WHERE DO THE GANGSTERS COME FROM?

Victor and Nazim, who play two of the three gangsters John, Paul and Mondo, were in over the weekend to rehearse.

"Where do they come from?"

The gangsters ... how do i put it. Imagine three guys watching a movie. And as they see the movie, they think maybe they want to change stuff in the movie. So they have a chance to go in and meddle with the filmic world. But in order to go into the filmic world, they have to go in as a cinematic type as well: bruce lee style martial artist, frank sinatra style crooner, italian mob boss, the final girl in slasher films, a money-grubbing cowboy in a spaghetti western. They can't just go into a cinematic space as themselves, so these three go in as Humphrey Bogart style gangsters. Maltese Falcon. They've probably watched too much of those films.

So when they go in, they are restrained by those conventions: the hats, the suits, the cigarettes, the talk. They go in and the first thing they wanna do is have a bit of fun, so they go and seek out the girl, try to find out her name and bring her out for a harmless dance. Then they go and do what they really wanna do: kill the villain. So they go and meet the confused protagonist, give him a job and then go out of the cinematic space - perhaps back into their living room - and watch as Dev is now tasked to kill. The repurcussions are beyond their expectation - they probably wouldn't have predicted Lam Tak-Wing hijacking the gun and taking it to the supermarket.

Then again, they probably don't care. As John the gang leader says, "we're just here for a good movie".

CHEF BOY SPURNED TWICE

One boy. Two girls.

Both will turn him down.

"I'll cook you dinner. What do you like?"

Justin rehearsed with Ching Ching and Alice the other night, the girls respectively playing Rosalind and Siao Lian, the two cashier girls who spurn Lam Tak-Wing's offer for dinner. They go about it in very different ways, and it was enlightening for all of us to explore the disparity in their rejection of our poor chef.

Rosalind toys with Lam Tak-Wing

Rosalind was always going to be a bit of a bitch, and we first worked on getting Chingz to play girly girl flirt, and then juxtapose it with sultry seductress. It didn't fully work, of course, and we went with a coy seduction that gives and then holds back, and then gives a bit more. It drove Justin nuts. Which means it worked.

Alice on while developing Siao Lian's character

In the evolution of Siao Lian, she initially spoke mandarin, and then english, and then cantonese and finally a mix between english and cantonese. We finished rehearsal with Alice going for full manglish. Siao Lian is quite poorthing cos she'd actually love to be out with boys like LTW, but she is too responsible, over her sister and her job, to just take off and have her fun.

The night was fairly light-hearted, but i think we achieved a good deal considering it was the first time Justin met with the girls. In the end, they both got picked up by their cars, and any effort on Justin's part to "give you a lift" were spurned as well. Poor boy. No fish head curry.

JESSY'S TOE AND MIRROR TALK

Jessy and Ash were over tonight, and were doing a focus exercise using the song Dil laga liya (pictured above, and no, those aren't jessy and ash, that's priety zinta and her costar, but i swear we'll get there, i swear).

It was then that our two actors, astute as they were on the floor, got their feet tangled, eventuating in Jessy hurting the baby toe on her left foot. After some tlc that first involved tying her baby toe to her fourth toe (so that it didn't "pop out") and then followed by home-made ice pack, we got back into rehearsals. Jessy did spend the remainder of her night on the sofa, which worked out pretty alright considering that in her scene, she is in a bath tub.

Jessy also brought some really yummy chocolate chip muffins, which she baked till 1am the night before. Thanks Jessy!

"How do you feel if i told you that the whole dev story is a dream, a big conjurance in the mind of sapna, as something to soothe the hurt she feels? like, nothing about dev is real. it is all sapna's extensive imagination, fleshed out to make her feel better about losing him?"

"Dev, for you, it is opposite. sapna is your imagination. both of you believe that the other one is imagined. it's like a mirror image, but the object and the image both believe they are the object. both insist that the other is the image, a mere reflection. maybe both of them are objects. maybe dev and sapna are both in that bathroom. or maybe both are the image, reflecting someone else. maybe neither dev nor sapna are there at all"

TABLAS ARRIVE

This weekend i'm getting my* tablas back. i've not seen them since i was ... fifteen? I don't even know if i remember how to play them anymore but i'll sure die trying. surely, it's nothing wikipedia can't teach me. wikipedia can teach anybody anything from scratch.

I say this to mark the beginning of me nosediving into the world of bollywoodia, the concluding of my writing dev and sapna's hindi song and the encampment in an atmosphere of all things Bollywood. I've just spent hours downloading the songs from some of my favourite hindi films and so the impending arrival of the tablas is most timely.

* they're not really mine. they're my mum's. but i did pester her to buy them when i was ten.

WISH I WAS THERE!

bloopers are the greatest...

ROTTERDAM

Rotterdam is half an hour away.
The festival is a year away.
It goes to say that RSD will be at the festival.
I will be in Rotterdam in half an hour, in one year. QED.

WORK HARD GUYS