Chapter 372: This is an actor's self-cultivation
The newcomers looked unfriendly. The leader, a burly man, had a dragon tattoo coiling over his shoulder and down his neck. He rhythmically tapped a steel pipe against his palm.
“Who’s in charge here? You’re blocking the road, delaying our money-making. How do you want to settle this?”
Lin Wan immediately stepped forward, shielding Jiang Ci and Chen Yi behind her. She was about to reach for her phone to call the police.
But Jiang Ci reached out, gently pressing down on her shoulder. He stepped past Lin Wan and walked straight toward the man with the over-the-shoulder dragon tattoo, his face even carrying a hint of curiosity.
“Big brother,” Jiang Ci spoke up, “it was wrong of us to block the road.”
The gang leader clearly hadn’t expected anyone to dare walk out like this. His pipe-tapping motion stopped.
“Good that you know it was wrong.” He slung the pipe over his shoulder, tilting his head. “Compensation. Looking at your shabby state, give us fifty thousand, and this matter is settled.”
Jiang Ci shook his head.
The gang leader’s face, full of hardened flesh, twitched. “What? Think it’s too little?”
Jiang Ci ignored his threat. Instead, he pointed at the pile of scrap metal and junk on the film set.
“We’re short on background actors.”
The gang leader froze, his brain momentarily failing to process this.
Jiang Ci continued, “Two hundred a day, includes a boxed lunch. Playing gangsters. You in or not?”
The scene instantly fell into dead silence.
The men holding steel pipes looked at each other, seriously doubting their own hearing. They were here to collect protection money, not to look for work.
The gang leader lowered the pipe from his shoulder, pointing it at Jiang Ci’s nose. “Are you fucking messing with me?”
“Not messing with you.” Jiang Ci’s expression was sincere. “Look, your vibe, these tattoos, the weapons in your hands… you don’t even need makeup, you can go straight on camera. Natural-born actors.”
He even added a critique, “Especially you, big brother. This over-the-shoulder dragon… you look like a man with a story.”
These words completely baffled the gang leader.
Money? Food? And getting on TV?
One of his underlings behind him couldn’t hold back, whispering, “Boss, two hundred a day is way better than what we get waiting for odd jobs.”
Another chimed in, “And they provide food… I smelled that boxed lunch when we passed by earlier, it smelled really good.”
The gang leader gradually wavered.
He cleared his throat, trying to maintain a final shred of authority. “Two hundred? Are you treating us like beggars? Our brothers’ appearance fees are very expensive!”
Jiang Ci nodded, fished his phone out of his pocket, and expertly opened the calculator app.
“Big brother plays supporting male character number eight. Three hundred for you. These brothers here count as special extras. Two hundred fifty each. Total, thirteen hundred.”
He showed the phone screen to the other man.
“Payment in cash, right after this scene is done.”
The gang leader looked at the number, then at the steel pipe in his hand, then at his clearly tempted brothers behind him. An intense internal struggle ensued.
In the end, the desire for money triumphed over professional integrity.
“Deal!” He threw the pipe on the ground. “But first, the boxed lunch has to have meat in it!”
Thus, an eerie scene unfolded during the preparations for the next shoot.
Several gangsters who had been menacing just a second ago were now obediently lining up at the set assistant’s station, receiving costumes and registering their IDs.
Lin Wan leaned against the wall, feeling her worldview had been shaken.
Gu Zhiyuan, however, rubbed his hands together excitedly. He circled the gang leader twice, nodding incessantly.
“Yes! That’s exactly the right energy! Playing oneself! Truly playing oneself!”
The next scene was Chen San playing a low-level thug who gets hacked to death by a gang.
After the “real gangster” extras changed into their costumes, their aura of ruthless bandits grew even stronger.
Before filming started, Jiang Ci, holding a prop machete, approached the gang leader and began an “academic discussion.”
“Big brother, let me ask for your advice.” Jiang Ci inquired humbly. “When you slash down from my chest with this blade, should I twitch first? Or just die instantly?”
The gang leader, who was studying his single line in the script, was stunned by the question.
“Isn’t it over once you’re dead?”
“Not good enough.” Jiang Ci seriously objected. “The way of dying is very important. I think I should first clutch the wound, my eyes revealing thoughts of my old mother…”
The gang leader’s patience began to wear thin.
“And then,” Jiang Ci continued, immersed in his creative process, “when my body falls, it can’t be too stiff. It needs to have that broken feeling of life’s residual warmth dissipating. My fingers should feebly scrape the ground a couple of times at the end, expressing my final attachment to this world.”
The gang leader playing the killer finally snapped.
“Are you done yet?!” He threw the prop knife on the ground. “You die when I slash you! What’s with all this nonsense?! Keep yapping and I’ll really fucking hack you!”
