Rubbing Shoulders with Alan Cumming

First of all, let's think about the title of this piece for a second. Or don't, if you don't want to, like if you don't have the same filthy, perpetually sexually frustrated imagination that I do, you're not obligated to imagine me rubbing shoulders with a man named Alan as he achieves orgasm.

A fun fact though while I'm on this bodily riff, someone I told my Alan Cumming story to once related an anecdote that he'd tested a series of cosmetic and hygienic products, including a shampoo line called "Cumming In Your Hair", and I'm sure he thought about a face cream, am I right? Cumming On Your Face? Did I really need to type that? Well I did.

So I was actually inspired to write this by my friend and collaborator on a few projects (including my first ever play in New York) Mark Blickley and his piece Waiting For Robin Williams about a chance encounter with, you guessed it, Robin Williams, that left an impact in his life.

It got me thinking about an idea for a historical fiction novel series I had, imagining my own life and career through the lens of Horatio Hornblower or whatever, except instead of advancing through the British navy and fighting Napoleon while bearing witness to various historical events, it would be a young artist, it's a little convenient but let's say he's an actor, writer, comedian and musician who adventures through the art world and has his ups and downs and successes and failures personally and artistically, meeting the occasional famous people, observing events, etc.

This would be a scene from that series, one of my first acting jobs in New York was an extra on an Amazon Prime series, "The New Yorker Presents", the concept being a series of video pieces, filmed essays, short documentaries and sketches reflecting what you'd read in an issue of The New Yorker. I found this particular gig on Actor's Access, it was SAG affiliated, I'd literally just moved to New York and didn't have anything going on, so I took a weird random day of extra work for $50 bucks and trekked out to Brooklyn somewhere to be an extra in this comedy sketch featuring Bret Gelman (who's a comedian and character actor you can google, you might recognize him) as a homeless person imagining himself talking to God, as played by Alan Cumming.

Unremarkable anecdote, I was hanging out in craft services at the beginning of the day, loading up on coffee to tolerate waking up at like 6 am for the 8 am call time in Brooklyn and of course the free food because what else do you do on set, when Alan Cumming came in, and I didn't register it was Nightcrawler from X Men 2. I overheard later was unhappy about the lack of vegan options, which yeah you could say is diva-ish, but it's like, I'm sure his people communicated he was vegan and it's craft services job to make sure there's stuff for people to eat. So yeah.

Later we were on set, and I was assigned to pass by the shot of the two of them talking outside the grocery store where we were shooting the scene, and one of the passes Alan Cumming jumps up as I pass by and walks next to me, shoulder to shoulder, I imagine to try and create the effect of God disappearing behind this rather tall, messy haired, kinda brawny hipster looking Brooklynite who's walking by like he just doesn't give a fuck. Which I didn't! Part of that was my intention, obviously I was just doing background work, but I was trying to make my walk as naturalistic as possible and not regard the action happening next to me, like if you're going to be on set you might as well try and practice something, right? And additionally, I was going through a rather rough break up with my ex girlfriend who I'd left in Boston to pursue my acting dreams in New York, so I really didn't give a fuck. I was somewhere else. I gave negative fucks, and I wonder if they could tell from my "performance" and because of that and my look as a Brooklyn character I was chosen for that moment.

Or maybe Alan Cumming was fucking around? I don't know. Funnily enough, I really wasn't happy about being featured, because I worried it would effect my ability to be cast in the future if the show went to series (I believe this was for the pilot) if I was recognizable from this piece.

I also remember at the time as it was happening thinking "OK be cool, Alan Cumming is walking next to you, literally rubbing up against your shoulder, don't do anything different, don't change your focus, just keep walking until they call cut", and because I was an extra and like, as an extra you don't  talk to anyone unless they talk to you except for the other extras and the PAs in charge of extra wrangling, I didn't say like "Hey, Alan Cumming, what was that beat just now where you walked next to me?" But I kind of wish I had, cause like, fuck it, I didn't deliberately rub shoulders with Alan Cumming, he got next to me.

I don't know where I'm going with this story. If you read Mark Blickley's piece, linked above and which I recommend, his chance encounter with Robin Williams ultimately lead to him taking a chance and getting his first literary agent through a series of events. Maybe if I'd reached out to Alan Cumming, something indirectly would have come of it (or cum of it, get it?) but probably not, and that's fine.

What's the moral of this story? I'm not sure. I just though it was kinda cool.