Free Beer And Ten Dollars
My part in a Korean gangster film
© Jon Horne  

   Sydney, July 1995
    A girl of no more than thirteen years propositions Phil. She sits on a kerbstone, her smile innocent and out of place. Phil smiles back, tenderly and with discomfort. I walk on.
    The hostel is at the top end of the street, away to the side and just out of reach of the Club XXXs and Sexoramas. Its neighbours are a café and a grocer. Blocking the entrance is a step-ladder. I walk under the ladder into the tiny lobby. Phil follows, ducking low. On the left wall of the lobby is an overflowing notice-board. We step over the detritus of long-filled sits. vac. and offers of lifts (share petrol), and ascend the concrete stairs.
    An elderly oriental stands behind the desk, scowling and smoking. He takes our names and allocates us beds for the night. As our backs turn, he calls us.
    “Wanna be in a film?” I turn back to him, and then to Phil. “Be extras,” he adds. “Free beer and ten dollars.”
    “We’ll do it,” we tell him.
    “Go to Dancers Club. Roslyn Street, around the block. He points the way.
    We dump our possessions and make our way around the block to the club. We are ushered in through the back door, opening into the basement level of the bar. The room is dark-lit, but bright-red painted - ‘decadent red’ Phil calls it. We are motioned into a corner. There we find a traveller-couple, a motionless man in sunglasses and a boyish oriental, who pats a chair enthusiastically.
    “Sit down with me. Hello! I am Wong - Wong from Korea. This is Korean film. Hello! We get free beer and see strip dancers! Maybe movie star! Who are you?”
    Phil and I introduce ourselves and shake Wong’s hand. The guy in sunglasses sneers and snorts contemptuously.
    “Hello?” I venture. The sunglasses stare into a void. Wong continues his two-hundred-words-a-minute introductory rap, this time to Phil. I try my luck with the couple. Before I’ve managed to say my name, the girl pipes up, in a Liverpudlian accent: “You’re from England!”
    Ruth is small and wide-eyed, always moving and squirming, with an attention-span that lasts seconds. She is completely in awe of her partner, Woody. Woody has a South African accent, but shows off his British passport. A dark-skinned Jew (he tells us), he begins very quickly to bemoan the fate of what he calls ‘outsiders’ (such as himself) in South Africa. He contrasts it with fantasies about his newly-adopted Australia.
    A little surprised at his own verbosity, Woody looks down at his hands. Ruth peers deeply into his eyes and I begin to survey the room.
    In the adjacent corner, cameras, lights and other equipment are being set up on the pool tables. Opposite, extras are being positioned around tables near the bar. In the main body of the room, most of the people are being herded around the two small stages.
    In the far corner sits a differentiated group. These are the Film People, themselves subdivided into the filmmakers themselves, all Korean, all looking busy and occasionally breaking out into furious argument, and the dancing girls, of various appearance, who all look bored. Sitting with the dancing girls are two black, well-dressed, threatening-looking security guards.
    Aside from Wong and Woody, the extras are a uniform bunch; young, white, semi-kempt, a ratio of 2:1 male to female, all wearing money belts - backpackers the lot of them. As a group, they are so easily recognisable. Appearance limited by the practicalities of travel, each one attempts by the use of small items of apparel and adornment to assert an individuality, which has the opposite effect, turning them into virtual clones.
    One of the Koreans visits our table. He moves us closer to the stage, and into the camera’s sights. The Korean ignores Wong, who retreats into a bitter sulk, only to liven up immediately at the sight of a statuesque woman in a kimono.
    “Korean movie-star!” exclaims Wong.
    “What’s her name?” asks Phil.
    “Don’t know. Movie star!” replies Wong, puzzlingly.
    Silence at our table allows me to hear conversations that drift across the room. Loud English accents, often with the mid-Atlantic tinge of the extensive traveller, mingle with stilted European voices. Every one of the extras must have been recruited from the hostels. Phil’s is the only Australian accent to be heard.
    Until now. The second local accent is wielded in piercing tones by a dancer who approaches our table.
    “Seems I’m the bloody barmaid now!” she shouts, “Want a drink, anyone?”
    All hands are raised except that of Wong, who has gone back into his sulk.
    “Get him one as well, thanks,” I tell the dancer.
