Greetings! I’m Armie Hammer! You definitely should know me by now from the Academy Award-winning movie Call Me By Your Name, in which my lead character Oliver cuts a rug to “Love My Way” by The Psychedelic Furs. What most people don’t know and absolutely need to, however, is that shooting the dance number was one of the most painful scenes I’ve ever had to do.
That’s why I’d like to tell you about my rehab clinic for actors who had to dance on film once.
Even though I’m world famous and have been for years and it didn’t just happen recently no matter what anyone says, a life of fame and fortune always comes with drawbacks. In my case, it's how I’m so fucking messed up from that dance scene.
But because I’m equally generous and perceptive, I know that other actors are surely going through the same trauma, which is why I founded this carefully tailored rehab center to help myself and my peers cope with briefly dancing in a movie in which we were paid handsomely to act.
Look, I may be a superstar actor with infinite potential, but I also basically have PTSD.
My therapy center is called Hammer Out Your Dance Demons and is funded exclusively by me and by none of my family’s $200+ million fortune because I’m a self-made man who has never once benefitted from my house’s vast wealth and influence.
Here at HOYDD, you’ll do exactly what the title suggests: drive out the suffering. Situated somewhere in Northern Italy, this clinic operating out of a humble, rustic mansion adjoining a peach orchard is perfectly designed to assist actors like me, who have come from a lifetime of privilege, and to reckon with the abject horror of a mildly bad dance.
I’m just a normal, run-of-the-mill American who grew up in the Cayman Islands, likes BDSM Twitter posts, and got ringworm a lot as a kid, which is why I’m relatable. Through a combination of bike riding that affords views of breathtaking pastoral landscapes, swimming in natural freshwater pools supplied by trickle down from the Alps, and aiding in archaeological excursions at sea, this simple, relaxation-based therapy is guaranteed to aid in accepting the brutal reality of being forced to do a simplistic two-step to no music while 500 extras ogle you while you do a thing that they are also doing, but for ten thousand times less money.
Naysayers (assholes who forgot I played both Winklevoss Twins, which was so hard) have told me that the exercises invented to help my patients unravel the tightly bound cords of their pain is “exactly what you do in Call Me By Your Name,” “technically counts as plagiarism,” and “you could get sued, dude.” To that I say it’s purely a coincidence that many of the events that take place in the film are also rehabilitation procedures curated by the brilliantly original mind of yours truly. It's really quite funny how similar they are, but what isn’t remotely humorous is that I almost died from embarrassment on set. Seriously. It’s not.
Look, I may be a superstar actor with infinite potential, but I also basically have PTSD. While I haven’t been officially diagnosed by a licensed psychologist, I do know that it usually affects poor people who fought in wars or poor people who experienced unspeakable violence. But dancing on camera is like war for me in the sense that I signed up for “military service” (agreed to act in a motion picture for seven-figure salary) and neglected to anticipate the “horrors of combat”(sometimes acting requires a bit of physical movement to harmonized sound).
Now, here I am, broken but still trying to help other poor souls with rich bodies figure out how they’re going to ever act in a movie again without being haunted by their permanently bruised egos that resulted from consenting to feeling insecure about doing something that almost the entire world does to express joy and pleasure.
So far, no one’s signed up, and that’s fine. They’re probably just scared. But I know in my very self-aware brain that they’re out there and that one day, they’ll come: professional performers who are embarrassing by performing.