5 months to go... Update 2.

The past half a year has been an interesting one. As I said in my earlier entry, I started off this year teaching in Korea, but thanks to the wonderful service one can expect from Delta Airlines, my luggage was lost on my way out there, and I had to spend the first 3 weeks both living AND teaching in the same sh-- i was wearing when I got off the plane. (Particularly since I'm too big to find clothes ANYWHERE on this side of the world.) Thankfully, I had 2 extra pairs of undies and an extra pair of socks, (socks I could buy- underwear was a no-go), so I was thankful for that, but it was brutal nonetheless. Yet another reason to be thankful for the small things.

It was also a lesson learned- they more or less ignored me when I tried to stay polite. Once I hit the third week though, I was angry as hell, told them they were damaging the reputability of both myself and the company I was working for, and that if they didn't find my sh--, I would do absolutely everything in one person's power to make all of their lives a living hell. Aside from threatening to get the management of that company involved, and writing about what a shi--ty experience I had on every online travel forum I could find, I told them I would flood every email address I could find with messages, and call non-stop. I also demanded the names of not just the manager involved but the all of the other people working to insure that my luggage was found, so that I could write each of them personally. Needless to say, after that, they found it immediately, and had it in about 2 days. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but I didn`t feel so.

The lesson: Oftentimes even if your opponent is way larger than you, they'll still back down if you show you're willing and able to put a hurt on them.

So that was January. Anyway, after that, I came back to Tokyo, and made my transition back into life relatively smoothly, and with no real hangups. (After the 4th or 5th time doing it, it's about doggone time.) And then, a few weeks later, I got the news: the company I was pronunciation coaching through is closing down. There goes my great, well-paying job with an American boss, and a schedule flexible enough to keep up with my action training.

With that, as things began winding down there, and my hours kept getting cut back, my paychecks went from about $3500 a month (last year) to about $600 a month. (Which coincidentally is exactly how much the rent for my room is).

Anyway, to make a long story short, I decided that enough was enough, and that it was time to start planning my transition back to my own country, where I could continue on this journey without having to deal with the language, cultural, and physical size barriers that I`m constantly having to fight my way past out here. I'd always planned to make it back to the states by 30 anyway, and at 29 now, it wasn't too far off.

Basically, the plan was that I would move to Fort McMurray, Canada (SUPER-far north) to work on an oil boom town for a few months and then use the cash I could make to transition into life in California. (Where I always wanted to end up). I wasn`t exactly fond of the idea of doing the oil drilling thing (for one because of my own political reasons...but also because you`re extremely far north, so it`s freezing, you work insanely long hours, and I`ve heard people occasionally die, lose limbs or get stabbed in bar fights up there), BUT you can make as much as $10,000 in a month doing it, and having 2 friends who did it and were fine, I figured I`d do alright.

Anyway, before leaving though, I wanted to tell my main actor director, and teacher Yuji-san, (the director of Death Trance) that I was thinking about leaving if I couldn't get any action work in the fall.
At this point, I have 9 years of English teaching experience, so getting work isn`t really an issue (the last job I was offered paid $130 per 90 minute lesson) but the fact of the matter is, I am not here to work a 9 to 5 job. I can do that much more comfortably in my own country, and in my own language. I am here to do action. If I can`t do action, it`s time to go home.

In any event, when I told him, he said that the reason I wasn't getting action work wasn't because I lacked talent. My action was good. The problem is that because I was making them by myself, my demo reels looked 'homemade', so people weren`t taking me seriously. I needed one that looked big budget... and he said that he wanted to make it for me. (He also said he'd actually been planning to for a while, but had always just been busy).

At this point, he's one of the best action directors in Asia, and in addition to working on Japanese films, he also works on Korean, Hong Kong, and New Zealand films, and he's recently completed work on his first Hollywood film. (An upcoming movie called Laundry Warrior- amazingly enough it had a budget of $40 million, but it was a total independent joint Hollywood/Korean Independent film- keep an eye out for it! It's supposed to be sweet!) I was both shocked and honored that he thought I was worth his time.

He offered to cover all of the expenses out of pocket himself, set aside 3 days to film it, and put together a full-on film crew. And he made good on his word for all of it. The filming was over the course of 3 days in 3 different locations and he put together a crew of 14 people (make-up, costume, lighting, 2 camera-men, 5 stunt men (3 from Japan, 1 from the movie 300, 1 from Laundry Warrior), fight coreographer, etc.).

Working under him was amazing. 2 out of the 3 days we were filming in the rain. We started early in the morning and filmed until we ran out of light every day. No lunch breaks, no dinner break, and on one day, I didn't even get to go to the bathroom until almost 5:00pm. It was brutal and I lost a lot of weight, but we were still always laughing and joking, and I enjoyed every minute of it. It was also the most concentrated learning experience I ever could have asked for. And he told me that over the course of those three days, I improved dramatically.

At present, that reel is in the midst of being edited, and it will be done Wednesday the 28th.

The funny thing is though, we haven't even finished the damn thing yet, and over the course of the one month we've been working on it, I've been cast as a main character in a Japanese action movie being filmed in Thailand next year that he's doing the action directing for (complete with both English and Japanese speaking lines), I've been contacted by one American producer who wants to profile my life on his cable TV show (17 million viewers), and another American producer who wants me to audition for a main spot in a film that might turn into a series on Fox, I was offered a part in a live action show at the beginning of next month, and I met an agent who wants to send me to China to do action films there too. It all just happened at once. (When I got the call from the American producer I was actually down to my last $2, and was comtemplating how I was planning to feed myself the next day.) Now all I have to do is not starve to death while I`m waiting for all this to come to fruition.