    There is a call for quiet. One of the Koreans, young and nervous, stands and speaks. Another, older and very well-groomed but for a ragged baseball cap, whispers into his ear.
    “Thank you all for coming. First some introductions: I am the interpreter; this is the director; this is the assistant director; this is the second assistant...” and so on. After the introductions, he gives an expansive hand-and-arm gesture, along with a rather poorly-executed grin: “And you,” he continues, “are the extras. We need you to appear natural. Walk around, drink, talk, go to the bar, enjoy the show. The rule is,” he pauses and gives a theatrical shrug, “never look at the camera.”
    The dancer returns with a crate of beer, handing out cans to the extras. The interpreter also doles out beer and cigarettes, with the encouragement to “Drink and smoke! Be natural! We need more smoke!” Phil and I dutifully light up.
    “Too many women here,” says Ruth.
    “Shut up. You’re here,” says Woody, dejectedly.
    The second assistant director, or some such luminary, prods my shoulder and that of a young blonde woman sitting by the stage. He mumbles something in Korean. The interpreter grins again.
    “Bartenders!”
    We squeeze our way through the packed nightclub, getting wary stares from the film people as we pass. The area behind the bar is a mess. Bottles, glasses and ashtrays are strewn around the floor, almost floating in the stale beer.
    “What do we do then?” asks the blonde woman.
    “Try to look busy, I suppose.”
    The lights go down.
    “Remember,” shouts the interpreter, “no looking at the camera.”
    The music starts, and a strong white light comes from the direction of the camera. Everyone looks at the light.
    “Cut!”
    The first dancer climbs over startled extras onto the smaller of the two stages. She is chewing gum and looking more fed-up than when she was handing out drinks. Her hair is an exaggeratedly-false peroxide blonde, her face is plastered with make-up, and she wears a couple of silver laced very-littles. She begins to dance in a disinterested manner. I watch for a moment, then busy myself with the people who are now crowding the bar. The first of these is a large, loud Irishman.
    “We’re all supposed to be acting then?” he says.
    “Dunno about you,” I answer, “but I am”.
    “Fine, well act like you’re pouring me a whiskey.”
    I reach behind me to the bottles and pour him a huge measure. The sight of this draws all of the Irishman’s cohorts to the bar. They are a ragged group of English travellers, plus a clean-cut German couple, who all follow the Irishman like disciples. I pour large drinks for all the ‘customers’, taking a nip from each as I hand them over. The woman playing the other bartender does the same, until most of the extras are cheerfully sipping spirits. A look of panic comes over one of the film people, who attempts to rush to the bar, toppling headlong over a table.
    “Cut!” shouts the director as the dancer cracks into unaccustomed laughter.
    I squeeze a measure for myself out of the whisky bottle before I am grabbed by the dishevelled film person.
    “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” he asks, incredulously.
    “You said you wanted bartenders.”
    “You can’t dish out drinks!”
    You surprise me. Still, we got a good run out of it. I pour some of my now-hidden whisky into my beer and hand the rest to Phil, who has appeared at the bar, bringing us more beer.
    The mob at the bar leer at the dancer. She looks daggers back at them. As the music starts for a third time, she spits gum into a tissue and freezes a smile onto her face. She gyrates out of time with the wobbly soundtrack tape. Her moves are jerky and uncoordinated like an athlete yet to warm up. The other bartender reaches into my pocket and grabs my cigarettes. She lights us one each and takes a long, critical look at the dancer.
    “Another couple of these,” she lifts her glass, “and I could do that. Better than her, too.”
    A second dancer takes to the larger stage, just as the first dancer sits down exhaustedly. This one dances on cue to, and in time with the music. She works the space, and gives lengthy, enticing stares to the extras sitting around the stage. She demands and gets applause when she removes her halter and flings it into the front row. At the end of the routine, she stands brazen and heavy-lidded. She looks around, then pulls her G-string aside, swiftly replacing it. The Irishman whoops at the brief glimpse of pubic hair.
    “Good one!” she shouts, “Now do that when I’m bloody dancing!”
    The German woman gets my attention. She hands me a drink.
    “God! I love watching women dance,” she says, “It’s so erotic.”