This genuine breakdown was completely captured by a nearby camera that was testing its shot.
Behind the monitor, Gu Zhiyuan slapped his thigh.
“Good! That’s exactly the reaction I want! Scene one, take three! Action!”
The gang leader “slashed” down with his knife. Jiang Ci fell to the ground accordingly.
He lay in the muddy water, eyes tightly shut. His body gave a slight twitch, then went completely still.
Gu Zhiyuan didn’t call cut. Using a wide-angle lens, he distorted the faces of everyone in the frame, creating a sense of absurd oppression.
The camera slowly panned across the arrogant faces of the gangsters.
Jiang Ci lay on the ground playing dead. Whenever he sensed the camera was about to pan over him, he would subtly adjust his posture, trying to steal the shot.
One moment his finger would twitch. The next, a bit of “stage blood” would trickle from the corner of his mouth.
Lying in the mud, one eye closed, he secretly cracked open the other a slit, peeking at the camera’s direction.
That humble yet obsessive drive of “even dying must be done with a sense of presence” made the crew behind the monitor both want to laugh and feel a pang of sorrow.
Just then, an accident happened.
A scrawny stray dog, having crawled out from some hole, wandered into the shot.
It walked over to Jiang Ci, who was lying on the ground playing dead, and lowered its head to sniff his face.
Gu Zhiyuan gripped the walkie-talkie, his palm sweaty, ready to call cut at any moment.
The dog sniffed for a while, confirming this person posed no threat.
Then, it lifted its hind leg.
Everyone instinctively gasped.
It was going to pee on his head.
In that split second, Jiang Ci did not jump up to shoo the dog away.
Maintaining the stiffness of a corpse, his lips trembled ever so slightly. From deep in his throat, he emitted a few low, guttural “woof woof” sounds.
The stray dog, startled by this sudden “corpse-speak,” shuddered, tucked its tail between its legs, let out a whimper, and fled swiftly.
The entire set fell so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
A few seconds later, Gu Zhiyuan’s ecstatic roar exploded from the walkie-talkie.
“Cut! That’s a wrap! Keep that scene! An absolute stroke of genius!”
That scene with the “real gangsters” turned out surprisingly well, even praised by Gu Zhiyuan as “heaven-sent material.”
Riding this wave of manic energy, the film crew rushed to finish all the exterior conflict scenes within two days.
The filming progress advanced by leaps and bounds. Soon, they moved to the set of the “Pig Cage Tenement,” to that cramped rented room belonging to Chen San.
Tonight’s scene was Chen San alone in front of a mirror, practicing his “gunshot reaction.”
Jiang Ci’s one-man show.
Jiang Ci stood before the mirror, wearing an old T-shirt.
Facing his reflection, he raised his hand, mimicking firing a gun.
“Bang.”
He provided the sound effect with his mouth, and his body fell backward in response.
Then, he got back up.
“Bang.”
He fell down again.
He got up again.
Each time he hit the ground, the sound was duller, more solid than the last.
His knees and elbows, scraped against the rough cement floor, were already raw and bleeding, bruised purple and blue.
That focus wasn’t for anyone else. It was solely for the self in the mirror who “died more realistically” with each attempt.
After the day’s filming ended, Chen Yi, unprecedentedly, asked Gu Zhiyuan for the day’s footage.
She rewatched the footage on the monitor—the “Chen San” who “played possum” in the mud to steal the shot, even acted opposite a dog—her heart filled with mixed emotions.
It wasn’t any acting school she recognized.
Burdened with full of doubts and an indescribable, complex feeling, she found her way to the door of Chen San’s rented room.
And then, she saw the even more crazed scene inside.
She stood at the doorway, watching Jiang Ci fall again and again, and get up again and again.
Her expression shifted from initial bewilderment, to faint mockery, and finally settled into a complex silence.
She saw the light in Jiang Ci’s eyes.
That light was bright, obsessive.
In the script, it was written that Liu Piaopiao would push the door open and ask Chen San, “What are you trying so desperately hard for?”
Now, outside the script.
When Jiang Ci finally exhausted his strength.
Outside the door, Chen Yi leaned against the wall, her hand on the doorknob trembling slightly.
In the end, she gently pushed the door open.
She looked at the man and asked the same question.
“What are you trying so desperately hard for?”
Jiang Ci looked up, saw it was her, and was momentarily stunned.
He answered in the most ordinary tone.
“This is an actor’s self-cultivation.”
Chen Yi felt as if struck by lightning.
She had read this sentence countless times in textbooks, heard it from countless sanctimonious teachers and directors.
But now, these words came from the mouth of an established Film Emperor, and he was actually living by them.
So, there really were people… who treated the contents of that book as their faith.