Filming Singura Acasa, late November

Fulbright Update:
A Star Isn't Born
Move over, Brad Pitt and George Clooney. There’s a new 60-ish hottie invading the silver screen (or at least, the screen on your phone). This silver fox has all of your charm, charisma, and good looks, and brings academy-award caliber performances to every scene.

I’m not sure who this might be, but it sure as hell isn’t me.

In the last few weeks, I have made my acting debut as one of the co-stars of a serial produced by the Centrul Media pentru Tineri here in Moldova. The series of short films, “Singura Acasa” (Home Alone), deliver a socially important message to young viewers about misinformation and stereotypes in an accessible, entertaining format. My performance is nothing if not entertaining, though I’m not sure if viewers will be laughing at me or with me. (See how to watch Singura Acasa, below.)

Basically, I play myself, an American professor in Moldova. The plot revolves around me trying to find an apartment, and a Moldovan couple’s indecision about whether to rent to me.

Not only did I have to learn my lines (something I’d never done before), but I had to “act,” or try to act, and I had to do all of this in Romanian, meaning that 90% of my waning brain power was concentrated on correctly pronouncing my lines.

Filming Singura Acasa, late November

We shot most of the scenes on a single day, over a 12 hour period. I had the least luck when I tried to remember and then perfectly pronounce the words as exactly written on the script. These lines ended up sounding very wooden. I did better when I was able to just say the lines using the Romanian words I would normally use, words that know how to pronounce, more or less. Now, my grammar is far from perfect, but these semi-improvisations ended up sounding much more fluid and natural than the scripted lines.

My fellow actors were quite good, especially the leads, played by Madalina and Gabriel. To the extent that my performance is palatable, it’s because I fed off the energy of my peers, and because of the outstanding shooting and editing by our colleague Leonid. Director Alexandru was also a calming influence, smoothing over my ineptitude-fueled frustrations.

If I were Brad and George, I wouldn’t be too worried. In terms of looks, they would both still be better looking than me even after a disfiguring industrial accident of some sort. And let’s not even mention acting talent. But I do have one thing on them: I bet I my Romanian is much better than theirs.

How to watch Singur Acasa, featuring me
I made my first cameo (at 7:28 on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce9oV0zb8Wo ) on season 1, episode 2 of Singura Acasa. This is the next episode that centers around my character:  https://youtu.be/IKb_gOxKwrM?si=i5ygjyWAwF18WIlk .

Not much of an actor...