    I manage to keep a stony face and mumble: “Me too.” Her boyfriend looks extremely put out. She hands me his drink with a satisfied smile. Another to add to the collection. This seems an odd place to have a domestic.
    I look over to Phil. The second dancer is sitting on his knee, stroking his thigh and pouring a cocktail into his mouth.
    “My mate’s pulled a stripper,” I say to no one in particular.
    I return to talking to the crowd at the bar. Under the surface of backpacker culture is an ill-disguised competitiveness. The crowd swap stories and subtly rate each other accordingly. Some boast of sojourns in burning western deserts, others of time spent in the fleshpots of Sydney and (gaining considerable kudos) Darwin. ‘Tourism’ (the word is drawled sardonically) is frowned upon. My travelling experiences get a very low rating, although a description of the difficulties of maintaining a relationship with a difficult Australienne garners some respect, being in marked contrast to the emotionless and hastily-consummated one-night-stands that seem to constitute the romantic lives of this lot.
    The Irishman returns to the bar and hands me a schooner of Coke. Good timing, as I have just gulped down the array of drinks in front of me. He is wobbling on his feet and giving me a twisted, expectant grin.
    “Oh...thanks,” I tell him.
    “Taste it.”
    I take a large swig, then swallow swiftly as tears fill my eyes.
    “Half and half whiskey,” says the Irishman, gleefully.
    “Thanks again,” I wheeze, gratefully.
    “Your mate liberated it from the oppressors,” he adds. I look over at Phil, who raises his glass to me.
    A booming, fuming voice bellows into my ear.
    “Get out from behind the bar! Go on, sod off, the pair o’ you!” The manager.
    To the annoyance both of us and of the film people, we are shooed away and back into the throng of extras.
    I return to Phil, who is losing control.
    “Just look around you,” he says, staring at a point some distance behind me. “Exploitation, that’s all it is. Fear of the body, fear of poverty, all being exploited by the Japs for money.”
    Phil often does this: drinking and thinking at the same time.
    “So who’s being exploited?” I ask, “Them or us?” I nod at one of the strippers. For the first time I can see her back. Striped weals mark her across her shoulder blades.
    “Us and them! Y’see?” he asks triumphantly. “The Japs have got us all in the palms of their hands.”
    I wish he’s stop calling the Koreans ‘Japs’. He continues, mumbling: “Bought and sold, bought and sold,” far too close to the earshot of the dancers.
    “Fine,” I tell him, “more whisky?”
    “Phil’s right.” says Woody, “It’s the same the world over. South Africa? I’ve seen it all my life. Lived it. Over here? Same story. I went to Ayers Rock. You know what we did?”
    “No.”
    “Walked on it, man, it’s sacrilege. Did anyone ask the blacks’ permission? Course not! We turned up, walked all over their temple. It’s just more exploitation - women’s bodies, the Earth, same thing.”
    Ruth echoes Phil: “Bought and sold.”
    As all this is going on, they are shooting the final scene. The strippers strip, we continue to watch with waning interest, and in one corner, one of the Koreans acts out a scene where he has to get past the bouncers, finally being overpowered and beaten to the ground. This elicits some derision from the extras, all of whom are drunk and bored. Finally the actor is forced to the floor with a sufficiently resounding thud. The dancers put their clothes back on and the extras begin to file towards the door.
    The man with the cash is in direct confrontation with Phil and Ruth. I don’t like the look of this. The guys who were playing the bouncers have reverted to being real bouncers. They stare hard at Phil.
    “Ten dollars?!” shouts Phil. “D’you think you can buy us for that?” Phil is whining and slurring every syllable. Ruth mumbles incoherently in support. Woody wanders over into a corner, shaking his head. Finally, Phil comes flying across the room, having been propelled by a bouncer. I catch hold of him to keep him out of the fray. Perhaps he has right on his side, but they have the firepower. I hold him tightly and quietly until his rage passes. Ruth wanders over dejectedly, putting her head on my shoulder.
    Woody breaks up the scene of togetherness, brandishing forty dollars.
    “I’ve got the money, now let’s go.” We follow obediently.
    Phil and Ruth continue to mutter, “They bought us, they bought us,” as we walk out into the Kings Cross night.
    “That’s right,” I tell them, “for free beer and ten dollars.”