A Crash Course in Swashbucklery and Fisticuffs!

I started acting at a very early age, running around the forest near my family's cottage re-enacting scenes from The Princess Bride and Star Wars. Recently I decided that as a PROFESSIONAL ACTOR, I should take all steps necessary to prepare myself for the inevitable day I'm on set and someone expects me to be able to convincingly have a sword-fight.

Trying to look cool while catching my breath. PHOTO CREDIT: Erin Gerofsky

 Thus! Early in May I signed up to do a two-week intensive introduction to stage combat run by York University and taught by some of the wonderful humans from the stunt crew Riot Act. In the course, you learn the basics of sword, quarterstaff, and unarmed combat for stage and screen – and rehearse three fight scenes choreographed by the instructors. At the end of the two weeks you perform them, and if the adjudicator thinks you were convincingly badass enough, you pass, and get to put “can swordfight” on your acting resume.

The "Peking Opera" stance. PHOTO CREDIT: Erin Gerofsky

Every morning started off with a “warm-up.” It’s not a warm-up. It’s just a 45 minute workout that any other day I’d consider more than enough physical activity for one day. Ten minutes of non-stop calisthetics! Then run around the room a couple times! Now backwards! Now do a bunch of aikido rolls! Now do eleventy seven crunches! Now do some different weird crunches where you’re also doing yoga! All this and more – it was deadly but incredibly effective, and as someone who often ‘forgets’ to do core exercises it was a really great reminder how important they are.

This is a very awesome looking backwards aikido roll. Trust me. PHOTO CREDIT: Erin Gerofsky

Then, the scenes. Our unarmed fight was a scene from the Benecio Del Toro / Tommy Lee Jones movie The Hunted. I got to roundhouse a dude, choke a dude out, get tossed across the room and land in a roll – and knock a dude to the floor using my favourite move, what I like to call the “Captain Kirk Punch” – the two-fisted hammer-punch to the back, the core principle of Starfleet Martial Arts!

The quarterstaff scene was haaaaaard. I’ve had to do some unarmed stuff on screen before (I got slapped on Renegade Press, punched a couple times on Falcon Beach, etc) but I’ve never handled anything like a staff. Instead of being given dialogue for that scene our assignment was to build our own scene around the choreography and music we chose ourselves. My partner and I, of course, chose Europe’s The Final Countdown. Somehow our scene evolved into me playing an overbearing manager of a doweling factory (hence the staves) and my partner playing a lowly subordinate whose had enough of my hogging the radio in the storeroom. It was hysterical, even included several yells of “FINAL COUNTDOWN!!!” in the place of “HA-YA!”

"I cannot live in a world where you have everything and I have nothing." Loved this scene. PHOTO CREDIT: Erin Gerofsky

The sword scene was by far my favourite. We were taught basic rapier swordfighting, and the choreography was set to the dialogue from the climactic duel in The Count of Monte Cristo (Jim Caviezel and Guy Pearce do a fantastic version of that fight in the 2002 version). I got to play Fernand Mondego! I loves me a bad guy! I think my favourite move from that fight was something called “the Angelo” where I swatted the Countess’ blade aside with my off-hand and passed my own sword behind my back to bring her on point. So cool! So cool.

Thankfully I managed to pass! I can definitely put “can swordfight” on my resume – and I had a ton of fun, so hopefully soon I’ll have reason to call upon those skills! I’d recommend this course to any actor wanting to expand their special skills (and get a kick-ass two weeks of working out as a bonus!)

Bi-Weekly Digital Drawing Slam: Han Solo

It's a couple days late but I stuck with it! Two weeks later and I've drawn something else. Lessons I've learned this time - don't start the day before an assignment is due, even if it's self-imposed. You'd think university would've taught me that.

 I, yet again, got partway through a sketch and realized that instead of trying to draw a fashionable Pulp Action Hero in a pea-coat with a revolver, perhaps I should just try to draw my reference photograph. My reference photo, in this case, was Harrison Ford as Han Solo.

I also got halfway through this and realized my first two drawing posts have been Star Wars related. Typical. Sigh.

This week I learned how to colour using the polygonal lasso tool! It's super convenient! I also learned courtesy of my sister, a PROFESSIONAL ILLUSTRATOR (in training), that a good way to cartoon the eyes of something is to not ink the whole way around the lid. Neat!

I've also included the penciling layer here, for your amusement. I love saving all the steps in a project like this because you get to see how the drawing develops! Good times.

Well, that was fun. See you in two weeks!

It's Gonna Take A Montage

Ever since I was on a sweet little TV show with the word 'Beach' in the title, regular exercise has been a part of my life. It's pretty key to the whole actor lifestyle, since your body is your instrument and your 'look' is of prime importance. I also came out of the womb with high cholesterol, so keeping the ol' ticker in shape is mandatory. That being said, I'm pretty lazy. I'm the kinda guy that needs motivation during a workout, because running on a treadmill just isn't enough fun on it's own. I mean, staring at a wall and being alone with my own tortured thoughts is great, but it's a lot more fun to pretend I'm in the middle of a mid-eighties action/adventure/sports movie training montage.

Hence the music I more often than not listen to while running and/or repeatedly lifting heavy things.

I don't exclusively listen to pop-rock soundtracks produced between the years 1979 and 1991 whilst jogging, but when I do it's a freakin' blast. So, I thought I'd share some of my favourite synth-and-chinups tracks with my readers today - specifically those that might not be immediately recognized. Everybody knows Eye of the Tiger and You're The Best Around, but not as many people know Thunder In Your Heart from the soundtrack to the classic 1986 BMX film Rad.

