In “They Want My Eyes” I portray a strange character named Hugh. I never remove my sunglasses, I sleep in an aluminium sleeping bag, and I walk around in a heightened state of paranoia rambling on about beings that are after my eyes. I suffer the scrapes and scratches of flesh torn by an unseen creature and I blow my own eye out with a pistol, only to survive to wander the streets once again, looking for a place to stay. I am immortal.
I’ve tried. I really have. I’ve been to a number of auditions for Argentine and US television commercials; I’ve tried out for Argentine drama cinema; and I’ve aimed hopelessly high for other assorted international films. But it seems that a die has been cast: two weeks ago I was contacted by a producer telling me that not only have I been selected to portray this Hugh character in this low-budget film, but that this makes me the film’s co-star. It is my fourth feature film, and all four of them spawn from the bloody genre of Class B terror. The truth is, I kind of like it.
The following are the notes from my diaries.
Director Sergio Esquenazi and his friendly producer, Diego Savignano summoned the main actors and crew for a meeting at a corner cafe in Buenos Aires. Over drinks and sandwiches we received the terrifying news that the film would begin shooting within a mere two weeks. Even more shocking, the shoot would be carried out over a period of less than eleven days. Sergio spoke to us about what he expected from the characters: my character, Hugh, would be practically robotic, zombie-like, secretive, mysterious, disturbing. Kile, Hugh’s old friend and the main character, would be just the opposite: a talkative dope freak, innocent, a victim. A weird chemistry should bubble between us.
At the same meeting, Diego expressed his fascination with the subtle violence in terror movies and how he prefers it over the gory, blood-splatting variety: “Blair Witch Project”, he immediately offered as example, “is powerful for all that you don’t see.” I agreed but immediately understood this as “They Want My Eyes” is too low budget for FX fireworks. He then said there would be no problem in shooting the film in the general order of the script: so accordingly, I start the shoot in two weeks.
Sergio then showed us on his Mac the trailer of a recent movie he directed (“Visitante de Invierno”, or “Winter Visitor”). There was some fine camera work there. Carolina Cichetto, Diego’s girlfriend and the head of wardrobe, confidently passed around art depictions of our characters: mine had black hair slicked back, a grey suit, dark sunglasses and carried a briefcase. He looked like an executive. In other words, this role would require special talent on my part.
I’m 47 years old, but my character is about 20 years younger. Certain physical alterations were required. First, as the girls from the wardrobe department hesitated about dying my tell-tale gray chest hair (being cautious of allergic reactions), I had to shave my torso bare. I looked too freaky with only arm hair, so that went, too. The girls dyed the hair on my head, but they left it soaking a bit too long and I subsequently carried a violet tinge throughout the shoot. The tinge didn’t come out on film, as most scenes were in dark interiors, but it did call the attention of family, friends and workmates for days.
Once I received the script by e-mail, I called the starring actor, Harry Jensen (Kile), to organize a rehearsal at my place. Harry is a 27-year-old Colombian with tattoos on his arms, chest and back, a pierced lip, the leader of his own band and a self-acclaimed follower of the “emo” urban tribe. His English is excellent, though he does have an accent. Harry, like me, is not an actor by trade: he teaches English and makes music. At my house, Harry seemed very relaxed about the role, perhaps too relaxed. Three days had passed since he had been designated as Kile, but he still hadn’t printed the script out for study. We worked for several hours on our lines, but we didn’t get too far: the meeting for the both of us amounted more to a memorizing chore rather than a bonafide rehearsal, which we could have done without on our own, separately. With less than two weeks until the shoot, the tension began to build. We decided to gather as often as possible over the coming days.
The script itself had arrived to us in Spanish. I phoned Diego, the producer, to ask the whereabouts of the English version, and he replied that there were certain “technical difficulties” about getting it out and that we should just try to forge ahead with what we had in Spanish. This, of course, meant that we were facing an extremely low-budget project and the only translation forthcoming would be whatever we come up with while we study our lines. I therefore became a language coach to Harry and we both spent a lot of time putting the text into natural American English.
I met up with Harry several times before we went for that first day’s shooting. Over the coming days his nervousness became apparent, as he began to realize the frightening responsibility before him. I had one-tenth the number of lines as Harry, and I was worried about my own task. Harry fortunately has a good memory.
My first day of shooting began early in a dilapidated house. I took a taxi in the pouring rain to a poor part of town in the south of the city, in Barracas neighborhood. The typical one-storey building looked nice from the outside, but inside I found the film and technical crew busily trying to make the location presentable. It was falling to pieces, with peeling plaster walls, massive humidity stains, naked light bulbs dangling from cables, and broken and ragged furniture sitting by windows with curtains so grimy they seemed to muffle sound. There were few places to sit because dirt and dust covered everything. It was raining hard, which heightened the terror effect for the set. I could barely imagine how the place had looked before the crew had arrived two days earlier.
