Howdy from Austin, TX, where we're opening the kimono on the creation of Z--a silly, sexy feature-length Zombie Musical guaranteed to delight and/or offend young and old alike!

In my last column, I described Austin as a Community of people working together to create Art of all makes and models--film, music, theatre, you name it. The prevailing philosophy here is that when you're not actively making your art, you roll up your sleeves and help others make their art...and whatever you give comes back to you in the end.

So I recently took nearly a fortnight off from the pre-production of Z to help some University of Texas film students create a 10-minute short called PAPER BALLS--the story of a cocky, over-educated college Professor who meets his match in the form of a young, dynamic Student he's dating.

Just two characters alone in a bedroom. Both naked the entire time.

Did You Say NAKED?!

Yo, if I ask somebody to do something on one of my pictures--pull focus, run a sound cable, stand bare-butt naked in front of the camera for all the world to see--I have to be willing and able to do the same myself, right?

I included a fair bit of nudity in my previous independent feature, THE PERFECT MAN CONTEST, and plan for even more in Z, yet I'd never myself had the experience of undressing and appearing exposed in a movie...especially one overseen by another director. And I wanted to have that experience, to feel what it's like, in order to better understand the process I'm so often asking others to go through.

Of course, since Z concerns itself almost entirely with Zombies and not Humans, the greater part of the naked-osity will consist of actors thoroughly covered with Zombie make-up--not unlike Rebecca Romijn's nude turns in the X-MEN pictures, where blue latex was all that separated her from the rest of the world. (Well, that and John Stamos, but now that he's out of the picture...Muwa-ha-ha!)

So about two weeks ago, after an extensive audition process, I got tapped to play the role of the Professor in PAPER BALLS. I was excited for about half-an-hour, then all kinds of nervousness kicked in. People were gonna see me without clothes! Now I don't look like Jabba The Hutt...but I'm also not as thin and cute as I once was. (I mean, who is?!) The first few days after being cast saw me in full-blown Panic Mode as I sought to improve the outside of that thing called John McLean. All of a sudden I was eschewing the "normal" filmmaker diet of fast-food and desperate, late-night snacks of unlikely ingredients from the back of the pantry, and started eating salad for every meal. Salad, mind you!

Shaping Up

The motivation to exercise that had eluded me since before Christmas arrived with a vengeance and I spent an hour or more each day tearing up the hills of Austin on my mountain bike. Dudes aren't supposed to care what they look like...but now I was stepping on the scales every 15 minutes, wondering when that "last 5 pounds" were gonna go away! I even made time to lay in the sun. (As Rex Mundi, the character I played in THE PERFECT MAN CONTEST, would say: "No matter what your goal in life, a tan always helps".)

In short, I'd turned into a girl!

But, c'mon, my entire body was gonna be seen not just by the production team, but would be recorded on 16mm film for pretty much anyone to see for pretty much forever.

Oddly enough, a day or so before the start of the production, these concerns subsided. I stepped on the scale one last time and realized, 'This is what I look like at this point in time.' I've been in better shape before...and will again. So I just, you know, ACCEPTED myself for what I look like right now. (Again, the kind of thoughts guys don't generally concern themselves with one way or another.)

Principal Photography

Due to the vagaries of the shooting sked, my first day in front of the camera would be by myself--often sitting on my side of the bedroom set, writing notes to my lover and crumpling them into paper balls. As I made my way to the soundstage, I had one last bout of unease...what if I got Wood during the shoot? Damn, that'd be embarrassing and then some. Ain't nothing to hide behind if Wood happens!

But no sooner had I reached the appointed soundstage in UT's gargantuan Film School than I realized Wood wasn't gonna be on the agenda. Because of all the lights and delicate electronics, Stage 4C was chilled to something approximating the Arctic Circle. Finally, an hour or so into the shoot I had to remove my boxer briefs for the first time. Naturally, I did a quick check-in south of the Equator and, uh-oh...

Shrinkage...

Listen, it was COLD in there! And so there was some world-class Shrinkage going on! To be fair, none of the mostly male crew said a word. No snickers, no nothing. But then, none of them had ever seen Little Dude before...maybe they thought this was its normal size?! Oh, jeez! Surely they'd watched the classic "Seinfeld" episode about Shrinkage?! Or maybe they hadn't seen it and they thought this was as big as it...oh, what the hell! My naughty bits weren't gonna be in this shot anyway and what did it matter what the crew thought?