Well, I say classic. I've never actually seen Rad. I've technically only ever seen the end credits of Rad because the copy of The Princess Bride I watched over and over again as a kid was taped off Superchannel, and Rad happened to be the movie on right before. As I was a little kid I for some reason always thought there was just a weird short film of hip teens doing wheelies at the beginning of The Princess Bride. My childhood confusion aside, Thunder In Your Heart is a fantastic addition to the Training Montage genre from dreamy Australian pop sensation John Farnham, who also sang You're The Voice. That chestnut is also pretty epic for workin' out too - replete with soaring bagpipes. It's like the wind really is whipping through my blonde mullet with this tune on in my headphones.

 On a similar note, Night Ranger's The Secret of My Success (1987) from the Michael J. Fox movie of the same name is exceedingly rad. I'd never even heard of this movie until a couple years ago, and it's actually kind of amazing. It's a completely nonsensical screwball comedy about Michael J. Fox, a mail-room clerk with preternatural business acumen, who takes over an abandoned office at his workplace so he can secretly be a businessman, mostly JUST BECAUSE HE LOVES DOING BUSINESS SO MUCH. The fact that no one catches on to Mike's Clark Kent/Superman routine earlier is pretty unbelievable. Doesn't HR need Fake-MJ's nonexistent social security number? That being said, the movie is actually quite a touching portrayal of a guy who will go to any lengths to be able to do what he loves to do for a living (which, as an actor, is a theme I can appreciate).

The title song is equally nonsensical (the secret of your success can't be that you're living twenty-five hours a day, Night Ranger. That's temporally impossible) but is super catchy and has a lot of great peaks and valleys, tempo-wise which is great for running outdoors.

My next recommendation, Fire, Inc.'s Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young, comes from the movie Streets of Fire (1984), which decided to keep having itself named after a Springsteen song even when Bruce turned down their request to use his music in the film. Instead, they turned to one of my favourite songwriters, Jim Steinman. He's the guy who wrote of Holding Out For A Hero, Total Eclipse of the Heart, and both Bat Out Of Hell albums for my man Meat Loaf.

The movie itself is ridiculous. Set in an alternate reality that's half-idealized-1950s-half-post-apocalyptic-1980s, it's about bounty-hunter Michael Pare rescuing his girlfriend, rock-star Diane Lane, from a biker gang leader played by a very young Willem Dafoe in bondage gear (seriously! He's so little he doesn't even get name-checked in the trailer!). Also, Rick Moranis is there as Diane Lane's manager and is doing his level best to play a tough guy and it's hilarious.

The song is classic Steinman, Wagnerian, epic, full of sweeping piano and twelve minutes long. His lyrics have always been about reclaiming a kind of lost faux 50s tough-guy youth and this song is no different - and that kind of epic machismo is pretty great for a workout. It's awesome.

Honourable mentions (neither of which are from soundtracks but should be) go to Billy Joel's I Go To Extremes, Gino Vanelli's The Time of Day (which I think is about saying no to drugs? Maybe?) and anything by Kenny Loggins, Journey, or Survivor. Seriously, a good, simple definition for music I like to work out to could be 'songs Kenny Loggins and Journey wish they were getting residuals for.'

And really, seriously, check out this trailer for Streets Of Fire. It's bananas. I'm so happy someone was lacking enough in their faculties to let that movie get made. Did I mention Michael Pare and Willem Dafoe have a sledgehammer fight at the end of the movie?! A SLEDGEHAMMER FIGHT.

Bi-Weekly Digital Drawing Slam: Self Portrait With Lightsaber

When I was a kid, I used to draw a lot. Mostly just drawings of Spider-Man over and over again. I don't know when exactly this fell by the wayside, but I figure it was sometime in middle-school when I discovered acting and film-making and I kinda decidedly shifted my artistic identity. 'I'm an actor and writer now!' I declared.

And so, I kinda stopped drawing. That being said, I kinda miss it. And, as a writer interested in visual mediums like film and, more applicably, comic books, I've always intended to get back into drawing for to finally write and create some form of graphic-novel / web-comic / penny-dreadful. If that's a real thing I'd like to maybe do one day, I'd better start practicing. Thus, this new feature!

It's up to you, dear readers, to light a fire under my ass merely by existing. There's gonna be a new sketch / drawring / thingy posted in this space every two weeks (I figure I'll start off slow).

This is a weird thing I drew a while back called "Self Portrait With Lightsaber." Originally I set out to do a concept drawing of the title character from an as-of-yet incomplete comic book I wrote about a modern day, Arthur Dent-ish guy who is bequeathed Space Excalibur by a Space Princess and goes off on Space Adventures. I got about halfway through the sketch and realized I hadn't drawn in years, and that perhaps it would be more educational for me to try to drawing just what was in front of me (in this case, a reference photograph of myself holding a stick). The stick became a lightsaber because, well, why not. Pew Pew.

I drew this (and will continue to draw for this feature) on the Wacom Tablet I got from my parents for Christmas last year. I really love drawing on it mainly because since it's all digital, you don't have to worry about mistakes - you've got perfect erasing power, and if you screw up the inking or colouring you don't have to start the pencil sketch part from scratch - it's all just layers and pixels in photoshop! It's kind of a travesty that I've hardly used my tablet over the past year - hence, this post and the baleful, guilt inducing gaze of my audience when I don't produce a drawring post.

Don't let me down, audience. See you all later in the week!