THE BUM DOUBLE

Here’s a funny story:

It was a morning like any other. I had woken up in my posh hotel room, breakfasted with the boss-man in his Titanic-like suite, and been driven to location. It was a particularly early day, I remember, a Monday, and perhaps I was still a bit bleary eyed, holding two coffees and the day’s script pages, as I headed into the makeup trailer to run lines. I opened the door, probably spilled some coffee, probably apologized to someone, cracked a joke of some kind, maybe didn’t notice anything strange at first. But then, there it was, without any question:

A real, live Spanish man was standing in the corner of the makeup trailer, getting his ass airbrushed.

He was my boss’s ass-double. There was to be a brief tushie-shot in one of the day’s scenes, and my boss had requested a double. He did not want to use his own ass, you see. So they found this man, a cyclist, a Spaniard, as I said, and he just stood there, trousers at his ankles, leaning against the trailer wall. They needed to get the ass-color right--for continuity purposes.

The head makeup artist is Scottish. She screamed from across the trailer:

“He’s gone too orange, Jan. You got his bum done up like a basketball.”

The poor guy. This was his big break.

And the saddest part is, they didn’t even end up using him or his ass in the shot. When push came to shove, my boss decided to use his own ass after all. I caught up with the Ass Double at lunch. He was looking kind of dejected. I tried to reassure him that there was nothing wrong with his ass, but he seemed unconvinced.

“Oh well,” he sighed. “Maybe next time.”

Yes. I assured him that the next time my boss is in London in need of an ass-double, he will be the first person I call. I took his info and patted him on the shoulder. He walked away with his jacket potato and his broken spirit.