Being Mr. President

With only a week to go before I leave, I’ve had to use aggressive tactics to nab interviews with industry bigwigs. I tried chasing down a few guild presidents after a press conference yesterday, and I got about ten minutes with the Creative Designers president before she literally ran away from me. I’ve been doggedly calling Segun Arinze, the Actors Guild President—and an A-list celebrity—and today he finally acquiesced. Well, kind of: he told me I could ride along in his car and throw questions at him as he drove across town. I figured it was better than nothing; I would probably manage fifteen minutes with him before he kicked me out and I had to take a cab back home.

What I didn’t know is that I would actually spend the entire day—from noon to 9 pm—in his passenger seat, hopping around town with him from one appointment to the next. After the third stop, by which point I was on the complete other side of the city from my house, I announced I had been kidnapped.

He kept apologizing exasperatedly for his hectic schedule, but I’m convinced he enjoyed showing off just how in-demand he is. We were frequently assailed by carfuls of women honking and waving, and at one congested intersection Mr. Arinze beckoned over a traffic cop to complain about the holdup. “So sorry, Shegun Arinze!” the cop stammered, rushing to part the traffic and let us through.

At one point along the road he let out a big groan. “I told them I didn’t like my expression in that photo,” he said with utter annoyance, drawing my attention to a gigantic billboard advertisement with his face plastered on it.



“So have you put Omo to the stains test?” I inquired.

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

I’ll say this for Mr. President (as everyone, everywhere called him) - he can certainly cram a lot into one day:

Stop 1: recording voiceover for a movie trailer. We were in and out in less than 10 minutes after Mr. Arinze read through each line only twice. (“Coming to a theater near you…coming to a theater…near you.”)

Stop 2: filming a scene for a soap opera. Though I didn't know that at the time. We walked into a packed room with ten teenage actors on one end and a long table at the other. We were quickly seated at the table, then someone yelled “Action!” and the ten actors began taking turns approaching the table, stating their names, and shadow-boxing. This all happened within five minutes of our arrival, so I had absolutely no idea what was going on. I finally deduced that they were filming a scene of an audition for a boxing movie, and Mr. Arinze played the director of the movie within the show. Yeah, I was still confused after we left, just half an hour later.

Stop 3: a photoshoot for a juice company. Mr. Arinze and his fake, beautiful family all stood in front of a canvas holding juice bottles and smiling delightedly. Oddly, this took over two hours.



Stop 4: a chicken shack for dinner, inhabited entirely by Nollywood actors who all hailed their chief when he strolled in.

Stop 5: Ojez Nightclub, for an important meeting in the back room to discuss a serious crisis within Actors Guild politics. Or so I presume from all the hushed tones and furrowed brows.

I finally insisted that I needed to get home before they locked me out of the house. Somehow I had started the day begging an A-lister to speak to me, and now I just wanted him to let me go home and sleep. At least he didn't make me pay ransom.

Mr. O

Since moving into the "Nigerian Idol" house, I've been living a life of decadence: sinks with flowing water! Fans that stay on all night! Lukewarm showers!

But there are other realities about life here in the compound that make me less comfortable. When I arrived, I learned that my patron had summoned an elderly housekeeper, Mr. O, to come stay with me. I first met Mr. O scrubbing the kitchen floor in his underwear. I learned he lives with his family three hours away, and on Sunday he left at 7 in the morning to travel those three hours to be with them in church.

The day I moved in, my friend Vocal Slender dropped by and told me he wanted to take me to Ajigule, the slum he grew up in. We were in the posh part of town, amid rows of fenced in mansions, so I figured we’d have far to travel to reach the slums. Instead, Slender took me a few paces from my house, turned down a narrow alley made of planks laid over a sewer line, and led me to the banks of a smelly and polluted river. And there, just on the opposite bank, was the sprawling slum. For 10 Naira (6 cents), a punt took us to the other side. I honestly couldn't shake the feeling that Charon was ferrying me across the River Styx. On the opposite bank was the sort of thing I had expected to see in all of Lagos but had remained hidden until now: pollution, desperation, dirt, smells of cooking oil and petrol. This was where clusters of kids squealed “Oyibo!” and followed me around the streets, where I had a delicious meal of pounded yam for $1 at a chop house, and where I got to hear and record Slender and his musician friends improvise a song on their front stoop. “This neighborhood,” Slender explained as we left, “is where all the staff live for the houses across the river."

I returned home to my mansion. Mr. O had washed all the floors, made the bed, and sprayed my room with anti-mosquito spray. When I asked if there was potable water, he dashed out to buy several liters before I could stop him. At first I felt purely guilty; just because I had wanted a few hours of comfort, I had made an old man toil away all day. Then I thought of Nigeria’s staggering unemployment rate, and I wondered: is Mr. O getting paid tonight when he otherwise wouldn’t have? Does he need this extra money to support his family? And I thought of Ajigule; is Mr. O grateful to spend a night in a cool room, with a soft bed? So have I clumsily benefited him or only inconvenienced him? I've decided, for the time being, that these questions are outside of my control, and for the next few days at least, it's best I try not to answer them.