The first scene of the movie takes place at this house, when Hugh (that’s me, in case you’ve forgotten) shows up at his old friend’s door after eleven years of absence. I practically invite myself in, sit at the cluttered table and enter into a torturous period of private silence that I puncture only by a few short phrases. Kile rambles nervously. My words conclude with “I need a place to stay, here, for a few days. Do you mind?” – a request that sounded more like a demand, one that should not be refused.
I gave Fernando the extra task of taking a few pictures with my camera when he could, which he did stoically (after all, he was very busy with his own work).
At the conclusion of the film’s entire shoot this day, Sergio would go on to choose the best portions of film, and the editor, Marisol Molas, would have the onerous job of putting it all together to make it look like one single, fluid conversation. Unfortunately, the whole scene was frustrated by a concrete truck roaring just outside the front window. Sergio told me that over the previous days they had been scouting the location and found nothing but silence. Now, the truck would be grinding away until 1pm, worrying sound technician Chelo about whether there would be too much interference. Nothing could be done, said Sergio. The producers had a schedule and we had to shoot.
Another scene they filmed put me in an aluminium sleeping bag, where I poke my face from a hole punched by my fingers and talk to Kile in a slightly menacing and confused manner. Don’t ask. I had stripped down to my shorts, donned my sunglasses and let the girls from the art/special effects department, Sandra Hornes and Maria Maidana Corpus, wrap me up. There was no air beneath that reflective blanket, which had an uncomfortable plastic lining, and I was obliged to sweat out an asphyxiating half hour as the camera moved about a variety of angles. Sergio kindly announced that Sandra and Maria cover me only when all was ready to go - and not before that - so that my private sauna torture in the Buenos Aires heat wave would not finish me off. The girls were wonderful as they fanned me and propped the bag open until Sergio’s “action!” call, when they wrapped me up like a fish in a newspaper.
Finally, we shot the scene of my approach to the door of the house, which appears at the opening of the movie, so I put my suit back on and took up once again the aluminium briefcase. The rain had stopped and the air was fresh. A few neighbors gathered curiously as the crew set up the camera at the door. From behind my shoulder they first aimed the camera at me knocking and Kile’s confused face (he barely recognizes his old friend). They then filmed my approach to the door several times, as I sternly walked down the sidewalk and checked out the house numbers. To the side, a kid kept poking his head from one of the doors, and I politely asked him to either stay inside or come out into the street until we could finish shooting the scene. He obliged without a fuss.
As I walked, my mind wandered to the thought of what would happen if any of the observers on the street had decided that they would do whatever they damn well pleased on their own damned street. This was a tough neighborhood, filled with people guzzling beer on doorsteps, kicking bottles and screaming from windows. Of course, we had no authority to close off the sidewalk for our exclusive use. Nevertheless, nobody really seemed to care too much about what we were doing and quickly wandered away bored.
On the next day of shooting there was a little more scripted violence. Here, I enter a new phase where I raise my voice to Kile for having opened my aluminium briefcase without my permission and letting out an apparently dangerous creature that had been residing inside. We never see this creature, or my supposed struggle with it (no budget for that), but the girls from the art department put their work to the test and turned out an excellent set of scrapes, bites, ripped flesh marks and dripping blood over my back, chest and arms. I had to leave my torso exposed and wear a pair of long johns (they belonged to Sergio’s personal wardrobe). I burst into Kile’s bedroom and spit about the danger we were facing. I kept stepping on Harry’s lines and I apologized until I got it right. The lighting cast dim and depressing shadows in Kile’s bedroom; it was wonderfully spooky. The rain came down again, and the electric cables had to be covered with plastic bags. At rest, I spoke with Sergio about the inventiveness of a low-budget movie; he corrected me by saying this was a “no-budget movie”. When I laughed, one of the slashes on my chest came partially unglued.
This day we also filmed the scene when I blow out my right eye. Sergio removed the camera from its tripod and filmed the entire take with camera in hand, giving it that shaky, nervous look. I run into Kile’s living room (in my long johns) with my friend trailing behind me. I shout out that it’s “too late”, that “they” have found me, that it’s “all over and we are both in serious danger”. I pull a gun hidden beneath my aluminium sleeping bag and raise it to my right eye. CUT. Sergio now filmed my hand jerking back from the recoil in a close-up of my hand and gun only. You never really see the ocular extirpation, but the third take of blood splashing against the ceiling gives the idea. As we rested, I spoke to Harry about the disgusting state of the house and wondered aloud how anybody could possibly live here. Harry tapped my shoulder and pointed out that the owner was standing right next to us.
