The next day, Pei Yan reported to set and started filming.
A production did not shoot a movie scene by scene in script order. The director jumped around according to everyone’s schedules and first filmed the simpler material for whichever actors had already joined the production.
Every evening, a detailed schedule was handed over telling you which scenes you would shoot the next day.
After several days of filming, things were going fairly smoothly. He had not frozen up and had not embarrassed himself.
In one scene, playing the villain boss’s psychotic younger brother, he went to a Chinese martial-arts school to make trouble for the protagonist and smash the place up, his bald head polished bright. The makeup artist painted Pei Yan’s face pale enough to resemble a white man and lined his eyes in pure black, giving him a dangerous air. His walk had a loose, floating swagger; his gaze was sharp, looking at people sideways; the moment he struck, he used vicious moves. Every punch against the stunt performers landed with real weight, and he wrecked the entire training hall.
The actions of smashing furniture and breaking props were shot more than a dozen times from different angles. Wherever the director indicated his foot needed to land in frame, Pei Yan kicked exactly there, wasting none of the effort of the cinematographer and camera assistants sliding back and forth on the track.
The finished product of an action film looked spectacular, but actually shooting one was extremely dull and exhausting.
Pei Yan was one of the few who could kick cleanly. Several other actors, including the lead, could not hit the spot no matter where they were told to kick. For front-facing close-ups they could not use doubles, and they were clumsy as hell. They kicked at the wrong angle, sent objects along the wrong arc, missed the designated landing point, or nailed some unlucky camera assistant.
When the famous director finally called, “Good,” he gave Pei Yan a nod without much expression. Directors at that level rarely praised actors casually. If he did not call you an idiot to your face, that already counted as praise.
The director really was a very famous Hollywood master of action movies. His surname was ridiculously long, perhaps from some small Eastern European country, and most people could not remember how to spell it. His first name was Charles. People on set privately called him “Fat Charles,” while to his face they called him “Big Daddy,” shamelessly flattering their great father.
The last take had already passed when Pei Yan said to the director and cinematographer, “Can we do one more? I’ll give you something fancy.”
Pei Yan kicked through the wooden board he was supposed to destroy, then casually grabbed a large grapefruit that had been placed on a table as a prop. It was a real fresh grapefruit. He had seen a props assistant carry in a whole bag of them that morning.
The big grapefruit flew toward the camera with a sharp smack.
The cinematographer seemed stunned for a moment and instinctively ducked backward. If that thing hit the camera, the equipment was too expensive to damage.
Pei Yan moved faster than the grapefruit. At the instant the large fruit was almost in front of the lens, his toe struck it with perfect accuracy and sent it flying away.
With a wet pop, the grapefruit burst to pieces, spraying dripping pink flesh and juice toward a cluster of heads inside the studio.
Uh…
Someone got hit, taking an entire bowl of grapefruit soup straight to the face.
Who? The male lead himself, Comrade Tony, the red-hot star who supposedly had one-eighth Asian ancestry. The male lead stared innocently at Pei Yan in shock, his costume splattered and a flower of pink grapefruit pulp blooming across his face. He was handsome to begin with, and now his pale face was literally flushed pink.
Pei Yan raised an eyebrow, equally innocent. “Huh. Thought you could dodge.”
Several stuntmen watching the excitement from a distance, all members of the Zhuang Stunt Team, exchanged looks. “Told you. That Pei bastard is trouble wherever he goes. Rotten mind. He did that on purpose.”
Fat Charles did not even shift his attention toward Tony, who had just been hit. As a professional film fanatic, nothing distracted him. He pointed at Pei Yan and shouted, “That take was good. Beautiful! Keep it!”
The cinematographer muttered something under his breath and told Big Daddy the camera had shaken just now, so the take was a little blurry.
Fat Charles used his favorite insult. Idiot. Shoot it again.
This time the cinematographer concentrated completely, set the camera properly, kept the track smooth, and the entire set stayed quiet. Pei Yan performed the kick again, exactly the same motion, with no difference in speed, force, or angle, perfectly reproducing the previous take.
