Continued from yesterday’s A Day In the Life of a Writer, i.e. ESL tutor.
To catch you up to speed (yes, I’m aware the phrase is “get you up to
speed”, but this is an example of poetic license on one’s own blog): I
am a writer, which means that I am a freelance ESL tutor, a film and TV
“background artist”, an underpaid office temp, a panhandler and, every once in
a while, a writer.
Today’s installment: film and TV background artist.
 |
| 1980 called - it wants its hair back! |
Doing extra, or background artist, work on film and TV can be quite
fun. Yes, it’s basically a minimum wage job, but most of the time you get
overtime and all the free M&Ms you can eat, so you might walk away with a
hundred, hundred and fifty bucks in your pocket (figuratively; a check is actually mailed to you a
week later) and a gassy stomach. All in all, not bad for a job where you dress
up as a nurse, cop, bar patron, intergalactic slave, big-haired 80s gal, or car accident victim (all typecasting, clearly),
and then sit around and catch up on your reading, phone calls, texting,
ego-bruising, sleeping, etc.
If the PA likes you or you simply have the right look, you might work
all day, crossing the set in the background, crying on cue when you discover
your loved one is dead, or sitting at the nurses’ station while the actors do
their bit (i.e. forget their one line over and over and over) in front of you.
And by the way, to the actors playing doctors: it’s pronounced VA-ginal, not
va-GY-nal.
Or on a real fun day, you could be ushered out of your cage—scantily
clad in a fur bikini with your matted hair and dirt rubbed on your face—with
the other slaves onto the auction floor fifteen times in a row. And that was the
fun part! The degrading part was waiting between takes in a tent in the winter
on a rainy day after the portable heater broke down.
One time the director of What Just Happened?, Barry Levinson,
selected me from a group of several hundred extras to play Sean Penn’s
publicist at the Cannes Film Festival (a.k.a. Northridge University, where it
was actually filmed). My task was simply to follow Penn around as he talked to
reporters on the red carpet and then dashed up the steps to the front door of
the theater, which was a mighty task in a floor-length gown and heels, but I
kept up! Adding to my spot-on performance as a harried publicist was the fact
that it was two in the morning and about forty degrees outside and it was the
end of a 14-hour day. Don’t bother watching the movie (I’m sorry to say it
doesn’t live up to its director's and actors’ reputations), but if you see the trailer (which you will if you click 'play' below) you’ll see me right behind Sean
Penn’s right shoulder at the 2:01 minute mark. I’m the grumpy one with the sprayed on tan.
Another experience, this time on the set of Dirty, Sexy Money, made this minimum wage job worth it: Donald
Sutherland spilling wine on the front of my dress and then trying to mop it up
with his hands, and later falling to the ground (on purpose) and peeking up my
skirt (by accident), then announcing to everyone that I wasn’t wearing anything
underneath (not true)!
So you see, if you don’t have any major bills to pay and
you are able to leave your dignity at home, background work can be tremendous
fun!
No comments:
Post a Comment