You know how sometimes you’re watching a movie or a TV show, and there’s a band playing, but they’re in the background and just kind of like set decoration? I was once that set decoration, my friends!
It was 1989 or 1990, and I was playing guitar in the Los Angeles reggae band Boom Shaka. One day the singer, Trevy, came into the rehearsal studio (where I lived in the upstairs loft) and said, “Hey man, I think we’re going to be in a movie.” He said it like he was telling me we had a gig in Fresno or something.
When I was in that band, I’d heard we were “going to do” a lot of great things that never quite happened. Okay, not just in that band, every band I’ve ever been in. So I thought, “Well, that’s cool. I guess. If it happens.” But some gears turned in the universe—you know, those gears that control our lives—and we got the gig to appear in the movie.
I assumed it would be some kind of low-budget, indie thing since reggae bands weren’t exactly popping off the screen in a lot of mainstream movies. But when we met the director, Martin Campbell, he told us we’d be in a scene with Barbara Hershey and Sam Shepard. They were what you might call movie stars at the time, so it definitely wasn’t low-budget.
Campbell is a New Zealand-born director. When we met him, he’d just directed Criminal Law with Gary Oldman and Kevin Bacon. He set up a screening for us—another clue that we were not in low-budget land—and the movie was pretty dumb. Luckily, Campbell wasn’t at that screening, so we didn’t have to force smiles and lie to his face which we probably would have done, because that’s just what you do in those situations.
The movie we were about to make, Defenseless, turned out to be pretty dumb, too. But even pretty dumb movies often start out hopefully. And the truth is when you’re making a movie, there’s no way to tell if it’s going to be good or bad. It’s up to dozens of other people, and none of them know either until all the pieces come together.
The first time we met Campbell was in an editing studio, and we spent most of the time talking about music. He insisted several times that the music we recorded for the film “has to have steel drums,” and we insisted back that reggae music doesn’t have steel drums. After half an hour of back-and-forth, he relented (or lost interest) and said, “Okay, then, lads, no steel drums.” Look at us, we’d won our first Hollywood negotiation.
Our part, as Cambell described it—and as we filmed it—was much more elaborate than what wound up being used in the film. The storyline isn’t important, but it involved a woman singing with us, and the gag was that she was a terrible singer. Super funny, right? Sure. We recorded a couple of versions of one of Trevy’s songs, with the actor singing in a weird operatic voice. It made me worry that what we were doing wasn’t, you know, cool, but what did I know about making movies?
We filmed at night in the courtyard of the old Los Angeles County Museum Museum of Art. We showed up at around 3 or 4 p.m. and didn’t pack up to leave until the sun was rising. It was a long night, and we had to “perform” for most of it. There are a lot of breaks in movie making, though, so I spent a good amount of time sitting on the edge of the stage, watching them order extras around and talking to whoever happened to be hanging around (including one of the costumers, who, through a series of ridiculously unlikely coincidences I’d find myself in a relationship with for seven years).
For hours, we stood and pretended to play, both with the “singer” and without. I don’t know if you’ve ever pretended to do something for hours at a time, but it drives you a little crazy. After a while, I didn’t even know where my fingers were supposed to go to play the song. By 1 or 2 a.m. I was gone, just flailing my fingers around the fretboard and pretending to be very into what I was pretending to do.
I think we were paid $6,000 for 16 hours of intermittently pretending to play and sitting around, which is about $15,000 in today’s moolah. It wasn’t much, but we pretended to play one of Trevy’s songs, so we thought that, eventually, it would be a bigger payday. Royalties, you know.
And it totally would have been a bigger payday if they hadn’t cut the song out of the movie.
I had a feeling that was going to happen. Well, I saw a sign, you might say. Before the movie came out, I was working at a print shop in Pacific Palisades, and one day, someone came in to get some copies of their film sound editing resume. I saw Defensless in his credits.
I said, “Hey, I was in that movie!”
He was like, “Oh yeah, which part?”
“I was in the band.”
“Hmm, I don’t remember a band…”
That didn’t sound promising. Had we been unceremoniously removed from the end product?
The first version of the movie that we saw at the cast and crew screening featured 20 or 30 seconds of us performing, so the song was in there. But months later (a year later?), when it came out, and I went with some friends to see it, and the music had been cut. All you saw was us standing on stage for no apparent reason while actors acted in front of us.
Years later, I bought a copy of the DVD and skipped through the movie but couldn’t find us. I looked again, nope. I couldn’t find us because they’d cut our scene completely.
Welcome to Hollywood!
Recently, I learned there was a German “collectors” version DVD, titled Wehrlos, that claimed to be an uncut version of the film. Conveniently there was a new copy available on eBay. There’s a new copy of everything on eBay, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. It’s not the version I saw at the cast and crew screening, but I think it’s the version that was in theaters. So you can see (but not hear) us.
