Become A Star

Chapter 50

It was a pity Woo-Jin did not have the footage of the scenes that were rejected. It would have made things easier for him if he could compare and evaluate them. However, he was thankful that Production Director Park Jong-Hyuk, despite being a very demanding person, was taking such good care of him.  So, even if he thought it was a shame, he left it at that.

He found out what Production Director Park wanted after hearing his last remark, but that did not mean he had understood everything. The acting that had met the production director's standards was Woo-Jin's 'original' acting – it did not contain his feelings, and neither did he adopt a personality from one of his past identities. In that case, it meant that apart from using the method Woo-Jin hated, there were other ways of satisfying Production Director Park Jong-Hyuk's demands.

'What can I do for you?'

'Why are you always trying to do something for me whenever you see me?'

'Because there's nothing I can do for you.'

'It's not that you want to do something for me because you haven't done anything, but rather, you feel unsettled because there's nothing you can do, right?'

'I've done nothing for you and there's nothing I can do for you, but there's only one thing I can do well, so I hope that for your sake, you'll never need my help.'

'Then why do you keep asking me what you can do for me?'

'Because you might need me someday.'

In the scene that was shot a couple of days ago, Louie continuously asked the female lead those questions with a completely emotionless face. People had always wanted 'something' from him, so Louie had assumed that was also the case for the person he had fallen in love with. That was why he had constantly asked himself, 'What should I do for her?'

As a contract killer, the only thing that Louie had complete confidence in doing was murdering people. He hoped that she would not need his help, but he had a feeling that she might need it one day. A killer's hunch was never wrong.

In this scene, the cold and unfeeling Louie showed his regret, as well as his affection for her, along with a killer's instincts. It was also the scene that had been rejected several times because the production director was not satisfied with Woo-Jin's performance. On top of that, the female lead's peculiar stage voice had caused the production director to reject it almost the same amount of times he had rejected Woo-Jin. Thereafter, both of them had been completely exhausted and ended up collapsing. He remembered how Park Yeon-Ah had staggered and sank into the chair like slime as she was unable to lie down on the floor because of the sponsored clothes she was wearing.

He had not been able to think about anything after facing a constant stream of rejections. He vaguely remembered repeating the movements on auto-pilot and regurgitating lines that had been engraved in his mind. He had not been cognizant of whether or not the lines he had mindlessly uttered were right or wrong; he had just said them as though he was having a conversation with Lee Yoo-Ra. He could only remember that at the time, he had talked and acted like Louis without consciously thinking about acting and whatnot.

“Become like Louie. Without doing it consciously…”

Looking back on the scenes that had been given the green light, a good majority of them were like that. All the moments where his subconscious had naturally taken over after repeated rejections were the ones he had stopped acting consciously. When the camera started rolling, Woo-Jin tried to immerse himself in his role as much as possible and act it out, but he had a tendency to return to his actual self as soon as the cameras stopped rolling. He made a clear distinction between his character and himself, Chae Woo-Jin, as he frequently toggled the on and off 'acting mode' button in his head as he acted.