THE PRESIDENT’S PATIENT – A REFLECTION I

AUGUST 30, 2012; After a long creative sabbatical I was once again back in the field; meeting the cast for a script reading at Chikitsa, a joint situated on what used to be Horror Cafe. Script reading is most often a tedious and time consuming process which very few creative people would like to be part of. They would rather be a fly on the wall of casting than sit for half a day listening to would-be actors pronouncing difficult words.

I should say i was looking forward to this exercise because I tend to use big words in my writings and to actually see the next person bite their tongue to pronounce them is often a game for me. So, here we were at Newtown making our way to Chikitsa, a nxa pozzie next to World Of Beer for our session.
I should say i was impressed by the professionalism of the actors as they pitched one by one. The core cast was there, Regina Dube (Lieutenant), Napo Masheane (Susan), Paul Mzaca (Tshepo), Thabo Monareng (Lukas) etc. They all came excerpt for those small roles which we call bit parts. You know when you get to utter a single line in a film we consider you gifted and worthy of every praise. So, on the script reading day we decided to give them a rest so we all chipped in to deliver the lines.

What made everything more interesting was when Gwyza popped in; on his way to another meeting and we had a chat. You should remember that Gwyza was the guy who got popped in the last film; Cast the First Stone. He was quite a maverick and played his role so excellently I crossed my fingers that it was going to open doors for him – I am waiting for his big day. We discussed his upcoming album and what I can do. Maybe I can do what I am doing right now, write some few lines and get you hooked.

So, after director King Shaft have explained how broke we were and how everybody had to give their all as if we were operating on a fifteen million budget it was my time to explain the concept of The President’s Patient. I tried to be brief that the cops should understand that they are actually a task team made up of the cream from the NIA (State Security Agency), Crime Intelligence and Organised Crime. I explained the moral of the story.

And as we finished and got down to munching our lunch I couldn’t wait for the first day of shooting. I couldn’t wait to see all the research that Napo told me she did for her role kick in as she will be kicking butt.

I looked forward to Paul being a cop and not a toughie. Day One carried so much promise the night just dragged on.

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