He was telling these people: that kick was not a lucky fluke. I could do it a hundred times and every one would look this good.
And if you did not cast me as the lead, that was not my loss. It was your production’s loss.
Everyone standing where the projectile was going to land moved away. Nobody was stupid enough to stay there and get a second bowl of grapefruit soup.
Another scene involved the little psychopath provoking the protagonist. In the setup, the two men were on a construction crane dozens of meters above the ground, positioned to overlook Beverly Hills and Hollywood, competing at upside-down pull-ups while hanging from the crane.
Naturally, the production was not actually going to make stars risk their lives at the top of a crane dozens of meters in the air. Everything was filmed inside the studio. The set used a crane arm only a few meters high, while a large camera jib shot the protagonist from high and low angles to create the sense of being suspended in space. The rest would be finished on computers in post-production, compositing the magnificent Los Angeles landscape into a realistic background.
To be fair, Tony worked very hard and was extremely professional. He was another young star on the rise, only one year older than Pei Yan, and his salary was climbing. He worked himself hard on set. In Hollywood, no matter how big a star you were, if you dared act precious, refuse to work, or neglect your character, you simply could not survive.
Tony had a safety line attached at his lower back. He walked onto the crane arm and slowly crouched, carefully following instructions from the stunt coordinator. Finally, with two assistants helping him, he managed to get into the upside-down position.
For an ordinary person, it genuinely was challenging.
The director called NG several times. No. Again.
The moment Tony was suspended, his whole body went rigid. And he was supposed to perform movements too? The male lead had to compete with the villain in badass upside-down pull-ups, yet there he was hanging in midair trembling from head to toe like a flower in the wind. The movement looked ugly and did not pass.
Tony’s assistant went to discuss it with the director. If they suspended him with wires and let the rig take some of his weight, he could make the movement look better.
Fat Charles cursed. In the script the man was supposed to go up bare-chested in tiny shorts. If he wore a wire harness, would it look right? They could not even fix that cleanly in post.
Pei Yan went up next, also with one safety line at his lower back.
He needed nobody’s help. He straddled the crane arm, hooked one foot around it, let go with both hands and flipped downward, hanging upside down, then performed the pull-up. He passed in one take.
Fat Charles sat in the director’s vehicle staring at Pei Yan and shouted, “Ian, do that again. One more take! Bring the camera jib in close. I want a close-up of his abs!”
The director had improvised a close-up for Pei Yan on the spot. The large jib swung in close and rotated almost 360 degrees, covering him from every angle. You could already imagine the finished shot: green hills stretching into the distance, endless scenery, Pei Yan walking dangerously along a crane arm dozens of meters in the air, oiled abdominal and back muscles gleaming beneath the sun, the destructive, dangerous beauty of male physical power.
When the take ended, Pei Yan flipped himself back up and climbed down from the top of the crane arm. Scattered applause clearly sounded around the set. A few Americans, along with several brothers from the Zhuang Stunt Team, were actually clapping for him.
Tony’s take still had not passed. He remained hanging inside the studio.
Pei Yan had already gone back to his trailer to cool off. His villain always wrapped earlier than the male lead. With nothing to do, he sat there eating from a bag of snacks and had time to think about other things.
From behind him, Fat Charles seemed to curse, “FUCK. If he can’t do it, we’ll have to put a stuntman up there for the shot. Find somebody with the same height and body, bare-chested, then replace the head in post, idiot!… Or just let Ian hang there for him!”
And Tony had supposedly crammed three months of karate before filming. Pei Yan thought, Three months of cramming is useless. Your Grandpa Pei has trained since childhood. It took me more than ten years to reach this level.
It was exactly like Pei Yan cramming English for three months before coming over. Did that make him fluent? Like hell it did. There was still no comparing him to a native speaker. He chewed shredded squid and spicy strips while watching the others bustle around through the open door of his trailer, happily spectating with snacks in hand.
The strongest fighter in the cast, Zhuang Xiao, had not even joined the production yet, and the male lead’s action work was already clumsy enough to make Big Daddy furious and consider replacing him.
