WTF?

O.K. Last night was an experience that I will hopefully FOREVER forget! F-list filmmaking at it's finest!

Where to even begin? The scatter-brained and wholly unappreciative director who wasn't on set at the time I arrived? The entire production crew, made up mostly of the director's Texas friends, who treated the experience as just another excuse to smoke pounds and pounds of weed? The other two brand new actors (also just replaced that morning) who would now be playing my parents? Or the fact that the party scene we were filming consisted of about five people more or less pretending to be in a room crowded with celebrating party-goers?

Did I mention that the prop master, the production assistants and more than half of the party crowd decided to get up and UNANNOUNCED go to bed in the adjoining hotel room well before even a portion of the night's shots were filmed? No? Did I mention that apparently my character is half-Hispanic? No? Because the actor playing my father sure as shit is!

Maybe I just left these details out because I was too traumatized all evening long by the fact that this bachelor party scene included both a male and female stripper. The female stripper an "actress" friend of the director and the male stripper a man who turned out to actually be the real deal. Ordered, I imagine, in advance and paid for on the spot. The male stripper was a relatively pleasant and easy-going Latino man named Gabe who came dressed as a Cop. (Early on, this REALLY freaked out any of the crew members who had been participating in their pass-the-marijuana game) Through their haze of smoke I could tell that each of them was convinced he was a legitimate Officer of the Law.

During my first shot, a dancing scene that involved the male stripper entertaining the "crowd." Stripper Gabe initiated his routine by proceeding to grind himself upon my face, the smell of which I fear may haunt me for some time, and simulate positions I don't particularly feel comfortable disclosing here. I felt like I was Jennifer Connelly in "Requiem for a Dream" only I wasn't getting drugs out of the deal.

Luckily this all ended when I walked out of the shot, shocked that a director would allow something like this to happen without 1. First consulting me 2. Taking the time to block the movements or 3. At the very least discussing personal comfort levels with every single actor involved. I walked out of the shot and informed everyone in the room that I in no way felt comfortable with the nature of the material or the way that it was being handled and that from this point forward if they wished for me to continue in the role I would be acting as an observer of this stripper and not as a participant.

At the end of the evening I was apologized to profusely for the way that the entire shoot was being run and I was thanked for my candor, honesty and willingness to discuss my inherent concerns. I informed the leading members of the crew that I am not an actor who needs to be babied. I am not an actor who needs his hand held or to be patted on the back after each take. I am an actor who has worked on student and independent films before and one who is capable of handling controversial material. But the way that they were running their shoot was completely unnacceptable. I was promised that nothing like this would ever happen again during the course of filming and was surprised to be informed that the project was not a student film at all, as I had first been led to believe, but a seventy minute feature that would be filming through the beginning of March. And, more importantly, a film that comes accompanied with full actor's pay.

These people have one more chance.

The morning shots back at the Embassy Suites Hotel were scrapped because my Puerto Rican pappi has another engagement he needed to attend. But I will be headed to a church on the Upper West Side shortly to begin filming what is supposed to be my character's Wedding scene. I have no qualms about being the second, third or fourth actor to walk away from this production. I have never in my life experienced the sensation of being so outside myself. I have never in my life felt more violated (AND ON FILM). And I have never in my life been more amazed at just how unprofessional people can be.