Although I was neither one of the extras nor one of the boat people, the tide of sympathy pulled me toward them. The current of alienation simultaneously pushed me away from the movie people, even though I was one of them. In short, I was in a familiar place, the place of feeling unfamiliar, which I responded to in my usual fashion by arming myself with a gin and tonic, my first of the evening. I was sure to be defenseless after my fourth or fifth such drink at this party, which took place under the stars as well as under a huge thatched pavilion that served as the canteen. After trading jokes with Harry, I watched the men of the crew crowd around the few white girls on the set. Meanwhile, a blond-wigged band from Manila pounded out a perfect cover of Diana Ross’s “Do You Know Where You’re Going To,” and I wondered if it had perhaps been one of the same Filipino bands that had played in Saigon’s hotels. On the edge of the dance floor sat the Auteur, chatting with the Thespian, while Violet flirted with the Idol at the same table. The Thespian was playing Captain Will Shamus; the Idol was Sergeant Jay Bellamy. While the Thespian had started his long career off Broadway, the Idol was a singer who had flashed to fame with a bubble-gum pop hit so sweet my teeth hurt just on hearing it. The Hamlet was the first movie role for the young man, who had shown his commitment by shaving off the evanescent hairdo much imitated by teenage boys into a GI haircut, then submitting himself to the military drilling required for his role with the enthusiasm of a sexually repressed fraternity initiate. Leaning back on his rattan chair, sporting a white T-shirt and khakis, his perfect ankles exposed because he wore no socks with his boat shoes, he was cool as ice cream even in the tropical weather. That was why he was an Idol, fame his natural aura. Rumor had it that he and the Thespian did not get along, the Thespian being an actor’s actor’s actor who not only stayed in character the entire time but kept his uniform on as well. The GI fatigues and combat boots he wore were the same set he’d donned three days before, when he arrived and became possibly the first actor in history to demand a pup tent instead of his air-conditioned trailer. Since frontline soldiers did not shower and shave, neither had he, and as a result he had begun to give off the aroma of slightly less than fresh ricotta. On his web belt was a holstered.45, and while all the other guns on the set were empty of ammunition or had blanks, his packed real bullets, or so went another rumor that I am fairly certain originated with the Thespian. He and the Auteur discussed Fellini while Violet and the Idol reminisced about a Sunset Strip nightclub. No one paid any attention to me at all, so I sidled over to the next table, where the Vietnamese actors sat.
Or, to put it more accurately, the actors playing the Vietnamese. My notes to the Auteur had actually effected some change in how we were represented, and more than simply how the screams were now all rendered as AIEYAAHHH!!! The most crucial change was the addition of three Vietnamese characters with actual speaking parts, an older brother, a younger sister, and a little brother whose parents had been slaughtered by King Cong. Older brother Binh, nicknamed Benny by the Green Berets, was filled with hatred of King Cong. He loved his American rescuers and served as their translator. Along with the one black Green Beret, he would meet the grisliest of deaths at the hands of King Cong. As for the sister, Mai, she would fall in love with the young, handsome, idealistic Sergeant Jay Bellamy. She would then be kidnapped and raped by King Cong, which served as the justification for the Green Berets utterly annihilating every last trace of King Cong. As for the little boy, he would be crowned with a Yankees cap in the final scene and airlifted into the heavens, his ultimate destination being Jay Bellamy’s family in St. Louis, where he would be given a golden retriever and the nickname Danny Boy.
This was better than nothing, right?
In my naïveté, I had simply assumed that once roles were created for Vietnamese people, Vietnamese actors would be found. But no. We looked, Violet told me yesterday, when we had found time to sip iced tea together on the hotel veranda. Frankly, there just weren’t any qualified Vietnamese actors. Most of them were amateurs and the handful of professionals all overacted. It must be the way they were trained. You’ll see. Just withhold judgment until you see these actors act. Unfortunately, withholding judgment was not one of my strong suits. What Violet was telling me was that we could not represent ourselves; we must be represented, in this case by other Asians. The little one playing Danny Boy was the scion of a venerable Filipino acting family, but if he looked Vietnamese, then I could pass for the pope. He was simply too round and well fed to be a boy living in a hamlet, the typical such stripling having been raised without the benefit of any milk except his mother’s. No doubt the young actor was talented. He had won the hearts of everyone on set when, on first being introduced, he had rendered a high-pitched version of “Feelings” at the bidding of his mother, who was sitting with him now and fanning him as he nursed a soda. During his performance, the maternal affection of this Venus was so strong I was pulled into her orbit, convinced by her that one day, mark her words, he would be on Broadway. You hear how he says feelings and not peelings? she whispered. Lessons in elocution! He does not speak like a Filipino at all. Modeling himself on the Thespian, Danny Boy insisted on inhabiting his role and demanded to be called Danny Boy instead of his name, which I could not remember anyway.
The actor playing his older brother could not stand the child, mostly because Danny Boy stole the show with malicious ease whenever the two appeared next to each other. This was especially galling for James Yoon, the best-known performer on the set after the Thespian and the Idol. Yoon was the Asian Everyman, a television actor whose face most people would know but whose name they could not recall. They would say, Oh, that’s the Chinese guy on that cop show, or That’s the Japanese gardener in that comedy, or That’s the Oriental guy, what’s his name. Yoon was, in fact, a Korean American in his midthirties who could play a decade older or a decade younger and assume the mask of any Asian ethnicity, so malleable were his generically handsome features. Despite his many television roles, however, he would most likely go down in history for a highly popular recurring television commercial selling Sheen, a brand of dishwashing soap. In each commercial, a different housewife would be confronted by a different kind of sticky dishwashing challenge that could only be solved by the appearance of her chuckling, knowing houseboy, who offered her not his manhood but his ever-ready bottle of Sheen. Relieved and amazed, the housewife would inquire as to how he had come across such cleaning wisdom, whereon he would turn to the camera, wink, smile, and utter the slogan now famous across the nation: Confucius say, Clean with Sheen!
Not surprisingly, Yoon was an alcoholic. His face was an accurate thermometer of his condition, the mercurial redness an indicator that the liquor had worked its way up from his toes to his vision, tongue, and brain, for he was flirting with the actress playing his sister even though neither was heterosexual. Yoon had made his intentions known to me over a dozen raw oysters at the hotel bar, their moist, open ears cocked upward to eavesdrop on his attempted seduction. No offense, I said, his hand on my knee, but I’ve never been so inclined. Yoon shrugged and removed his hand. I always assume a man is at least a latent homosexual until proven otherwise. In any case, you can’t blame a gay for trying, he said, smiling a smile utterly unlike my own. Having studied my smile and its effect on people, I knew it had the value of a second-rate global currency like the franc or the mark. But Yoon’s smile was the gold standard, so bright it was the only thing you could see or look at, so utterly overpowering in person it was understandable how he had won the role of the Sheen actor. I was happy to buy him a drink to show that I was not bothered by his advances, and he in turn bought me another, and we bonded that night and almost every night that followed.