You Can’t Be Serious(38)

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Thankfully, Walt and his writers (Brent Goldberg and David Wagner) were as nice in our conversation as they had been at the audition. They were all about finding deeper humor, were receptive to my thoughts about the script and character, and agreed to change a few of the more cringeworthy things: a few lines with the irrelevant religious references, the lame jokes about different foods, stuff like that.

Originally in the script, Taj was supposed to wear traditional Indian clothing. In the real world, most young exchange students try extra hard to assimilate, not double down by wearing ethnic attire. I pitched the idea that something like a collection of ill-fitting sweater vests was more realistic and therefore more charming and grounded. While Walt and the writers were agreeable to this, one of the producers was furious. He ranted with a bizarre combination of bravado and sass. Sassy Producer carried on about how he had been to India (once, in the early 1980s) and was therefore an expert on all things Indian. Taj had to dress in traditional Indian clothes, because the people Sassy Producer saw in India in 1982 were wearing traditional Indian clothes. End of story. I got the sense that this strange behavior was far more about his own ego than the best way to ground my character.

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.



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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.