Misc. inanity

Unhip priest

By July 22, 2009No Comments

Because I got noth­ing today, really, I thought I’d share some anec­dot­al mater­i­al which you might find divert­ing. Last Sunday I com­pleted my second film role, a snip of a bit of a cameo for a micro-budgeted indie whose dir­ect­or I think is a ter­rif­ic and under-known tal­ent. For reas­ons known only to him­self, said dir­ect­or thought it would be cool to dress me up as a priest. (Perhaps he’s doing me a favor, giv­ing me a chance to show some range and do “holy” after going full sleazoid for The Girlfriend Experience.) This is a pretty easy thing to do, as it turns out—get the shirt, and the col­lar, and you’re good to go, in a verisimilitude-boosting min­im­al­ist kind of way. 

Unhip priest #2 We shot in the gen­er­al vicin­ity of my neigh­bor­hood, and it was a great deal of fun, and it took hardly no time at all. Afterwards, my auteur told me I was free to keep the shirt and col­lar. This really blew my mind. I thought of the old Television song “Venus de Milo:” “Then Richie, Richie said, ‘Hey man let’s dress up like cops, think of what we could do!” Which line is of course fol­lowed with “Something, some­thing, it said ‘You’d bet­ter not.’ ”

Nevertheless. My Catholic guilt (The Force is strong in this one, believe you me) wrestled for a bit with my imp­ish side. I thought it could be hil­ari­ous to park myself at an out­door table at my loc­al, array a bunch of Jãger shots in front of me, and down them one after the oth­er, mut­ter­ing (or shouting—hard to say what would pro­duce the bet­ter effect) “The power of C****t com­pels you!” before each swal­low. And ask­ing “What the f**k are you look­ing at?” every time I received a dis­ap­prov­ing glance. Comedy gold, I guar­an­tee it, but with no one around to record it, what would be the point? So I con­ten­ted myself with merely walk­ing a few blocks down Court Street in the shirt, but even that gave me the wil­lies after a little while. Yes, “some­thing” surely did say “you’d bet­ter not”—that some­thing being the reas­on­ably sure know­ledge that I was put­ting myself in a pos­i­tion where I could get the shit kicked out of me and com­pletely deserve it. 

Of course I am hardly the first rep­rob­ate raised with­in the church to have indulged in such shenanigans…

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No Comments

  • Tony Dayoub says:

    Glenn, I hope you don’t mind, but this story was so amus­ing I had to share it on Facebook.

  • That needs to become your new photo on Facebook.
    Give us a bless­ing Father Glenn.

  • Ryan Kelly says:

    I smell a remake of Melville’s clas­sic on the hori­zon, with Kenny in the Belomondo role.

  • Gareth says:

    It’s a little alarm­ing how much you look like my sec­ond­ary school phys­ics teach­er once you don shirt and collar.
    I had to wear sim­il­ar garb for a play once and the damn guilt won out and made me take the out­fit off at the end of the performance.

  • Tom Russell says:

    (Perhaps he’s doing me a favor, giv­ing me a chance to show some range and do ‘holy’ after going full sleazoid for The Girlfriend Experience.)”
    Would you say then that your depic­tion was a rev­er­ent one? Or more tongue-in-cheek?
    Just curious.

  • don r. lewis says:

    Lemme tell ya the story of LOVE versus HATE.…

  • slutsky says:

    Television ref­er­ence and head­line of this post = you clearly have the best music taste of any of the major film crit­ics going today.

  • Jim says:

    Massive WTF moment, cour­tesy of Armond White (who else?):
    “Made in U.S.A. and 2 or 3 Things have more in com­mon with the visu­al wit of Michael Bay’s Transformers 2. It is Godard’s bold example that taught Bay to love sound and image. All these films share a visu­al lan­guage and a way of see­ing the world that is rooted in an artist­ic use of tech­no­logy. What a triple bill.”

  • Glenn Kenny says:

    To which I can only say: God save us all. It’s inter­est­ing, the ven­ues and con­texts with­in which A.W. decides to up the ante on Crazy. I feel a little guilty, though, Jim, let­ting you hand me what has to be my White-ism of the week…

  • JF says:

    To be only spec­tac­u­lar should be 5 or 10 per­cent of cinema.”–JLG
    “MEGATRON! IT’S ALL SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT MEGATRON! RAAARGHH!”–MB

  • Steve says:

    Which Joe Swanberg film was this for?

  • Campaspe says:

    You are incred­ibly con­vin­cing in that priest out­fit. Like, you could cast demons out of Linda Blair at a moment’s notice, THAT convincing.
    It’s scar­ing me.

  • Davin says:

    Wouldn’t it have been more appro­pri­ate to drink the long draught?

  • Diane Rainey says:

    Glenn: From one guilt rid­den Catholic to anoth­er, you look great as a priest. You can absolve our­self of any and all sins now! Just say 3 Hail Mary’s, one our fath­er and a Glory Be. As you left they would say Go now and sin no more.