In May 2014 my friend Katie Guthorn enlisted myself, John Seabury, and Alex Baum as actors in an independent film. Katie, who was playing the role of a singer in a nightclub, was asked by the producers if she could recommend any local musicians that "looked like sleazy old jazz guys." We were excited to be recommended (but perhaps a little less when we gave it a bit more thought as to why we got the part).
The film crew had turned the basement of a restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown into a speakeasy night club. We set up our equipment, only then to be told we would be playing along to a recorded track and not making any live music. Though our expectations were dwindling away - "stand there and look questionable" - it seemed we were the right men for the job.
Over the three days of being 'on set', we quickly realized that most of our time would be spent waiting to be called for a scene. After a while, we went from waiting on the stage, to waiting outside the restaurant on the sidewalk, to me giving my cell phone number to a stage hand and telling him to text me when they needed us; I had found the band a remote office around the corner where we could spend our time: Lei Po's Lounge.
While we waited between takes, we watched the ball game, talked with actors and stage hands (they quickly took to my 'remote office' idea), we ate wonderful chinese food for lunch, and I wrote a few poems. The one that documented our experience was called "Too Much Time in Chinatown."
I recently watched the final season of the series Goliath on HBO which was set in San Francisco with many scenes shot in Chinatown. It quickly reminded me of our experience there and the poem I wrote about it, so I decided to try my hand at producing a spoken word recital of the poem with a soundtrack of drums and effects. My initial attempts came out fine for the percussion loop and sound effects, but I learned in a one take that my voice was as far away from sounding like James Earl Jones as humanly possible. Luckily, I was able to enlist a dear old friend who is a professional voice-over actor to recite the poem, and his performance sounds magnificent. The final touch was to tie all the pieces together with an attempt at some visuals. The video is called 'Too Much Time in Chinatown'. I hope you enjoy it.
Update, 12/27: I created a new version of the video by removing the drum loops and replacing them with an acoustic bass performance by Alex Baum.
YouTube Link: Too Much Time in Chinatown; Jazz Coffee House Version
YouTube Link: Too Much Time in Chinatown: version 1
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