I employed more of Sonia’s advice, and stuck to explaining the clothes as a way to make the character witty and more engaging. More truthful could mean funnier. It worked. Sassy Producer eventually relented. The character’s wardrobe felt like a win, however minor. Sonia was right; practical compromises would help me keep some artistic integrity. Of course, there’s plenty of stereotype—ethnic and otherwise—in both the role I played and the film in general. But I was glad to have comedic bits beyond that, and happy to be working with people who mostly respected and appreciated my creativity within the confines of what we were making.
* * *
As nerve-racking as those creative conversations about stereotypes were, on the first day of shooting, I had to do something legitimately life-and-death terrifying. Keep in mind that this was my first real major motion picture. It was the very first scene I shot for my first real major motion picture. And it was my first sex scene. Ever.
In one of Taj’s pivotal moments in the film, an enthusiastic girlfriend comes over to his dorm room to hook up. While they’re getting naked in the scene’s climax,8 he nervously rubs massage oil on them both. He then—most unfortunately—leans too close to a scented candle, and his back catches on fire. Not the back of his shirt, mind you—the skin on his actual back, set ablaze just as he’s about to lose his virginity. Debauchery. Hilarity. Nudity. （Told ya it wasn’t all ethnic stereotypes.）
The producers couldn’t light my skin on fire directly, of course （special thanks to our labor union, the Screen Actors Guild）。 Weeks before, I had been sent to a special effects shop in the San Fernando Valley where three guys with long hair and very cool tattoos stripped me down and took a plaster mold of my back. Out of this they built a prosthetic back, which was really just a very thin piece of silicone with small, hidden openings at the top and bottom. On the set, this silicone prosthetic would be affixed along the full length of my back and colored in to match my real skin before it was doused with a flammable liquid and set ablaze. Standing in the freezing special effects warehouse in my underwear while three strange men lathered me up in plaster felt like pretty good prep for this sex scene.
So, there I was, arriving at my trailer on my first day of work on my first real movie ever. I put down my backpack, took a sip of my coffee, and saw the costume that the wardrobe stylist had laid out for me: boxers and a pair of socks. That’s it. It didn’t take long to put them on, or go through hair and makeup. I showed up half-naked on set and saw that since there would be flames in the scene, the entire crew had been given special fire-retardant “just in case” jackets. Firefighters were also standing around, dressed in masks and hats, with tanks strapped to their backs, as if they were getting ready to put out a dangerous wildfire. This freaked me out. I was the guy they were lighting on fire in his boxer shorts. Any contingencies they were planning for would affect me the most. Firefighters? Special jackets? Just in case of what?!
A guy hollered from across the dimly lit room. “Kal Penn! Taj Mahal Badalandabad!! How are ya, I’m Rod!” As Rod got closer, I noticed he had a quarter-inch-wide scar running the length of his face, from the top of his right temple, through his forehead, around his left eye, down his nose, ending below the left side of his cheek just after the border of his neck. “I’m your stunt coordinator. My primary concern is your safety. Just do what I say, and you’ll stay safe. Promise.”
Ohmygod.
Shouldn’t a stunt coordinator have been able to avoid a scar like that?
Here’s how the rest of the day went. Scarface Rod supervised the setup as two firefighters poured some gasoline on my silicone prosthetic back and lit it on fire before each take. When Walt yelled “Cut!” they’d smother the flames with a blanket. A third firefighter would then shoot ice-cold water through those hidden openings of the prosthetic and directly onto my real back to mitigate the heat transference. “We gotta do that quick,” said Rod, “so the heat don’t move through the silicone and burn off your skin.” Okay yeah, it seems like you should do that, Rod, thank you.
I should have been scared, but I was running on adrenaline. I couldn’t wait to tell my friends with as much humblebrag nonchalance as possible, “Yeah, of course I do my own stunts.” The real challenge, it turned out, wasn’t being lit on fire. It was the acting performance that followed: making moves on a half-naked actress as a virginal exchange student while on fire. My equally half-naked scene partner, the lovely and talented Ivana Bozilovic, thought the sight of me running around with flames shooting off my back was so hilarious （thankyouverymuch） that she busted out laughing in the middle of the first few takes. I had to get lit on fire over and over again until we got it right. My first day on a studio film set and I was so funny that I was going to burn to death.
* * *
During breaks that first day, I got to know the writers better and pumped them for information. Ever since auditioning for a character named Taj Mahal Badalandabad, I had wondered two things: 1） Why did they decide to make the character Indian? and 2） How did they decide on his last name?
It turned out that the choice of his ethnicity was somewhat random. There hadn’t been that many Indian characters in movies, so this seemed like a fresh take to them. The important thing was that without Taj, they said, the plot wouldn’t progress. I was happy to know that my initial assessment of Taj’s creative grounding was solid.
And his last name? They just made it up. That was… hilarious. To those of you who don’t speak Hindi, let me explain. The end of Taj’s last name, -abad, could be taken from any number of generic cities—Allahabad, Ahmedabad, Abbottabad. It’s common. But the first two syllables of Badalandabad were interesting. In Hindi, bada means “big.” And land—pronounced lund—means “cock.” They had no idea they had literally named this character Taj Mahal Huge Cock.
I love subversive, subtle things! After I explained what it meant to David and Brent, we all had a good laugh about how they had unknowingly named a character whose central problem in life was that he couldn’t get laid—a Big Dick Baller.
* * *
In all, I was a Big Dick Baller who was lit on fire around a dozen times to get that first scene right. It was hard work, and I enjoyed it. As the day wrapped up, Ivana asked me, “Hey, do you know why they started the shoot with one of the toughest scenes? We’re both naked, getting it on. You’re lit on fire. A lot could go wrong.” She raised a very good point. Why not shoot it later in production when we had better chemistry and communication?
I asked Sassy Producer that question. He was such an unashamed hothead, I knew he’d be straightforward with me. “Do you really want to know?” he asked, with super-sassy satisfaction. “If we lose an actor, we’d have to recast and reshoot everything. It’s a whole process. By doing this scene on the first day, if we lose you I would simply have to recast you. I wouldn’t waste money having to reshoot all your other scenes.”
Translation: If something goes wrong with the fire and you burn your face off or die, I won’t have wasted more than one day of my production budget. Still plenty of time to call Facey McPainty and see if we can light him on fire next!