tangle that I immediately recognized was a stickette uniform.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: So where do you think she went?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: Bob shrugged.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: She can't have gone far, though.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: The realization sank in.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: They were talking about me.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: They wanted me to be a stickette.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: My mind world.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: This was my opportunity, the one I'd been working towards, wasn't it?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it was my chance to be in a real movie.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: Perhaps not one with any real lines, but still a feature with an international release.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: I thought of Fufu and her friends and my improv group and my childhood dreams.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: What would Edward Albie do?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: I'll tell you what I did.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: I slid down even farther.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I lay there under some lighting equipment without moving for at least another hour.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: And when I finally emerged, everyone was rapping and no one was really talking to me, but I guess they got the shot.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: Years later, when Times Square was being renovated, I saw that one of the old movie palaces on 42nd was actually playing This Is America Part 2.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: So, of course, I went to see it.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: And there they were, the nudes, skydivers, the karate nuns, the extra snorting manital.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: It looked even crummier than I'd imagined.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: But it also had a charming vitality as well, you know, a kind of innocence, right?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: And Captain Sticky was so much younger than I remembered.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: He drove down a street and into his driveway where he was greeted by someone who snapped to attention.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: And there she was, the middle-aged housewife.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: The one who owned the house, packed into a superhero uniform that was simultaneously way too small and way too big and all the wrong places.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: She looked awful.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: But she was beaming.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: And that was when I realized two things.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: My god, did I dodge a bullet.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe, just maybe, I had a face after all.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: And in that one instant, I knew enough to save it.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Susan Kim writes plays, documentaries, novels, nonfiction, and kids' TV.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: She wonders if it's because no one form can truly contain her wild soul, or that she just has problems with her attention span.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Truth Be Told was created by Susan Kim and David Zelnick, and each episode was produced and scored by Eric Svakar.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed this, please tell your friends and keep listening.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: More stories about the moment I knew will be released every Monday, and about the theatre every Thursday.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And do hit like and subscribe.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: It really helps.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Till next time, remember the truth wants to be known.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yours too.