The Great Acting Blog: “The Movie That Never Was”

The Great Acting Blog: “The Movie That Never Was”

I once knew an actor who, every time I ran into him, kept telling me that he was going to make a feature film and that there was a part in it for me. The first time he told me this, I thought “oh wow” (I was young). Then a little bit of time passed and I ran into him again and he told me exactly the same thing; “I’m gonna make a movie and there’s a part in it for you”. Anyway, this continued for about a period of five years, after which time I lost contact with him for about another five years, until I ran into him in the street. Almost inevitably, he told me was no longer acting, then I asked him about his film and whether he ever did make it  but he just looked at me with a blank expression, as though he hadn’t a clue what I was talking about. I didn’t push the point, frankly the whole moment was awkward and embarrassing, our initial excitement at meeting each other again dissipated quickly. It was not long before we said goodbye and walked on.

The reason I felt embarrassed was because this guy never ever had any intention whatsoever of making that film. And I knew it. In fact, whenever he had spoken about it, all he ever really described was about half a scene and a few shots. There wasn’t even any kind of broad narrative or overarching idea. Of course, the reason he would always wheel it out, was to give himself some kind of social value, as if without it he was not worthy of anyone’s time and attention. Despite my naive response in the beginning, I had always humoured him by pretending to be interested in the phantom project. However, now that he was no longer an actor, the feature film ruse was no longer required, in fact, judging from his blank expression when I mentioned it, it seems he had long forgotten about it. And this fact laid bare my own hypocrisy: knowing there was never going to be any film, I still enquired about it.

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