Disclaimer:
I wanted to have my stories of
working in and around the film and television industry under a blanket title
- and I'm going through chronologically - so here is another of these blog posts
from before my time as a production assistant. If it helps, it's also pretty much the LAST of the entries that don't have me working on the crew. Mostly, anyway. This one really should
be housed under the title Extra Extra Read All About It - because this is one of
my experiences as a movie extra...
I moved to Wilmington, North Carolina in January 1992 to seek work in the film industry, after a very disappointing 18 months outside Chicago Illinois not getting work in the film industry. Work? Hell, I never even got an interview in the Windy City.
A college friend who was also graduating with a BA in Cinema and Photography had vacationed in Wilmington NC with his family years before, and he knew there was film studio located in the city and movies were made there. So, he and his wife and I packed up all of our belongings and drove down to the coast of North Carolina.
My friend and I made the rounds of any place we could think of to seek production work of any kind. We went to every video production facility, we went to the studio - at the time Carolco Studios as it was owned by The House That Rambo Built. We went to the local TV stations. We went tonearly every sound studio, production house, prop house, costume house, and possibly doghouse in the hopes of finding work.
 |
| The only place in the city of Wilmington with the word 'studio' in it that we didn't stop at. It's a long story. |
I don't want this to turn into a domestic drama, but I'm going to quickly explain why my friend is about to fade out of this story - we agreed with a manly handshake that any job opportunities we found would be shared between us - both could put in an application or resume, and let the best man win. Well, an overheard phone conversation between my "buddy" and his parents (or maybe it was the wife and her parents) some time after we'd arrived revealed he'd put in for two or three TV production jobs he'd found listings for that I'd never been told about. So, I'd been upfront about everything I'd turned up - and he'd turned into a double dealing jackwagon.
Consequently, although sharing the same living space for a few more months on the same lease, we went our separate ways in our job search and our friendship faded away too.
Well, one of the places we'd stopped was a small sound studio the name of which I've forgotten. I know that their ad in the Yellow Pages indicated they were available for film dubbing or scoring, so my pal and I had stopped in their during our first days in Wilmington. We met a really nice guy there named Chuck, and while he had no work for us, he did give us some good advice about our job search, and told us to stop back in occasionally.
Time passed, my friend and I had our falling out - and I was still looking for film work. March had rolled around, and nothing was happening. Turning in a resume at the studio had gotten me nothing - and stopping by a location shoot for a CBS TV movie called
Stompin' at the Savoy had likewise produced no results.
 |
No, didn't work on this one - dropped by the location shoots a couple of times.
I just wanted to stick more pictures in to this post. |
I'd come down with some savings - but with no income of any kind three months of living expenses had drained them away. I was in dire straits, money-wise - and it had already been discussed that the only option left to me if the money ran out was to head back home to my parents' in Illinois with my tail between my legs.
On March 11, 1992 I went back to the sound studio to see Chuck again - to see if he had any leads or anything at all. And much like a movie ending - Chuck told me he could put me on to something - a friend of his was working in extras casting for a feature film that had just started production. Her name was Pam, and she was at the studio right then signing people up to be in a movie called
Amos & Andrew. I could only guess it was a new version of the old radio and TV show - possibly a strange choice in those days of political correctness as the actors who'd played the African-American characters on radio had been white, but a job was a job. Chuck told me to go sign up and mention his name to Pam, and that he'd put in a good word for me - but I had to promise him I'd be dependable and show up when expected. I assured him I would, thanked him, and dashed out to my car.
I got over to the studio, and jumped in with the line of people signing up as extras - and when I got up to Pam I threw Chuck's name at her like a ninja throwing star. She lit up at the mention of his name, and told me she'd definitely find me something on the movie. She did tell me the movie was not a redo of the old
Amos and Andy show - but it was an edgy racial comedy that was playing off that old title. Other than that, all she could tell me is that the extras were being signed up for a sequence in the movie where several news crews surround a house. I would be "acting" the role of a TV news camerman. She also told us that a lot of the movie was going to take place at night, and the production had decided to work the night schedule for the bulk of the movie after knocking out the few daylight scenes in the first few days of filming.
 |
This is the studio today, with two additional soundstages built since 1992, and the EUE/Screen Gems logo.