Seeing us there on the screen after all these years was, honestly, underwhelming. But I am playing my dearly missed 1960 Les Paul Junior, so it’s nice to see that. Also, seeing what we were wearing was funny (we all wore t-shirts, with Trevy sporting a Boom Shaka tee). We’d dressed for being in a movie the same way we dressed for a gig. Meaning we were wearing whatever we happened to put on that morning. It reminded me of our second Hollywood negotiation, which was with the wardrobe department.
At the beginning of the day, as we were setting up our equipment, the costume designer walked onto the stage and asked, “What do you think about wearing these shirts?” She was carrying an armload of Hawaiian shirts. We just stared at her because we were kind of in shock. Our silence flustered her, so she changed her tactic and said, “Martin wants you to wear these shirts.” We said something like, “Thanks, but, um, tell Martin hell no, okay?” She tried again to get us to wear them, and again we said, “Thanks, but no,” and that was that.
Can you imagine if we’d just said yes to everything? We would have been standing there in Hawaiian shirts next to a steel drum player who wasn’t in the band. Though I suppose that would have gone well with the singer who wasn’t in the band. Maybe that’s why they cut us; we were drawing too much attention in the background with our bright white t-shirts. That or our overt sexiness.
There were a lot of close-ups of us in the first version of the movie that we saw at the screening. But on this DVD, only Ray gets his (sort of) close-up. Congratulations, Ray. I hope your check didn’t get lost in the mail.
I’ve lived long enough and done enough weird things to have a handful of mildly interesting stories, and I guess this is one of them. It’s an experience I think about often because any time Ayin and I are watching a movie or TV show, and a background band comes on screen, one of us (usually me) shouts, “Boom Shaka!”
That makes it all worth it.
I just remembered that I have a laserdisc copy of Defenseless. I’ve never owned a laserdisc player, but the disc is here somewhere. Ever seen a laserdisc? They’re like CDs only the size of an LP. Ridiculous things, but apparently they were the highest-quality home video back in the VHS and Betamax days. Wait here while I find it and take a picture of it…
Thanks. Turns out I have two laserdiscs. The other is Bob Marley and The Wailers Live From the Santa Barbara Bowl. God, I remember buying that. It was 1981 or 82, a time when I had to walk across town to the audio/video store to buy blank VHS tapes. They didn’t sell them in any other stores. And they were $25. I’m not kidding. I had to buy blank tapes one at a time and protect them like they were newborn Bald Eagles or rare Swiss figurines of chubby little kids adorably kissing each other on the cheek.
Anyway, I saw the Wailers laserdisc in the store and thought, you know, maybe you’ll have a laserdisc player someday. You should buy that. If you don’t buy it right now, the disc will be out of print when you finally get a laserdisc player, and you’ll cry. That’s how I used to think. And probably still do. A little bit. So I paid another $30 or $35—or more—for the laserdisc. I spent the equivalent of a couple hundred dollars and walked out with a single VHS tape and a disc I couldn’t play. Sounds about right.
Okay, that was a different story, wasn’t it. Sorry. Let’s get back to Defenseless and wrap this up. It’s enough already.
Here’s the laserdisc. Fascinating, innit?
I still have that because it has no collector’s value, so I can’t sell it. You can buy old laserdisc movies for $5 or $10 on eBay. I guess some people still keep the machines alive so they can invite friends over on Saturday night to eat microwave popcorn and watch Tootsie or Airplane II.
Or Defenseless.
I should say that Barbara Hershey was lovely and patient and professional. While she filmed the scene where she’s watching the band, I was sitting on the edge of the stage about five feet from her. No one was talking to her, so I felt like I had to hang around and keep her company between takes. Things got pretty real:
“Hi.”
“It’s nice to meet you.”
“How are you doing?”
“Long night.”
“Did you have the grilled cheese? It’s so good the way they make it.”
“Getting kind of cold in here.”
“How about that guy over there hamming it up. Does he know he’s an extra?”
“Is that a bird?”
“Where did Martin go? Are we on a break?”
“Are you cold?”
Now don’t go selling that exchange to a movie magazine. I’ll know it was you.
We probably didn’t really talk about grilled cheese, but that night was the first time I ever ate a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato slices cooked into it. Really delicious. I just made a variation for Ayin and me yesterday.
I didn’t speak to Sam Shepard. The whole time he was there, he was being filmed up on a catwalk overlooking the crowd scene. I doubt he ate the grilled cheese. He doesn’t seem like the grilled cheese type. He probably went to his trailer, drank bourbon straight out of a bottle, and thought complicated thoughts while the rest of us were lollygagging around eating.
Can you tell I don’t know how to end this one?
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Brilliant!
You are!
Yes those were good coincidences leading to a lot of the best years of my life. Thank you for helping me raise my son through those teenage years. He is an amazing , funny, kind person and I love him more than anything. Thank you for making him push the mower. LOL. You are one of my favorites on this orb and always will be .We were fortunate to have had you in our lives. And most of all I am glad you found your true self and are brave enough to be living it. You are an incredible woman.
Yep the best years .