Faces of The Sickness

Joseph Tornatore reflects off camera after the carnage.

What is to be said for a dreary morning while on your last day of vacation? While the weather was a real downer, looking at myself in the bathroom mirror motivated my return to bed. I just couldn’t stand the ugly pimple rearing its greasy head on my face nor the twin teabags which seemed to hang under my raging bloodshot eyes. For heaven's sakes, my thoughts were that I looked like a hellboy made up for a horror movie.

About two hours of useless beauty sleep later, my cell phone rang. I received an urgent telephone call from the director of The Sickness. Although I had submitted my resume for this independent film about six months prior, I had not even been called in for an audition. The director sounded busy, his words short to the point. He inquired about my immediate availability. Although I was thinking ahead to my weekend plans, I wound up on location a stone’s throw from Delaware in little over an hour.

Let the record show that on the day I looked like I could scare Halloween, I was actually cast in a horror movie. The director greeted me by my car. As he explained the featured role I would be playing, I followed him past a creepy dilapidated barnyard with a silo. I heard human noises coming from the greenhouse where we were headed. Inside the greenhouse, I was introduced to the bloodied cast and crew, many of whom looked ragtag enough to have come from the set of The Crazies.

As stray cats jumped out of nowhere onto the gardening tables, the makeup girl added a white powder puff foundation to my beaten face. She then applied four latex open sores. After discussing cinematic realism, it was mutually agreed upon to leave my pimple alone. A network of blue veins got penciled on my long forehead. Faux membrane and dripping blood made me look like a walking epidemic.

As the last actor to arrive on set, I actually completed my scene before signing an appearance release. I performed a very violent act with minimal rehearsal. My face, body, and clothes were a bloodbath of membranes by the time I finished my carnage on the helpless victim.

This role represented the first time I had killed someone on camera. After the first take was over, I didn't know what to make of myself. I stumbled for feeling. I likened my acting to a seizure, a momentary lapse of reason, temporary insanity. The director complimented me on my burst of caged rage. Sometimes when you wake up looking the part, it is just a matter of following through with bloody action.