We did the extras casting for A&A in the little cafe up front, just to the right of the tiny little guard shack. |
It was going to be a couple of weeks though as the movie was only getting started, so I had to go into survival mode in terms of money - I ate a lot of canned tuna and Ramen noodles for those weeks.
A few days after I'd signed up I got a call to go to the studio for a costume fitting, and to wear jeans and bring a few different shirts and any jackets I had. At the studio, a harried wardrobe guy had me try on my different shirts and one and only jacket - which was reversible, and he finally gave me the okay when we flipped the black jacket with green piping over to the green jacket with black piping. He snapped a Polaroid of me in the outfit for continuity. Then I went to see props - because they needed to make up a fake press pass for me to wear in the movie. The prop guy - Greg - took my photo so it could be put on the pass, and that was it - pretty painless.
 |
The actual Polaroid - working with the same wardrobe crew
on a subsequent production - someone gave me the picture! |
A couple of weeks later I got the call -
Amos & Andrew needed me for filming! I got my first call time - something like 7 or 8 pm - and after a nap, headed out that way with plenty of time to spare. To keep the number of cars near set low, they had us park at a grade school a couple of miles from the set. (This kind of setup - the deal to let the extras park at the school - is the province of the locations department - who work out these kinds of deals all through preproduction - then act as liaison to the public at each location.) A 15 person maxivan was designated to take the extras to set - driven by a member of the Film Teamsters union. They would fill the van, then make the loop around to the set, let everybody out, then head back to the parking area - this took a fair amount of time - but it really helps not having all that car activity happening anywhere around the film equipment.
We got out to the set - and the first step was to do some paperwork. All of the extras checked in at the extras tent, and filled out the forms that would help us get paid. Generally speaking, extras made roughly $50 a day in 1992. But this had two caveats - 1.) it was based on an eight hour day - and if you went longer than that you started making overtime - and without getting into a lot of maths - if you went 12 hours you ended up making $87.50 minus taxes. Not too shabby. and 2.) you got paid a minimum of the 8 hours the minute you showed up. So, if you arrived, and moments later a huge downpour of rain opened up, and they decided not to shoot your scene right then and released you - BAM! $50 still went in your pocket. And you wonder why movies cost so much to make?
 |
Not Amos & Andrew, but a representative picture of what extras hair and makeup
looks like in the extras tent. |
After the paperwork, it was time for wardrobe, makeup, and hair to send representatives to make sure everyone who was supposed to look like they were going to be on TV camera in the story looked like they were going to be on TV camera. Because this was a movie that was set in 1992, they didn't have much to do on the rest of us. And then it was the waiting game. We stayed in the tent while they shot other things on set and generally got ready.
And here is where I learned the life of an extra. People who'd done it before brought all sorts of things to occupy themselves in these days before smartphones and tablets - there were books, cards, knitting, even sometimes musical instruments (guitars mostly) There were 30 or 40 of us in the early going and we chatted and read and played cards and got to kind of know each other - and it was fun.
 |
| Extras holding for a period production. |
I eventually brought a book a few nights - but I never read a page - there was just too much going on around me - too many people to interact with.
We were told when we agreed to be extras that the shoot for our sequence would take at least a couple of weeks, and we had to agree to come back until that section of the production was finished with us. So I knew going in there were going to be several nights' shooting.
 |
| Catering truck - coffee dispensers almost dead center. |
It was sometime in the first few nights that I went to get some coffee off the catering truck - which was set up very near the extras' tent - and someone got in line behind me for coffee - oh, it was that Sam guy who was starring with Nicolas Cage!
Yeah, as in Samuel L. Jackson! But here's the thing - at this point he'd only done a handful of acting roles, and the best known was his zonked out character from
Jungle Fever - so he wasn't that known a quantity to me. And this loops back around to something I said in my
A League of Their Own post - sometimes it's better to chat up and get autographs from the people on the set you don't know all that well - because I guarantee there will be less activity around them moment to moment - and if they do go on to be better known you get a better story to tell!
Unfortunately at this time I hadn't come to that realization - so I did not get an autograph or a picture - I took my cup of coffee back over to my seat and continued chatting with someone about something. Think of the story I could tell now if I'd talked to Mr. Jackson!
 |
I would love to talk to you, Mr. Edwards,
but I'm all tied up right now. |
I kind of realized that while I can make sure I post these in chronological order - the actual writing is probably not going to go that smoothly - because my memory of the order of events is a little slack. I know what happened - but I don't always know when, or what came before or after it. So I'm going to get a little episodic here and just chat about the various bits I remember that were kinda cool.
 |
This is an actual behind the scenes shot; you can see Dabney Coleman in character being made up to
appear on TV (or maybe it's the actor being touched up off camera?)