GOD SINS AND PRINTING

I spotted the above four words on a street advertisement for a sign-making business, accompanied by a phone number. I think the ad is arguing they can make "good signs." Please take however long you need to appreciate the full range of humor in this.

Hero to the rescue

Several weird and wonderful developments have occurred in the last few days and I’m still trying to sort out which is which. In my interviews with the film and music industries, Vocal Slender put me in touch with a multimillionaire heiress, who describes her family name as Nigeria’s version of Trump or Vanderbilt. This woman has spent the last five years creating Nigeria’s first superhero, complete with comic books and action figures, and she wants to put him on the big screen with the backing of a Hollywood studio. Quite frankly, after she gave me a synopsis of the story I was convinced her superhero is pretty awesome, and I’d love to see the movie happen. When she learned about my own Hollywood experience (very little experience, mind you, but I think it’s the Smallville credit that piqued her interest) she invited me to team up with her to make the project happen. Her dream director is Robert Zemeckis, but hey, I say no harm in dreaming big, especially when you’ve got the money. So watch out, Mr. Zemeckis. We’re coming for you.

Meanwhile, in case some of my blog entries this week didn’t tip you off, the continued power outage at my house has been driving me a bit insane. When the superhero creator learned I had been sitting in the dark for six days, she offered to let me stay in her guesthouse. My initial reaction was to thank her for her incredibly generous offer but stay put, since I’ve got a family who takes good care of me at my house even when I don’t have functioning light. But the truth is my host is out of town this weekend, and I could use a few hours of computer time to actually get work done. So here I am, at least for a few days. As it turns out, the guesthouse is a four-bedroom, two-story mansion. When I came in, I found a huge “Idol” logo emblazoned on one wall. Guess what? This was the house used for Nigeria’s version of the Pop Idol & American Idol reality franchise, and here they had the added element of putting all the contestants in a house together for bonus drama, Big Brother style. There are a dozen beds spread between all the bedrooms, but tonight it’s just me. Ridiculous.

A Ride to the Bank

It's the rainy season, and last night brought another torrential rain that flooded the streets in my neighborhood with nearly a foot of water in some places. When I walked to the local bank to withdraw cash, I discovered a river blocking my path where a street used to be. On the opposite side, the posse of bank security guards spotted me (the neighborhood oyibo isn't easy to miss) and sprang to action. A guard in galoshes forded the river, turned around, and indicated that I should jump on his back. As far as I can tell, this was in fact the guard's official duty for the day: to give piggy-back rides across the street to customers in need of an ATM.

I guess I was so thrown by the professionalism of it all that I didn't so much as bat an eye before hopping on the guard's back and catching a lift. Once I had taken my cash, I hopped back on and got a ride to the opposite shore. The Nigerians have proven again to be only too willing to oblige.

What's there to say except that we're on Day 4 of a power outage, and we had enough fuel for 30 minutes of generator time, which is about how long it took to connect to the internet. Ah, never have I dreamed of high-speed internet so longingly...sorry again for a short post.

Before the Generator Dies

I'm here! I'm here! I haven't been kidnapped. (I make sure to wear really ratty T-shirts and ripped jeans everywhere I go anyhow so everyone knows I'm not an oil tycoon. And besides, Lagos is actually probably the safest city in Nigeria, so no need to worry.)

Apologies for the radio silence; I blame a blackout that went on for nearly a week, coupled with a neighborhood fuel shortage that makes it difficult to run the generator. But life in Lagos continues ... I get my daily nutrients at the local fast-food haunt, Chicken Inn (or as I call it, Chicken Inn, Diarrhea Out) and I spend electricity-less nights at the outdoor bar down the street sipping Coke with my host.

Our generator's just shut off, and my computer was already running out of battery life, so I now have 5 minutes to send this off. Here's hoping tomorrow I'll be granted more time to post!

It's a Wrap

Our shoot wrapped after just nine days, at which point the director dashed off to his next project. He probably won’t even think about this movie again until the premiere, since he plays no role in the editing process. His job is basically to tell the camera when to start and stop--he didn’t even know the stars of the film until he showed up to shoot.

I thought I had finished all my scenes, but when we were on location at a mall yesterday the director called me over. He realized we needed a scene where Gary’s friend learns about the pregnancy, so we sat down, improvised some dialogue in about 15 seconds, and started shooting. We did a total of three takes: a medium shot, Gary’s close-up, and my close-up. It would have all taken less than five minutes if a woman hadn’t interrupted and insisted she owned the chairs we were sitting on. The director had to negotiate, but fortunately she didn’t want anything other than to meet him and shake his hand. The complications of on-location shooting…