My friend Azuma recently got revenge on me for casting him as a policeman in The Kiss of Lady X (not to mention a thug in Clay Soldiers) by asking me to play a park ranger in a commercial he’s involved in making. Fair’s fair, I agreed, and found myself checking into a backpacker hostel over the Wellcome supermarket at Guting last night, as we were heading out at 5 a.m. the next morning.

I slept poorly, not just due to the unfamiliar roar of traffic 12 stories below, but also because I kept waking up thinking I should be waking up soon, and was it time yet? Better check the time…no, but it would be time to wake up soon so I shouldn’t sleep too soundly, etc. Then I woke up and it was 5:20; no morning call had come. Rain was now beating at the window, so I figured the shoot had been cancelled. Still, I called Azuma, who confirmed. “Get some rest, you can still go to work today,” he said. So I fell at last into a deep sleep.

…and was woken up 20 minutes later when he called again. “The director’s decided to go for it,” he said. So I packed up and went downstairs for a quick McDonald’s breakfast and a drive through the muddy basin up into the clouds of the mountainous Yangmingshan area. There we waited along with the other cast and crew in our cars in the parking lot for the rain to ease up. Then we waited in a tourist center for the rain to ease up. Eventually it did, and I put on my park ranger uniform, complete with patches, a badge, and a semi-automatic Glock pistol replica. An actual Taiwanese park ranger arrived at the station soon after we did, which made me feel a bit silly in my fake uniform, but the others seemed to think  it was pretty accurate. The other actors were doing their scenes first, so I figured I’d take advantage of the uniform to make some silly Vines while I had it. I was already embarrassed as it was, so I figured a little more wouldn’t hurt.

Then it was time to shoot. The director and most of the actors were also bilingual, which gave the on-set banter another interesting dimension. I don’t envy the editor who has to reconcile all the different lighting conditions, however, as the weather was flickering between weak sun and near-complete darkness.

Still, we managed to get a lot done before the rain began again in earnest. The crew was working more or less as we’d done on our films, and I realized that I kind of miss film-making; it was fun and interesting, more purposeful than my usual wanderings with cameras. Maybe I’ll do a little something sometime.

The Nanjichang International Photo event Craig Ferguson and I have been managing has been rather successful; our first photo walk was on January 24th, which turned out to be the COLDEST DAY EVAR. I was thinking nobody would show up, but many did. My Canadian friend Darren, in particular, seemed proudly under-dressed considering the fact that real, actual, god-damn SNOWFLAKES were floating down from the skies of downtown Taipei. We took the small group of a dozen-odd photographers around the community, up on the roof of the compact elementary school, where Dilip perched himself on an alarmingly rickety desk to get a shot of the rooftop skylights. We even took the group into the usually-forbidden Third-stage building, something which the residents usually refuse, as they make a sizable income from weddings, movies and TV shows for some reason. Inside, they were, in seeming defiance of the weather, washing the courtyard with soap and water.

Due to the extreme cold and worsening air quality, most people left after noon, but I still count it as a success. Still, many people begged off because of the weather, so we decided to do it again, this time on February 20th. The weather was cloudy and threatening to drizzle, but we got a much better turnout. In fact, there were almost too many people; about 50 photographers showed up. We managed to fit everyone in the community center, but the borough chief had an emergency meeting and couldn’t give his normal introduction; his son managed in his place, though the chief is much better at it. I translated as well as I could, but I’m not great at such things.

We then tried to lead the group back to the school, but we lost half the people on the way as, being photographers, they just sort of naturally followed whatever caught their eye. One group seemed to have actually brought a young women with them to act as a model. And then, as school was in session that day to make up for the new year break, we weren’t allowed inside, much less up to the rooftop. By the time we got to the food bank, most everyone had wandered off, which I guess was fine. Later, with the assistance of the borough warden, who had returned from his meeting, I led a much smaller group into the third-stage and second-stage buildings. This was just as well, as I doubt they would have let a larger group in, and certainly not without the warden.

As leading large groups of photographers is not conducive to actually photographing, I didn’t really take any photos myself during the events, so I decided to join two photographer friends, Hubert Kilian and David Thompson, on a leisurely stroll around the community afterwards. Hubert and David often go out shooting together, and know each other’s styles enough to keep out of each other’s way, but I apparently threw a monkey wrench into their carefully coordinated shooting ballet as I always seemed somehow to be in the way of their shots.

It was a lot of fun, though. We had some delicious dumplings at the Xiu-chang restaurant, and then some coffee at a corner cafe, but most of the time was just wandering around and chatting with people and me being in the wrong place at the wrong time just when they wanted to take a shot of something. David is a very thoughtful shooter, taking his time before he shoots as well as when actually shooting, whereas Hubert, who also puts a lot of thought into his shots beforehand, seems more aggressive in pursuing what he wants in the frame. I generally shoot first, instinctively, and ask questions (of myself about the shot) later.

The upper levels of the second-stage building were particularly interesting, though I’d gone inside before with Chenbl, Ewan, Qi-hua and Linda. The designers apparently didn’t want to mar the exterior of their masterpiece with things like exhaust vents, so all the kitchens and bathrooms vent right into the corridors. After decades of this, the hallways are black with soot, the water heaters wrapped in little cages to prevent theft, though the washing machines are left unprotected. We met one old mainlander from Qingdao who told us we should get the hell out of Taiwan now before China bombed us to smithereens. We said we’d look into it.

Submissions from all the photographers have been pouring in over the last week, and there are some very nice shots; I think the exhibition will be quite impressive. Hopefully all of this will raise public awareness of this little-noticed community, the first of its kind in Taipei, before it’s consigned to history by the city government’s urban development plans.