Scenes to Die For

Joseph Tornatore, as Victor the Hitman

"Rain add new wrinkle to scene. In the words of Barack Obama, nobody can see crystal ball. Good Luck!" -Zhenya Kiperman, director, before our stunt driver hit the pedal to the metal filming a scene from Sketches from Moscow and Philadelphia

They say the first time you die on film is an existential experience. I never heard about such philosophical introspection until after I played dead. I got hired as a hitman and took a shot at it in the movie Sketches from Moscow and Philadelphia.

Sporting a Dollar Store military hat, a scruffy beard, and a manufactured scowl, I got upgraded on the set on the first morning of shooting. Victor the Hitman leaped off the pages of the screenplay and I felt re-born.

Investors ponied up upwards of a million dollars to make this movie short. If the talented Russian director, Zhenya Kiperman, delivers on translating the screenplay to a short moving picture, a full-length picture is on tap. My paid job was to impress the director enough to get his attention and earn consideration for the full-length feature, if not for an audition for the role I played then a lesser role.

As it stands, I had a featured role in an abbreviated thriller that wrapped filming last night. The director described my acting as tireless and selfless after I sold my body take after take for my physical death scene with the lead character. Three days of action packed shoots. In a car with a professional stunt driver doing 55 mph fish tails and hair pin turns in the rain. The chance to work in a scene with perennial actor Giancarlo Esposito. To carry a Beretta with the camera following my action. To hold in my arms the sultry James bond girl vixen, even if she was struggling and did not welcome my embrace. They were scenes to kill for…some of us are just a better shot than others.