I don't see myself in here anywhere, though, dammit.
And check out the house nestled away top left. Info on that below... |
When we got to the actual set - I discovered they had actually built an entire house - and a road for the set! The house was a shell - almost no interior stuff - but the road - while a tiny bit thinner than an average road like this - was really poured asphalt with painted on lines and everything - it stretched past the house for a goodly distance in each direction, then came to a curve on either end - and disappeared into the woods at each end just around that curve.
 |
| The fake road. |
After the film was over – I went back out to the set – and ran into the location manager, a nice guy named Shaw – who cleared me to walk around and photograph stuff – so that’s where the pictures came from. All of my pics are daytime shots – the only time I was ever there in the daytime! They ripped the road up and tore the house down shortly after.
 |
| The Sterling home facade from the "road." |
Walking one night very late back to the extras tent (also known as basecamp) - probably for a restroom run - I passed Nicolas Cage headed to set - he said "Hey how ya doin'?" I said "Fine, how are you?" He replied "Good." and that was my entire experience interacting with Nicolas Cage.
 |
| The house facade, closer. |
When the newspeople come to surround the house - a bunch of news trucks and vans convoy out to this house - and while some of the stuff was shot elsewhere in Wilmington of these vehicles - when they get close to the house - the production had us extras driving them! (A little unusual, as it would normally have been the Teamster production drivers). And I am actually driving one of the big trucks with a satellite dish on it! I was terrified the whole time - but they had this adorable female Teamster named Lori helping me back the thing up and get ready for each take, and she was basically assigned to my truck - and well, she was really cute, so I drove the crap out of that truck just for her!
 |
| This is very similar to the truck I was driving - not huge - but that road was skinny! |
The cast was pretty amazing for this movie - in addition to Cage and Jackson, you had Dabney Coleman, Michael Lerner, Margaret Colin, Bob Balaban, Giancarlo Esposito, Tracey Walter, Loretta Devine, and Brad Dourif. I had brief momentary interactions with everyone - and more with Lerner, Colin, and Dourif. I actually ended up standing in (being the lighting double) for Michael Lerner - and he and Margaret Colin were not trailer babies, so the nights we shot their stuff (later - after the news crew scenes) the two actors and me and Ms. Colin's stand-in - a woman named Lisa - more on her in a moment - spent a goodly amount of time together.
 |
Margaret Colin and Michael Lerner. Yeah, they looked
like a real married couple. |
Lerner was a funny New Yorker type - Colin was a sweetheart and very funny. I helped Lerner learn how to say the name of local grocery chain Harris Teeter - which around here is pronounced Heh-us Teetuh if you have a thick Southern accent. (Which I don't, by the way - I'm a Midwestern boy - almost no accent at all!) As for Brad Dourif - I knew him from
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and more recently at that time as the voice of Chucky the Killer Doll from the
Child's Play movies. I struck up a conversation with him at the catering tent one evening - and he was a very nice man - we chatted about this and that - and unfortunately I got no autograph or picture - it was my first show - and I was afraid to ask for stuff like that - so I have nothing from any of the actors - except nice things to report.
To finish up my stand-in stuff - I also stook in for TV reporter Waldo - who prowls around several scenes with his camerman Ernie. I.M. Hobson was that actor's name - another nice man - a journeyman actor who appeared in small parts in dozens of shows, perhaps most noticeably as a servant in
Bram Stoker's Dracula that same year.
 |
| I.M. Hobson |
So, that other stand in I mentioned - Lisa? Well, she'd been there since the news crew stuff - a tall, willowy brunette - just gorgeous - and they had her duded up as a TV reporter for those scenes - in fact, I was her camera guy in those scenes. Well, later, after this show and another I worked on with her - her husband became North Carolina State Senator Patrick Ballantine - which made her Lisa Ballantine - lawyer, state senator's wife - and almost NC First Lady when her husband made an unsuccessful bid for governor in the last few years! But imagine that! I knew her when!
 |
Lisa Ballantine and Bob Sayer, downtown Wilmington 1992.