The third scene that day jumped directly to a bed scene.
The assistant director came to Pei Yan’s trailer beforehand to discuss it. No problem with the bed scene? Any requirements?
“You can make requests?” Pei Yan looked cockily at the assistant director. “Then get me someone pretty, sexy, with big tits.”
The assistant director grinned meaningfully in the universal language of men. “I think Reese is pretty enough, sexy enough, and definitely has big tits.”
Pei Yan asked, “You cast her?”
The assistant director said, “No way. Big Daddy picked her himself! The old guy just likes flirtatious brown-skinned women. Exactly his type… hahaha…”
Private jokes between men were all dirty. Everyone knew the old bastard liked young, beautiful women of color. He had already married five times in his life, and his freshly acquired fifth wife was an eighteen-year-old Argentine model. That principle seemed universal. Famous directors in every country somehow had an endless supply of young beauties willing to give them a whole brood of children.
Pei Yan nodded. “No problem. Let’s shoot.”
Bed scenes in this kind of action movie only suggested the act and did not linger over details like an explicit Category III film. The male and female actors would press close, kiss, touch, then roll onto a large bed together. The formula came straight from the 007 movies. Once audiences got used to it, every film of this type seemed obligated to give both the righteous hero and the villain a decorative woman to sleep with.
Elio’s Notes: “Category III” refers to Hong Kong’s adults-only film classification, often associated with sexually explicit or otherwise restricted content.
The righteous male lead was paired with a clean, innocent-looking Chinatown girl with black hair and black eyes.
The villainous psychotic younger brother, Deng Yun, was paired with a brown-skinned little temptress whose eyes carried a deliberately seductive look, emphasizing the sharp aesthetic contrast between the righteous and villainous sides.
Because one shot exposed her back and buttocks, the assistant director asked Reese, “Baby, do you need a modesty garment?”
The chocolate-skinned beauty gave Mr. Pei an experienced sideways glance and smiled. “No. I’ll shoot naturally.”
The assistant director then asked Pei Yan, “Do you want protective shorts?”
Pei Yan raised an eyebrow. “Is there any need? I can shoot it either way.”
The villain’s bed scene really was more decadent and sexual than the hero’s. This section would probably be cut for the mainland release, leaving only material above the neck. Deng Yun, the lustful little psychopath, had to violently throw his partner onto the bed, pull down her skirt to expose her buttocks, strike her several times with a whip, then press down over her.
The villain’s eyelids were lined black, the outer corners carrying a demonic edge. The posture as he pressed over her was domineering, his manner rough and vicious.
Filming a bed scene was actually boring and funny. One second the man and woman were sitting separately on opposite sides of the bed, strangers who barely spoke. The director called ACTION and they instantly turned, embraced each other, and acted as though they were incredibly familiar.
Pei Yan did not care. He could not even properly pronounce the brown-haired foreign girl’s name in front of him. Once they left this set, neither would know the other. He had no psychological pressure at all, and the mainland theatrical release would not show it anyway, so he was not worried about scandal.
The director called stop. The two separated immediately. Pei Yan felt absolutely nothing. Half a second after CUT he was out of character, his face blank.
When he turned around, he unexpectedly saw that person in the distance.
Wasn’t that Zhuang Xiao?
The studio had not been cleared. Zhuang Xiao was talking with several people far away, and at that moment their eyes met.
Zhuang Xiao greeted him with a hand gesture, still wearing that faint, almost-there smile.
Pei Yan immediately crooked a finger at his assistant standing nearby and called him over. “Zhuang Xiao’s here? Wasn’t he supposed to join tomorrow?”
His assistant said, “He isn’t joining today. He’s not filming. He came to visit the set.”
Pei Yan: “Whose set is he visiting?”
The assistant looked as if the answer were obvious. “Aren’t the action directors from his Zhuang Stunt Team working here? And seven or eight of his younger guys too.”
Pei Yan: “Oh… heh.”
Pei Yan asked again, “When did he get here? I didn’t see him just now. Has he been here a while?”
