CONVERSATIONS WITH VAN DAMME - Part 5
Video Voicemail, No-Face Man
Another CONVERSATION WITH VAN DAMME
(For the reader, I wrote a movie that JCVD starred in called POUND OF FLESH. I’ve also written a few other projects for him that have yet to be made, so I’ve got a ton of voicemail and video messages from him, in addition to occasional phone calls out of the blue. It’s a surreal experience to have a guy you once had posters of decorating your college dorm room call you. But that’s the biz. JC is a unique, eccentric man. Conversations with him cannot truly be described, only experienced. What follows may have or have not happened, per se, but it is true to the spirit of JCVD interactions. Consider this fiction with a dose of the real, and you can decide for yourself which is which. Myself, I ain’t saying except where specifically noted.)
Video voicemail from JCVD:
JCVD: So, back to the story1, Joshua, our guy, the guy I tell you about, the man with no face. He has no face. Where his face was, there is nothing. Two holes for eyes, yes, two holes for the smelling, one slit for mouth, yes, but everything else, is gone.
Just scars, Joshua, like I told you before2. A big lump of the scar, what is that called? Like for to blow the nose? (turns to someone off-camera)
My love, what do we use for to blow the nose? Tissue? Yes, that’s it. (back to camera)
Our guy, he has nothing but the scar tissue for the face. They call him No-Face Man, and he almost never talk. This is my character, Joshua. No-Face Man.
I am No-Face Man.
And I am in the jail, for murder they say, but really what happen, this bad man was blackmailing my mama, she had a toy store, you see, sell the toys to little children, and this bad man, he make mama pay him for protection, and I catch him breaking up the store, hurting my mama, who die from her bad heart during this, and we fight… and I kill him, go to jail. Yes? But this bad man, he was head of crime family, very big-shot, and though they wanted to kill me, the man’s son, the bad man’s SON, we need a good name for this character, because I want to get Charlie3 for this, Charlie is a very good actor.
What should we call Charlie? (off-camera) My love, what’s a good bad guy name? Something like the name of that guy from that one movie, remember? The bad guy you like, remember? Yes, like that, but can’t be too much like that, needs to be like that but original. (back to camera).
So Charlie, he don’t kill me, he could, but he say that is too good for me, so instead, he has his thugs pour the acid on my face, to take my face. Before I go to jail, they burn my face off. I go in as No-Face.
They leave me alone in there, because of this face, like a monster, I mop the floors, I clean, no one bother me, and I bother no one. For years. Then, one day, I see on the television, Charlie, open a casino where my mama’s toy store was!
I got it! I know what Charlie’s bad guy name is. We call him Good-bye! Good-bye Charlie, they call him that because his face is last they see before Good-bye!
You like that, Joshua? Good-bye Charlie.
Okay, so there is doctor, woman doctor, she work the prison, very attractive, she feel sorry for me with the no face, and she reach out to some experimental plastic surgeon and get them to fix my face. She falling in love with me, but she don’t know it yet.
When I am in hospital getting my new face, Good-bye Charlie send his goons to kill me, he just find out I am getting a new face. So I am in bandages, face all wrapped up, when his goons come in to murder me. I fight them off and save the doctor, who I think should be Scarlett Johnson4, you know Scarlett Johnson?
So I save Scarlett, we escape the goons and go on the run, she take me to her father’s farmhouse, remove the bandages on my face, she see this (points at face) and she fall in the love with me for real now. We make love, have to have love scene, my fans, they ask for it. Shot very well, classy.
I leave her there, to go find out about where Charlie is, do some detective work, now I look different than I do from beginning of the movie, understand? So no one, they recognize me, no one. I am like new man. I can go to casino, no one knows me.
That night, I find out is grand opening of Charlie’s casino, the mayor, other big shots, all of them will be there.
But while I do that, Charlie send goons to Scarlett’s farmhouse, they take her, kidnap her and I get back too late to stop them. They took her.
So end of the movie is, I go to casino and rescue Scarlett, kill all the bad guys, and before I kill Good-bye Charlie, I tell him… Good-bye. Boom! Kill him.
I think I should kick him in the face and he fall from casino tower.
That’s the movie.
I talk to you more after you do treatment.5
JC hangs up, video ends.6
For more CONVERSATIONS WITH VAN DAMME, click HERE
No recollection of him ever telling me THIS story.
See above.
He probably means Charlie Sheen. They’re friends. It’s true. I sat behind Charlie at the premiere of POUND OF FLESH. When you see them, you’re like, of course they’re friends!
Means Scarlett Johannsen. I think.
We never spoke of this idea ever again.
Full disclosure: I made this specific story up myself. As I cannot share JC’s real stories, I created this in the spirit of his stories, which all have this particular flavor.