John Oak Dalton

"Not 'Hollywood Independent' - writer John Oak Dalton is the real Real Thing." --Cinema Minima."Very weird and unpopular b-movies and comics."--Blogalicious. "After watching the film I am left to wonder if he had some childhood trauma he is not telling us about."--IMDB user review. "Screenwriter John Oak Dalton wanted to be in Hollywood. Instead, he's in the rustic kitchen above the Germania General Store, stirring a pot of boiling hot dogs." --The Harrisburg Patriot-News.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

The Day I Killed Myself

I have been wanting to write about my acting turn in BLACK MASS for a while but hadn't been able to think of how to do it without getting a lot of unwanted hits to my site, not unlike John Polonia's fear of what might happen after he rather haphazardly ordered German Army props and material from poorly-vetted websites. I think he is still keeping his eyes peeled in case the FBI busts in with a one-way ticket to Gitmo. Suffice to say, to confound the search engines, let's just say I was slated to play a Bad Guy soldier, and this is a World War II movie, so do the math.

Loyal readers may remember my star turn as Bigfoot in the stunning denouement of AMONG US, where I stood on a box and channeled my inner sasquatch to attack Bob Dennis, Hunter Austin, and Jon McBride in the van as they were trying to escape the seige at the cabin. In BLACK MASS I will be more recognizable, as a Bad Guy soldier who startles our loyal troops as they try to creep up on a Bad Guy factory deep in Eastern Europe.

I'll say this, at least I had the buzz haircut for the part, as opposed to certain other members of the cast who had to wear hairnets (Years and years ago, as I have mentioned before at this humble site, I was an extra in the movie HOOSIERS, shot nearby. Featured extras had to line up and get whitewalled and flat-topped in true army fashion, a shock to my college sensibilities--and, of course, you can't even see me in the final product).

In BLACK MASS, our stalwart protagonists come up on some weird scenes of devastation and one solitary Bad Guy soldier stumbling through the creepily-quiet woods. Although they shout for him to halt, he brings the gun up--and shoots himself in the head.

I tried to practice conveying fear and horror, and I didn't shave that day, but that's as far as I got as far as getting into character. But I will tell you, putting on a Bad Guy jacket and helmet will give you the creeps, though. If you have played a lot of "Axis and Allies" like I have, you know how close a call it could have been. It makes you stop and think.

This kind of chilling feeling was mirrored the next day when we draped a Bad Guy flag over the altar in a Catholic church. It makes you feel kind of queasy seeing it up there, and the Polonia Brothers hurried to get the shot and get it down. And these guys are hard to faze, believe me.

But no matter how much I thought about the philosophical side of it, I couldn't help but think that somebody (like these guys) will snitch a screen grab of me with a gun in my mouth and caption it something like "The screenwriter realizes what he's done and exacts personal justice."

We will let the audiences decide when they see my "Alfred Hitchcock" appearance in this one. Until then, give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.