The blood on the ceiling was managed in a way that would make Ed Wood proud. Again, the girls from art/FX did their best under such pressing budget restraints. They painted a piece of wood (about half a meter square) the same shade as the real ceiling and walls of the house (where plaster still clung, that is) and raised it on four vertical posts about two meters off the floor. Matias Lago, the brilliant director of photography, set the camera to point upwards at the portion of wood that faced down towards the floor. At the call of action, the girls tossed hands cupped with theatrical blood to the plank and let it drip down. At cut, just about everybody standing in the room had noticed a splatter of blood on their clothing. Unfortunately, with the movement of the girls as they tossed the blood, the plank trembled on the wooden floor and this was captured on film. A shaky ceiling made no sense, not even in this movie, so they shot it again, this time with Matias and the very expensive rent-a-camera taking cover beneath a protective cloth. Sergio called it a take when the blood oozed from the plank in sticky droplets.
I had to get back into the sleeping bag for another scene, but it was pleasantly short. Director of Photography Matias and Director Sergio put the camera right into my exposed face, and I said my lines. My body itched, but I was not supposed to move. In my stillness, I got an unforgettable look at that high and precarious ceiling, which was dropping rain down into buckets through nasty holes. I secretly hoped that the weather had not weakened those humid stains high over my face.
My final house shooting on the third day was the most unusual. Sergio, Matias, Harry, Chelo and I closed ourselves off into the kitchen. They set up heavy black cloths over the window to give the effect of night. Once more I stripped down to my shorts and put on the stained long johns and sunglasses. The girls used their previous photos of my scratches and torn flesh to fix me up again, but this time with an additional effect of caked and dried skin slightly frozen over from refrigerator freshness. Earlier in the script my character had revealed that the refrigerator contains aluminium in its structure and therefore offers a relatively secure hiding place from the bad guys. So in this present scene, I have supposedly just murdered my mother – one of the enemies, I’m afraid – with a gunshot from behind the refrigerator door (my presence wasn’t required for that part, and it was filmed a few days earlier without me). Her cadaver lies in the middle of the kitchen floor, and Kile is vomiting into the sink from the shock. I slowly drag my scarred and tired body from inside the refrigerator so that I can warn him that he “must finish the job.” He doesn’t quite get my meaning, so I pull my damaged body over to the sink, knock a few things around as I try to get a knife, and explain that he must cut off her head. He cries and denies, but I plead with him and force his hand with my own to oblige him to finish it.
For this scene, I was just barely able to squeeze into the refrigerator and close the door, but not without great acts of contortion and yogic breathing. My knees were up to my face in a fetal posture (not bad, considering I was in my eighth month of slowly fading sciatic pain) and in the uterine darkness a pool of refrigerator drip soaked my ass. The fridge creaked and cracked under my weight but still held. I heard Harry “vomiting” (he told me later that he actually did vomit, with all the stress of trying to make it look real) and then Sergio’s shout to me for “action!”, whence I slowly push open the door, gun first, and tumble exhausted onto the floor. Kile understands nothing, so I explain and guide his hand into the grisly job. You don’t see Kile cutting a head, of course: we looked around the kitchen for something that would give the visual sensation of Kile’s hand in sawing motion, to make it look like he wasn’t just cutting air. Matias found a roll of kitchen paper towels and the camera focused on Kile’s crying face, my hands over his hands, my face, and the cutting action. The body doesn’t really exist: we just put a bunch of rolled up rags onto the floor to mark the spot where my mother is supposed to be, so that we don’t step on her.
Suddenly there’s a mysterious bang “outside” (provided by Sergio’s slapping hands; the soundtrack will add something more ominous, I suppose) and I look up in terror to say that “they” have come, that I must now hide once again. I crawl away from Kile in a nervous panic, tumble sloppily over a chair while on my knees and sending the chair crashing to the floor (my own improvisation), grab up my gun, and leave a pleading Kile behind me as I somehow manage to stuff myself back into the fridge in a relatively nimble single take. Cut.
My fourth and final day of shooting was carried out in a public square in a busy Buenos Aires neighborhood called Almagro. I invited my wife, Miriam, to come along for the fun of it and to take pictures of the action. The two scenes to be filmed, Sergio told me, were added to round out the choppy narration of the story and to extend what he had felt to be a dangerously short feature film. (Most of the crew nonetheless believed that the film would make it to the full-length feature category, but Sergio thought otherwise and wanted to throw in some extra material just in case). The costume department had come up with a complete nun’s habit, which had nothing whatsoever to do with the film itself, and Sergio thought it could be woven into the narration in a credible way. The young wardrobe assistant, Carla Petrilio, would don the outfit and play one of the threatening evil-doers, following me around corners in a menacing manner.
