My brain was literally on fire first time I saw a drama set.

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I now wanted everything to do with "the biz."

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So I learned it all.

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ALL. OF. IT.

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Directing. Writing. Storyboarding. Pitching.

Casting. Acting. Producing.

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ALL.

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OF.

IT...

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.. I tell you!

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I went from living for many months in a room the size of most

closets in American homes (quite literally, they are called goshiwons

and they had free kimchi and Ramen, and that was all my broke ass

needed back then) to slowly, over the years, working my way up by

being kind to everyone on set and working my David H-ass-el-off!

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People, in any country, love working with affable, funny people that show up on time, know their shit, and bring others up when they have "made it."

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You'd be surpised how many people thought talent alone was gonna get them hired. 

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But I had my eyes set on two goals:

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1) Be the most diverse and 2) famous white dude in the history of the second largest entertainment industry in the world.

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I managed to accomplish one of those, and missed the mark on the second.

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I'll let you decide which :)

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Alright, below is a very small fraction of the work I did.

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Most if it has been removed offline for various business reasons, copyrighted to hell and back, or I just never got around to downloading it at the time.

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Some is bad "Korean, eggy-oh" way of cheesy acting. They literally will do 100 cuts until you do it that way.

Just watch any Korean comedy and you will know what I mean.

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Still some cool clips in there, but man, as I type this I am realizing it was a damn shame how many major scenes got lost on the cutting room floor. 

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More clips and stills can be seen on my Instagram, the_ameriken.

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I was also often cast as a "hand actor", too, for products like the first Samsung Gear Watch (utter garbage, literally didn't work) and the Samsung 360 camera (was so bad they had to tape 7 DSLR Canon cameras onto a ball and run them at the same time to get the effect the 360 camera was supposed to have. Never trust what you see on TV kids! I've got literally dozens more stories of horrid products rushed to market that I was asked to "make it look like it works" because "we already told the world it does." Oppa, Gangnam style!)

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Side note: Once I came back to America, the Korea Times called me asking me to do an expose on how shitty foreigners were treated in the biz, and since no working actors would dare go to the press about our troubles for fear of being blacklisted by agencies, they finally found a non-working (hallo!) who couldnt care less about sticking it to those bullying from agencies, and their "no-contract"s that screwed us all, and their disgustingly putrid working conditions, no union, delays in pay or no pay at all, and visa intimidation tactics that drove 99.999% of all foreigner actors out of the biz within five years.

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Once I was forcibly bounced out of that country, I happily obliged to that documentary camera crew.

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KPOP and Kdramas wasn't all kimchi and Hi-Chew, after all.

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Often times it was super dark, and I saw behind the scenes, up close and personal, the darkest of the dark in that industry.

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And foreigners got the worst of it, often times.

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​Now back to our regularly scheduled program:

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Where were, we? 

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Ah yes! Hand modeling!

These hand modeling jobs were interesting because:

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1) How would any Korean viewer ever even know the difference on TV if it was a white guy hand and a Korean hand?

2) Who thought the average Korean viewer ever would care, even if they did notice?

3) They always reminded me of those old Country Crock commercials from the 90s, but with more butter (I loved getting unnecessarily oiled up and greased down. Really showed off my "hand tone.") 

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I still tell people that my favorite job ever was a Korean hand job a Samsung Marketing Exec once gave me.

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More butter, please!

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