Magic Carpet Ride — Bogor, Indonesia | August 2001
The Cameras Are Rolling …
“Action,” the director shouts.
I jump off the chair and make yet another para-roll, pretending to have just landed with a parachute — even though I’m not actually wearing one. It’s the twelfth take and it’s starting to wear me down. We’re on the final day of a four-day film shoot for a Diplomat Cigarette commercial, in which I’m the assistant hero. Not quite a career choice, but I happened to be at the right place and the right time a couple of weeks ago.
I was having a coffee at a coffee bar on Jalan Jaksa, the main street in Jakarta’s tourist ghetto, when a man, dressed a tat too sharp to be trustworthy, approached me.
“Hi, I’m Arief and I’m a talent scout. My client is looking for Caucasian extras for a TV commercial, would you be interested?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, assuming this would lead into some kind of scam.
He looked like a con-man, but over the past months, I’ve learnt that saying yes when you should say no makes life far more interesting, and I sort of enjoy watching a crook try hard. Nothing happened though, he just asked if I could be at this same place in a couple of days time so he could bring me more details about the “opportunity”. I still assumed it was a scam, just a bit more refined than usual, but as long as nobody was asking for money, I’d play along.
A few days later I sat at the same coffee bar sipping a hot lattè when I saw the “talent scout” approaching, accompanied by a group of what looked like grubby backpackers.
“Hi, great you’re here, these are the other talents. We’ve got to go and try on your costumes, do you have time?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, and it was true, I’d had nothing but time for the past six months.
As we walked to his car, Arief introduced me to the other “talents”. Josh and Kevin from the US, Lars from Denmark, an older Englishman called Stuart and Johan, a fellow Dutchman. In Arief’s car, a beat-up Toyota minibus, we got talking and all of us agreed this was probably going to be an elaborate scam, but we were all curious to see how things would work out.
After a short drive by Jakarta’s standards, Arief pulled up at a boxlike building with a sign which read Tumbuh Sendiri Studios. When we walked inside, we saw it was indeed a proper studio. In fact, there was a shooting going on as we walked through the main hall, a large group of pretty girls doing a choreographed dance routine in front of multiple cameras with a red-faced director shouting at them.
“This way,” Arief called, ushering us into a side-room.
In the room a woman was waiting with our costumes, we were going to be skydivers! We tried on our jumpsuits and, after about 20 minutes, made our way back to Arief’s car.
“We have to be in Bogor early tomorrow morning, so you stay at my house tonight, OK?” Arief said matter-of-factly.
Hmm, that was unexpected. Should we really just go with this “talent scout” about whom we really knew nothing? After a quick discussion — among five people who’d only met that morning — we decided to accept and see what would happen, there were five of us after all and three of us just came out of the army.
After about an hour’s drive, we arrived at a large house in a suburb of Jakarta. Arief proudly showed us around his house and introduced us to his wife Nadira and their children. We were then led to a dining room where, to my surprise, Nadira had prepared a full rijsttafel for us. On the table in front of us were laid out, at least, thirty small dishes of egg rolls, sambals, satay, fish, fruit, vegetables, pickles, and nuts, accompanied by steamed rice and, of course, Indonesia’s ubiquitous national dish Nasi Goreng or fried rice. It seemed that my inclination to say yes when no would have been more sensible was going to turn out fine once again.
The next morning we were up at five, in the garden listening to the sound of hundreds of mosques which morphed into a long stretched Buddhist “Ohm”. We were all ready for the drive to Bogor, the former summer residence of the Governor-General of the Dutch East-Indies, about 60 kilometres south of Jakarta. Our destination was a film set in an abandoned stone quarry on the outskirts of the city.
That was three days ago. Since then we’ve had long days, 6am-10pm, but they have been very exciting. I’ve never been on a film set before, doing whatever the director tells you to do, without knowing what the big picture is. Today, the last day, the director is really pushing us, we’ve been running and jumping around all day. I’ve just done 12 para-rolls and the director doesn’t look like it’s been enough yet. Fine, ready for take 13.
The cameras are rolling, “Action!”
Magic Dub Katz. Magic Carpet Ride Maxi-Single [CD]. London, United Kingdom: FFRR Records (1997)
This autobiographical sketch comes from my bundle In the Moment: A Disjointed Audiobiography which is available at Amazon.com. (USD 9.50 for a paperback or USD 4.50 for the Kindle version)
