Monday, 20 March 2017
The James Bond Dance Dream, Co-Starring Charlize Theron
Theron… Charlize Theron.
You know those dreams where you’re supposed to do something really important, but you didn’t know about it or prepare for it? The most common instance being you’re supposed to take a test or give a presentation in school but you’re completely unprepared for it. Y’know?
That was the kind of dream I had a few nights ago. There was some big Hollywood awards show—not the Oscars or anything, but big enough to have in a huge theater like that. There was going to be an interstitial between awards that featured a “James Bond-Themed” dance set to Duran Duran’s Bond Theme, “A View to a Kill.” In case you’re unfamiliar with that song, here it is:
The dance was to be performed by Charlize Theron wearing a black gown. My job was to operate the spotlight. At the last minute, the producer and director of the show called me over to the side of the state and told me that they’d decided I should get in a tux and go up on stage and join Charlize as James Bond. Charlize’s part of the dance had been completely choreographed, but the producer of this awards show literally told me to “wing it!” Hilariously, since they hadn’t planned on throwing me up there until the last minute, I was not given a prop gun, just a laser pointer that I was supposed to pretend was a Walther PPK.
The dance started out excellently. I was manning the spotlight. The stage went dark, and I turned on the spotlight. As the opening strain of the James Bond theme started playing, Charlize walked out into the spotlight, spun and fired a prop pistol directly at the spotlight, which flared bright and then went dark, mimicking the “gun sight” openings of the James Bond movies.
As “A View to a Kill” started playing, I had to rush down from the spotlight perch and head up the main aisle in my tux and climb up on stage.
Y’know how dreams like this are usually panic-inducing? Well, image instead that you embraced the whole “winging it” philosophy and had an absolute blast. Instead of trying to dance, I acted like the silhouette of Roger Moore in his James Bond opening numbers, striding around and posing and pointing my laser-pointer “gun.” Then I realized I could actually tell a story with this whole thing.
There was one part where Charlize was choreographed to head way off to one side of the stage, then quickly dance across to the other side. When she moved off to the side I was in focus on centerstage. I quickly spun around like I just noticed someone behind me, then slam, sprawled on my back as if I had been shot dead. Charlize started her dance across the stage to the other side, and right at the moment where she crossed behind me, I spasmed as if I had been hit with a defibrillator. When she reached the other edge of the stage I sat up, groggy, and instead of going back into Roger Moore posing, I started acting dazed, stuttering around Charlize as she danced, studying her every move.
Charlize, like a trooper, started playing to me instead of to the audience at this point, and the dance became a story about a man who was killed and then brought back to life as James Bond by Charlize’s femme fatale. By the end of it I was acting in full-on confident James Bond mode again.
It was hecka fun and funny. The audience of celebrities seemed to enjoy it as well.
