How FHM became a Hollywood star (kind of)
Introduction
Monday October 18 2010…
It’s 4am, it’s pitch black, and a half-asleep FHM is squeezing his car between a Sherman tank and a palm tree. This is weird, but weirder still when FHM remembers that we’re in Southend-on-Sea. Southend-on-Sea, in case you’ve never been, usually looks like this:
But not today. Because today, just a few hundred yards from Europe’s longest pier and England’s least pleasurable Pleasure Dome, a little bit of Southend has been transformed into a dusty and intimidating portion of Iraq for the filming of Screwed.
That’s not the only transformation taking place. For two days only, FHM is being converted from perma-tanned Essex boy into a terrorist-killing soldier called ‘Mac’. Mac’s psyched. He’s ready. He’s got his war-face on. He’s… having tar-like fake tan applied liberally to his face by a make-up girl in a trailer.
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From this...
Several hours later, with a complexion not far short of Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder, Mac’s fully kitted out and ready for war.
To this
If we look a bit sad, it's coz we are. Partly saddened by the brutal futility of war. But mainly because we rolled our sleeves up at the start of the day, now we're freezing and can’t roll them down because that’ll fuck continuity. Fuck continuity, we’re thinking. But we're professionals, so we soldier on through the goosebumps. If you think moaning about being chilly and having goosebumps is a bit wet, YOU WEREN'T EVEN THERE MAN.
Shortly after this, we got shot. It was really traumatic and messy and we couldn't get the fake blood out of our left ear for days. At least this'll look really dramatic on screen, we thought. We'll probably get an award for this, we dreamt. It got cut from the film. As did ALL of our lines. Honestly, both of them. Hollywood's a cutthroat business, make no mistake.
We did get an IMDB page, though. And we're up 574,516 on the STARmeter this week. George Clooney? George WHOney, more like.
If you happen to watch Screwed, look out for our name in the closing credits. It's the one that's spelt wrong. Yes, really.
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