The Hunger-Driven Stardom
A fictitious story of how I suddenly became a popular actor in Bangkok, Thailand in the early 2000s.
In the early 2000s, a small, private TV station in Thailand had wanted to re-enact the activities of the Western missionaries in Africa in the nineteenth century for its inquisitive Thai audience but was running on very limited resources. The station could not afford to hire notable or up-and-coming Hollywood actors and actresses to do the movie, and it could not even sponsor trips to any African location to film there. The TV station had then decided to take a huge risk by undertaking the entire project in Bangkok City, Thailand, expecting little or no success.
Adele Thomas was on the dance floor at his favorite nightclub on Kao San Road in Bangkok City when a short Thai lady patted his back, indicating her willingness to engage him in a friendly chat. Honestly, Adele did not welcome her intrusion at that moment — he was deeply engrossed in a heated conversation with Bridget, an Austrian lady he had just met half an hour before.
“I’m sorry to disturb you; can we talk for a few minutes?” The Thai lady said with an infectious smile.
Reluctantly, Thomas Adele followed her out of the nightclub, glancing over his shoulder now and then to be sure Bridget wouldn’t be snatched by another desperate clubber; she was beautiful, easy-going and vulnerable, being on her first trip abroad.
“I’m the Project Director for a private TV here in Bangkok, and I’ll be happy if you can agree to act in one of our movies,” she said, offering Adele her silver, glossy business card.
“Act in a movie?” Adele asked to make sure he had heard correctly; he was visibly shocked.
“You don’t need to be scared about it. You’ll soon get used to the whole processes of acting in a movie,” she assured him. She had even implored him to invite some of his friends to participate in the movie project.
Adele Thomas, a Nigerian student at Thailand’s Mahidol University had got only one close friend, Mensah, who was also a student at the same university, but from Ghana. Both of them had expressed profound shock about the possibility of acting in a movie without having prior experiences.
“We’ll be paying each of you 2,000 baht per day of filming, about 50 US dollars,” the Project Director had told them on their first official meeting. “And we would appreciate it if you could bring as many of your African friends as possible; we need a lot of people to make this movie a success,” the Director revealed.
Adele and Mensah were later introduced to the other novice members of the movie crew: Lizzy, a British tourist-turned-English teacher in Bangkok City; Pradesh, an Indian restaurant worker; Bernice, an Irish belly dancer; Gershom, a Jewish/Israeli café attendant; Barbara, an American tourist-turned-hotel waitress; and Berin, a Scot with an eagle eye on Thai massage, and learning it in one of the famous massage parlors in Bangkok.
Two things stood out among the pack of inexperienced actors and actresses: they had come to Thailand in search of a better or a more peaceful life; and they were all young and hungry for all kinds of adventures. Bangkok City, in the 2000s, had become a welcoming “home” to these kinds of disenchanted foreign youths who were out there for wild excitement energized by risk-taking appetites.
“I’ll appreciate it if you could help us bring some of your African friends,” the Project Director again pressed both Adele and Mensah for action.
They had visited Patrunam Market where assorted groups of black people could be seen milling around in twos or threes. Some of them were traders who had flown all the way from some African countries to buy Thai textiles, leather shoes and bags and other materials. But a handful of them could be seen loitering aimlessly around Patrunam Market, begging for some financial assistance from the African traders. This category of Africans consisted mainly of those who had migrated to Thailand in search of an elusive better life. And a great number of them were victims of uninvestigated human trafficking or illegal immigration. Since Thailand had got little or no job opportunities to offer them, they usually loitered around the market area, ready to pounce on any merciful African traders that could part with some of their cash.
When Mensah and Adele approached the latter category of Africans and explained their mission to them, five people had immediately shown a considerable interest in participating in the movie project. Some of them had even placed calls to their close friends who they thought might also be interested in the acting gig. Before long, Mensah and Adele had been able to put fifteen Africans on the list of movie crew; they were mostly men.
“I’m so happy about this development,” the Project Director had responded when Adele sent her an email to inform her of their efforts at recruiting more people for the movie.
As expected, the first day of filming was chaotic and almost nothing was accomplished except that the scripts were randomly distributed, and movie roles were assigned to all members of the cast. Adele was chosen to act the character of a die-hard idol-worshipping African, while Mensah turned out to be his flexible younger brother who had gladly welcomed the missionary and got converted into Christianity first. Lizzy was given the role of a benevolent wife of the missionary, who was Gershom; while Berin, Barbara, Bernice and Pradesh became the obedient assistants of the missionary.