Inside a public parking garage, hiding behind vehicles lest they throw us out, I once again put on the original suit and dark sunglasses and headed out to the busy and sunny square. My job was to carry around a bag filled with aluminium trash that I am supposed to be gathering for my own protection (the bad guys are allergic to aluminum). The camera filmed me walking around and looking into public trash bins. I fish out a couple of previously placed items and walk on. People kept looking at the camera, so we filmed a number of takes until the on-lookers lost interest. We also took shots of my feet pacing the sidewalk, with Matias trying to keep from bumping into trees and pedestrians as he followed me around.
The next scene in the same plaza would be with the nun. As wardrobe assistant Carla removed the habit from its plastic bag, we all realized she was too small to fit into the suit. It would simply look ridiculous, possibly even more ridiculous than the inclusion of a menacing nun in the movie. When Carla pulled the inner lining of the head dress over her face, giving her the preposterous look of a Smurf, this seemed to close the case. What should be done?
I bravely volunteered Miriam, who immediately refused. But there were no other women present. I nudged Miriam a little more, trying to convince her to take her first role in a movie. She laughed and resisted. Nonetheless, everybody seemed content with the idea and Miriam finally gave in. We were all grateful. Carla’s too young face would have come off unconvincing, as she looked too innocent, but Miriam’s sinister gaze added that perfect touch: a stern schoolmaster at an all-girl’s religious institution. I hardly recognized my own wife.
Miriam had to show up unexpectedly at my turns and put on her hardest face. I ran down the block, looking back, only to find myself confronted ahead by her presence. The good ol’ gal suffered in the summer heat but never complained and never showed it. Carla took pictures with Miriam’s camera. At the end of the shoot, Miriam received a round of applause and thanks from everybody present.
Back at home, Miriam would discover in one of those shots by Carla a photo of Miriam and I at one of our face-offs, about 20 meters distance facing each other: amazingly, the word “heresy” is writ in large graffiti on the wall behind us. Nobody had ever noticed or mentioned that graffiti during the shoot. Just another one of those little jokes by some unseen power.
To conclude the day’s – and the film’s – shoot I had to walk down the plaza, straight towards the camera, sit down, and say my lines as I stare into the lens. Supposedly, I am speaking to another person who would represent for Hugh an opportunity for a new place to hide from the enemy. The movie concludes with a reference to the question that I had presented to Kile at the beginning in his house: “I need a place to stay, here, for a few days. Do you mind?”
For this scene I put on another suit, in fact my own jacket and black pants, and this marks a new stage in the character’s journey. A few days before, Sergio had told me that he needed a new conclusion to the film and asked me if I would like to write the closing speech. I agreed. I finished the paragraph the night before the shoot and hadn’t committed it to memory yet, so I wrote it in large print on a sheet of paper and stuck it to the tripod beneath the camera. That way, when I walked to the bench and sat down, I could literally read my lines into the camera.
The tell-tale paper reflected in my sunglasses so we changed its position. My eyes could be seen from the sides of my glasses and, since my eyes are never visible in the movie, I had to be aware of that and not tilt my head beyond a certain angle. The text summed up my appearance in the film and I spoke the words from my own creation in a pensive, dark manner:
I have traveled to regions
that will not fit into your maps.
Time has severed my roots
and burned eternity past my eyes.
I sleep beyond your generations
in a metal shroud without dreams
only nightmares
populated by races of apocalyptic supermen
who wash away in the chemical dawn.
So, you might imagine that I am weary
and that my physical body needs to lie still.
How about it? A place to stay. Here. For a few nights.
Do you mind?
“They Want My Eyes” is scheduled to be released direct to DVD in 2009.
Cast:
Kile – Harry Jensen
Hugh – Brad Krupsaw
Nose – John Lopez
Patricia – Ivania Cox
Mrs. Tyler – Silvia MacKenzie
Old Woman – Alicia Vidal
Man in Black – Julio Luparelo
Scriptwriter, Demian Rugna. Producer, Diego Savignano. Director, Sergio Esquenazi. Production, Gonzalo Salonia. Director of Photography, Matias Lago. Camera, Martin Pimentel. Production assistant, Yael Gonzalez. Gaffer, Fernando Sabio. Sound, Marcelo Paz. Wardrobe, Carolina Cichetto. Wardrobe assistants, Michelle Rozen, Carla Petrilio. Special effects/Arte, Maria Maidana Corpus, Sandra Hornes. Editor, Marisol Molas. Light and sound equipment, Mariano Castillo.
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