This is an unused version of a prop photo from a subsequent production we
worked on together. |
I have to mention one other cool extra - although there were dozens I liked on the show - but Andrew Thielen was a lawyer or stockbroker or something of that sort when he wasn't being an extra - and he was also playing an on-air reporter as an extra. Good looking guy - perfect TV reporter look. Well, over the course of those two or three weeks of shooting the news crew stuff - we chatted a lot - he and Lisa and I - and he told us he was tired of the rat race of his job and he was thinking of chucking it and trying his hand at playing music for a living. Well, a few years later I saw The Andrew Thielen Big Band was playing in town - and now they're a really popular wedding and event band all over North and South Carolina - so he actually did it! That's really very cool!
 |
| Andrew Thielen these days. |
 |
| I'm thrilled for him! |
I had been told by Chuck that when I got on set I should try to prove useful to the Assistant Directors - as they would be the people who would be hiring me for any jobs as a production assistant - which was the next rung on the film ladder for me. The 2nd 2nd AD on
Amos & Andrew was a gorgeous blonde woman named Cyndie Williams - and no, not the one who played Shirley. So I tried to be helpful to her -
 |
| Not this one. |
I would gather up groups of extras for her; I retrieved items for her; that sort of thing. Well, one evening most of the extras were at set, but there were a few of us back at the tent. It was far enough into the day that the caterers were setting up for lunch (a lunch served at 11pm!). The catering company was called Ken and Art’s – and Cyndie was dating Ken. (She later married him!) Consequently she was helping their guy set up some of the stuff – and I pitched in too. Well, moments after I got started Cyndie got called away. So it ended up being me and Art’s girlfriend, who’d come to visit him on set that night after flying in – or so I’d heard. I grabbed a big bowl of macaroni salad and went and put it in the iced holder on the table just as Art’s girlfriend set a different bowl of something in the ice from the other side of the table. I looked up and she and I made eye contact – and this was the first time I’d really looked at her. My jaw dropped and I said “Uh…you’re Bonnie Bedelia!” Because I’m always ultra-clever in moments like this. Anyway – she was indeed the actress best known as Bruce Willis’s wife in the first two
Die Hard movies! She was dating our caterer Art – and on my first movie in North Carolina I run into her while helping set up some food tables! She was very cool – and we chatted as we continued to set stuff up. She told me then they were looking around for a
Die Hard 3 – but she didn’t know if she wanted to do it. (In the end, she didn’t.) And keep that
Die Hard 3 thing in the back of your mind – because it’s going to rear its head again a few posts down the road…
 |
| Bonnie Bedelia. The one setting out food with me had much less Hans Gruber. |
In the movie, author Andrew Sterling moves to an
exclusive island community – and no one realizes he’s black. The neighbors see
Sterling in his
home setting up his stereo and think he’s a burglar. The police chief (Coleman)
sends in his men, then realizes his error – but it’s too late – a crowd has
gathered at the Sterling home. Trying to save face, the chief
sends in two bit ne’er-do-well criminal Amos Odell (Cage) to act as the burglar
– but he ends up taking Sterling hostage when
he realizes the chief is trying to sell him down the river. What started out
as a guy setting up his stereo becomes a hostage situation, and that brings in
the news crews (us). This whole terrible situation is then worsened when a local mainland
Reverend (Esposito) and his flock hear of the trouble and make their
way onto the island and to the Sterling home to protest.
 |
| Samuel L. Jackson and Nicolas Cage discuss billing. |
So, part of our sequence was just us newspeople arriving and trying to get the story going on in the house, and the second part has us covering the protest, which actually ends in a riot and thrown torches setting the Sterling home ablaze. Well, it just so happens that we were shooting these sequences – the riot and the inadvertent burning of the Sterling house – on April 29th, 1992. If that date doesn’t ring any bells – it was the day the verdict in the Rodney King trial was handed down and the LA Riots started. Although we were a couple of years from the internet and wall-to-wall coverage – we got word about the riots as we were shooting – and someone from the LA production office got caught up in it briefly, though I don’t believe they were injured. But it was sobering and even a little chilling to be shooting such a scene - with African Americans angrily protesting and rioting over what they see as a racial injustice - at the exact moment that real life rioting was going on over the same kind of issues on the opposite coast.