The storylines appeared quite interesting and serious, but the inexperienced crew of actors and actresses had added humorous lines to the entire story. The second day at the location was intriguing but quite funny: Gershom, an Israelis and Judaist, didn’t know where to locate The Book of Luke in the Bible: Barbara, the missionary assistant, swore “holy fuck” several times despite being upbraided twice by the Project Director not to do so; Lizzy, the missionary wife had put on a mini-skirt and a see-through blouse, clothes that a missionary’s wife would not have been wearing in the nineteenth century; Mensah, a Muslim, didn’t understand how to hold a long conversation on issues pertaining to Christianity; and Berin, the missionary assistant, thought the storylines were too dull, he believed there should be a scandalous scene in the movie where the missionary was caught enjoying a sexual relationship with a local black woman.
Despite all these preliminary false starts, the correct storyline was adopted on the third day of filming: Mensah first met the missionary and introduced him, his wife and his assistants to his elder brother, Adele who had threatened to kill these “messengers of foreign gods” until he was supernaturally converted into Christianity. So said the storyline.
The other Africans recruited for this movie had acted mainly as town dwellers. And when the missionary and his assistants were passing through the marketplace to evangelize towns and villages, they had also acted as traders — the only odd thing was that there were more male traders than the female ones in the movie. At that time, it was difficult to find African ladies who would like to participate in such a project. Actually, there were very few black ladies immigrating to Thailand to live or work at that time.
To address this acute shortage of black women in the movie, the Project Director ordered that some women be brought to join the crew, irrespective of their races. And when they arrived in busloads, there were ladies from Bangladesh, Sri-Lanka, the Philippines as well as some Thai ladies. Some of those from Sri-Lanka and Bangladesh were black enough to act as African ladies, but those from the Philippines and Thailand had had their faces painted in black, and they put on clothes that covered their necklines.
“I’m deeply worried about the TV showing this disrespectful image of Africa to Thai people,” Adele said. He was referring to the half-naked dressing style chosen for the African actors and actresses — both men and women were required to wear only underwear that looked like a couple of leaves stitched together.
“I think the station is trying to recapture the kind of dressing African people wore in those days,” Mensah observed.
“I think so, too. But I didn’t hear that our ancestors put on leaves; they were reportedly wearing underwear made from thick and expensive hides,” Adele said.
“You may be right about that, but what can we do about it now?” Mensah asked.
“I was actually going to ask the Project Director to change our dressing style to something that was truly used in those days — like leopard- or lion-skin underwear,” Adele said.
“Well, I don’t want to read much meaning into what kind of things we put on here. Most Thais know that modern-day Africans are fashionable,” Mensah appeared to be tired of the conversation. “More so, we need this money — that’s why we are here,” he had quickly reminded his friend.
On the fourth day, the movie was getting into the appropriate shape as expected. The actors and actresses were memorizing their individual lines quite well and performing finely. And there was an appreciable cooperation among all members of the movie crew. However, the clouds had suddenly become dark and heavy. This was against the weather forecast for the day; it was expected to be a partly cloudy and partly fine day. Before anyone could make sense of what was going on, the rain started falling. It came in drizzles at first but unexpectedly turned into a heavy downpour a few minutes later.
The black paint on those ladies’ faces began to peel off in no time, giving them a terrible monster’s facial look. Everyone had run to take shelter under the four canopies erected at the center of the secondary school’s football field used as the location for the filming. Left in the rain were dozens of fake trees, huts and hills that scattered across the football field, giving it a typical African village outlook. And it was difficult to continue filming after the rain.
Before the TV station had completely run out of funds, the Project Director revealed her satisfaction with how far the show had gone, having captured some interesting scenes. At the end of the filming, the Project Director threw a small “thank you” party. She seemed to be very happy as she beamed cheerfully to everyone.
When the movie was released a few months later, Adele had found himself in a stormy fame he did nothing to prepare for. As the protagonist of the movie, most of his school friends had nicknamed “African King”. Ladies flocked to friend him on social media networks like Myspace. He was invited into several international cultural events on the campus. And he was eventually invited to join the university theatre group.
Adele was surprised to have witnessed his tricky transition from a totally unknown foreign student into a campus phenomenon whom everyone seemed to be interested in chatting with. Not long, he began to feel awkward because of people looking slyly at him or pointing him out in a crowd. He didn’t feel quite happy now for losing his privacy. And he had had to change his lifestyle in order to remain focused and comfortable. Adele would leave his room early in the morning to get to his classes, earlier than the other students. On weekends, he had made it his habit to get back to his room quite late so that people wouldn’t be stopping him on the way for photo opportunities.
“The Hunger-Driven Stardom” is one of the 12 short stories included in my thesis for a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing Program. The MFA was awarded in 2013.