His assistant said, “A long time, sir. Didn’t they just clap for you?”
Pei Yan smiled. No wonder someone on set had been applauding him. The boss of the Zhuang Stunt Team had arrived, so naturally somebody had to lead the applause and give the newcomer some face.
The director now asked Pei Yan and Reese to do another take, complaining he had not been wild enough or perverted enough the first time. Your character has a sexual-sadism angle and is performing R-rated behavior. If it is not hot and bloody enough, what is the point?
The actress’s so-called protective garment would normally cover the sensitive areas in front while leaving only the required back and buttocks exposed. But this foreign girl wore nothing at all, smooth-skinned, her complexion looking as though she had been coated in maple syrup.
The male actor’s so-called protective shorts were flesh-colored underwear padded three layers thick, meant both to prevent direct skin contact and conceal inconvenient arousal.
Pei Yan wore only ordinary black boxer briefs. His gaze drifted lazily over the beautiful woman’s trembling backside, flecks of light in his eyes as he imagined that kind of ass. He brought the whip down hard, roughly turned her buttocks, grabbed and kneaded them a few times, then pressed down over her until their skin nearly met.
It was over in a few seconds. The take passed perfectly. Fat Charles smiled and, unusually, gave him a thumbs-up. “Ian, wild enough. Very good.”
Judging by the expressions of several cameramen, assistants, and crew members nearby, the take really had worked. Those gentlemen looked as though they might need to put on protective shorts immediately to hide themselves.
The instant the camera turned away, Pei Yan moved off the woman.
Fat Charles looked him up and down and grunted. “Kid, can’t you give me another take with a little impulse? Show me some reaction?”
Pei Yan did not understand. “That wasn’t impulsive or intense enough?”
The famous director was over fifty and his beard was already streaked white, but he was still exactly like every other man. Age was not the issue; his mind had no limits when it came to dirty jokes. He grabbed his own crotch and lifted it, publicly miming an erection. “Tsk. Not even a little reaction showed on camera. Good thing you weren’t wearing three layers of protective shorts. If I’d known, I’d have made you shoot naked!”
Several people nearby laughed along. The director was only teasing him.
And he was even using a filthy gesture to mess with him. Pei Yan felt deeply contemptuous inside. What reaction am I supposed to have with you people? You think I get physically aroused by just anyone?
He had no interest in groveling after foreign babes. He preferred homegrown goods.
Zhuang Xiao walked over smiling, and his first sentence went straight to the point. “Those shots just now were pretty impressive. Didn’t look like your first time here. Experienced.”
Pei Yan did not care. “What experience do I have?”
Zhuang Xiao teased him. “Smooth technique, completely at ease. How many times have you filmed that?”
Pei Yan was very straightforward. “How many times do I need to practice? It’s just a bed scene. I shoot it on set the way I do things normally.”
Who did he normally abuse? Nobody. There was nobody suitable for him to unleash that wild, rough desire on. If he got too heavy-handed, he was afraid other people could not take it. Boring. No fun.
Zhuang Xiao asked, “Everything going smoothly? Adjusting okay?”
“Smooth. Feels great.” When Pei Yan smiled, one corner of his mouth crooked slightly, creating that particular expression of his. “Especially when I pass in one take and get to watch those huge idiots kick at a board dozens of times, exhausted enough to puke and cry and still unable to get it right. Feels fantastic.”
“Hehe…” Zhuang Xiao once again showed the half-dimple Pei Yan particularly liked seeing. “Fine. I join tomorrow. I’ll watch you pass everything in one take!”
Pei Yan stared into Zhuang Xiao’s eyes. “Didn’t you already see it today?”
Zhuang Xiao said, “Too bad we don’t have any fight scenes against each other. No chance to spar.”
Pei Yan said, “Then practice on those idiots! Isn’t this movie basically the two of us villains teaming up to beat the hell out of those fools?”
Pei Yan flicked his eyes toward another trailer in the distance. Standing at its door was young, tender, pale little Tony. He and Zhuang Xiao looked at each other and laughed. On this particular point, the two villain bosses had reached an understanding.