I continued to go through my acting paces, sometimes wearing nothing at all, sometimes wearing just my skivvies or just a shirt, depending on the framing. After a while I didn't worry about it anymore...the nudity, nothing. I focused on giving the best performance I could and that was plenty enough to worry about at one time.

Less Is More...

And this was a rare opportunity, I realized. Nudity is something rarely seen on American film screens anymore, both in Hollywood and in the Independent film circles in which I turn.

The great American pictures of the '70s--like European films, then and now--featured rampant, casual naked-osity. Over the past couple of decades, however, the beauty of the human body has unaccountably been replaced by more and more horrific violence and "realistic" bloodshed in movies...as if audiences weren't already numb to the core of their very souls with the real-life violence of Columbine and 9/11 and the Asian Tsunami and the daily tragedies in our own neighborhoods.

You could easily sell a script in which characters kill, torture and mutilate one another for 2 hours straight in contemporary Hollywood. But a script in which you glimpse a bare breast or, Zeus forbid, the nether regions of a man or woman would send Studio Execs into brain-freeze and get you escorted off the lot with your proverbial hat in hand.

Now I'm just an artist--a filmmaker and, sometimes, an actor--so I can't speak to WHY the bare human body is considered a source of such deep shame in American cinema, why my fellow filmmakers have become more prudish than their own parents, why virtually the only depictions of nudity anymore are of strippers, prostitutes and dead female victims of serial killers--as if only "bad girls" get naked...and, when they do, they're destined for a life of stripping, prostitution or, ultimately, becoming victims of serial killers.

Still, I GET that creating art that exposes the human body messes with some people's minds. Perhaps this is one reason why I put nudity in my own pictures--because it upends people's sensibilities and stirs something deep inside them. And if that's not the point of Art, I'm not sure what is.

Plus--and I realize that I may be in the minority here--Art is also meant to show the beauty and excitement and potential of life. Art should be aesthetically pleasing. For nearly 3000 years (give or take the last 20 years of American film) artists and artisans have known that perhaps the most beautiful of all creations is the human body. And they've shown the body, in all its glories and even excesses, throughout the history of art. Until recently, that is.

Of course, it's all well and good to have a theory behind your art, to be FOR sensuality and sexuality, or AGIN it, as they say in these parts. It's quite another thing to practice what you preach, behind or in front of the camera. And that's what led me to Studio 4C last week for the shooting of this sensual short.

The 2nd and 3rd days of shooting were mostly just blurs of 12-14 straight hours on the set for my Co-Star and myself. Despite the robing and disrobing, the production settled into a typically intense, yet convivial, shoot. As a filmmaker I was often distracted by the scale of the production--which was quite grand for a student film.

The PAPER BALLS production team had managed to beg, borrow or steal a primo Aaton 16mm motion picture camera owned by frequent Richard Linklater cinematographer Lee Daniel--who numbers amongst his credits SLACKER, DAZED & CONFUSED and my all-time favorite mockumentary, AND GOD SPOKE.

I'm now a few days removed from the shoot and finally unwound from the grueling hours on the chilly set. I'm totally glad I did it, glad I got my first full-nude role out of the way. Annette Bening talks about how being nude in THE GRIFTERS worried her beforehand...but made her feel "completely liberated" afterwards. (Coincidentally or not, THE GRIFTERS also turned Ms. Bening from a struggling nobody into a Movie Star.)

Liberation!

I can relate, in my own small way, to that feeling of "liberation". (I've got no clue about how Liberated or not Angelina Jolie felt before she appeared half-nude in HACKERS, and completely nude for seemingly 50% of GIA, but I do know that her ongoing roles in the buff ain't hurt her career none!)

Of course, I don't look like nothing like no Angelina Jolie, nor do most people reading this. (If, in fact, you DO look like Angelina Jolie--or, even better, if you ARE Angelina Jolie--feel free to drop me an e-mailand I'll definitely find a role for you in Z!)

In the end, the most difficult part of performing in this short wasn't the stripping or the Shrinkage (it was FREEZING in there, I tell you!!!!) or anything like that...rather, it was being away from my baby, Z, for so many long days.

At last, however, I'm back in the saddle and looking forward to riding off into the sunset. Or into the sunrise. Or someplace...just as long as I'm riding the horse of Z, my Zombie Musical, I'll be happy!

NEXT: we leap back into the pre-production of Z--adding to the cast and crew and shooting the first, nutty trailer for the picture.

Until then...

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