It was fun watching the production fake a helicopter in our news scenes – although there is footage of one taking off that was shot separately – when you see the spotlight and wind at the house it’s a light on a scaffolding tower shining down and giant fans (called Ritter fans or Ritters) making the wind. I love the illusion of moviemaking, and this was a prime example – and really the first I ever saw.
 |
| A Ritter fan. |
As we worked our way through to the end of the original
news crews segments – Pam lined me up for more work as a stand-in, first for
I.M. Hobson (Waldo) and later for Michael Lerner. Somewhere along the way I also
started working as an extra on another movie at the same time – doing night
shoots with A&A as they called, and day shoots on the other flick when I
wasn’t working on A&A. The other movie was Super Mario Bros, and it will be
the next movie to be featured in one of these posts. But I’m going to mention a
wild and funny overlap between the two movies – then repeat it in the SMB post
in case people don’t read both posts (and if you do read both posts – just read
one of the overlap bits with your eyes closed)
Well, I worked on Super Mario Bros one day as an extra - I went in early, like 6:30-7:00am. Worked all day, getting released for the day with no callback for the next day around 7:00-8:00pm. I got home and found a message one of my roommates had taken that said Amos & Andrew (which shot only nights) needed me as a extra - so I quickly showered, changed, and jumped back in my car and headed out to that set .
I arrive around 8:30-9:00 and discover they are happy to have me. I figure I'll shoot all night on A&A, then sleep all the next day. It was a looooong night. Around 4 or 5 am I was really sleepy, but I muddled through the rest of that evening into the coming dawn, which was always A&A's wrap time. I stumble back into the apartment around 6:00am, and find a message that apparently had come in five minutes after I'd left for A&A the night before requesting me to come in for another day's work on SMB! And by golly, I needed the work and the money!
Another shower, another change, and I drove back out to the cement plant, now past the 24 hours up with no sleep mark. I worked all day on the police station set, and most of the day is a blur. But on the back side of the day, I was sent into an office in one of the station hallways with the direction to "do office-y stuff" behind the frosted glass office windows while first unit shot some kind of action scene out in the hallway. There was a long lighting setup in there, and they just left us on set as we were out of the way and quiet, and I started drifting badly, not quite sleeping, but as close as you can get.
Thankfully they wrapped (or wrapped us extras) around 5-6 pm. I somehow managed to drive home, now 36 hours in and no sleep. I had no call time for either show and was planning to meet some friends for dinner. Got back to the apartment, half afraid that Amos & Andrew would have left another message for me - not sure what I would have done there, but thankfully they didn't. I got to my place, planning a shower before dinner, sat down on my bed - and it was suddenly the next afternoon. Slept straight through like 18 hours or something.
As we continued shooting, I started to become friends
with some of my fellow extras – hanging out off set and such. I decided that we
all needed to work on something – and I consequently started coming up with a
script idea that we might work on together – some in front of, and some behind
the camera. I’m still friends with some of these guys – so that was one definite
benefit of working on the movie.
 |
| Dabney Coleman and Brad Dourif |
I went to see the movie as soon as it premiered some
months later. After all that time on set, I didn’t think you could assemble a
movie from the footage shot and not include me – but they basically did. My
truck driving is in there – though I’m not visible behind the wheel; I’m in the
news crews crowd scenes – somewhere; and there is precisely one shot of about
10-12 news crew people looking astonished – and there I am, for about seven
seconds. I’ve never rented the movie to freeze frame the scene – I need to do
that and shoot a picture off the screen to put in
here.
The movie was reworked a fair amount after the fact – in
particular, the ending, which has Chief Coleman get his comeuppance from Tracey
Walter’s tracking dogs – was added through a reshoot in California later. I
don’t even know what the original ending was – as I never saw anything
approaching a complete script. The movie was merely okay for all that star power
– Jackson hadn’t
yet found his full-on angry edge – which would have added immeasurably to the
movie…and Cage ran roughshod over director Frye – looking too over the top and
playing the character a bit broadly. For every funny bit that works – there are
two or three that don’t. I love Frye’s script for Something Wild – but I think
this movie shows why he hasn't gone on to become a well known name in movie directing.
One last story – one night while helping Cyndie Williams
with something around the extras tent – she introduced me to her boyfriend Ken –
our caterer. And she said “This is Craig Edwards. He’s one of our extras, but
he’s been a great guy helping me out – and I’m going to hire him on my next
show.”
Would she make good on her promise? You’ll have to come
back to read the next post in this series to see!
Until next post, you Can Poke Me With A Fork, Cause I Am Outta Here!
