Hi Ho, the Glamorous Life!

A while back I was called by a casting agent in Boston who was trying to round up some Union extras to work on a network TV pilot that was shooting in Plymouth, New Hampshire.  The first thing she asked me was what kind of vehicle or vehicles did I currently own, and did they have New Hampshire license plates on them.  I assured her that, as a legal resident of the Granite State all my vehicles were duly registered in my little town of Wilton and sported genuine state-issue “Live Free or Die” license plates replete with images of moose and the now-defunct Old Man In The Mountain.  The agent practically squeaked with excitement when I told her that one of the three vehicles currently in residence was a blue 1994 Ford F-150 pickup.  “Great!” she said; would I be available for a day’s extra work up in Plymouth with my truck?  Now, the great thing about the Union is that, not only would I be paid the standard scale rate for my time on set, I would be reimbursed a set fee for the use of the truck as well.  I’d be driving by or through the action being filmed, ostensibly to lend a certain small-town New Hampshire verisimilitude to the scene.  “And, oh,” she added, “don’t wash the truck before the shoot date.  It should look grungy.”  I assured her that the truck was sufficiently dinged, dented and dirty and would definitely pass muster for the cameras as what we up here lovingly call a “beater truck.”  I was told when and where to report; furthermore, I had to bring a large sampling of my own clothing that would represent what a rural New Hampshireite might wear.  So, at 4:00 AM one late winter morning, I loaded all my normal, everyday duds -- flannel shirts, barn jacket, some pairs of jeans and work boots, my overalls and a sampling of ball caps sporting the logos of several local tractor and feed stores – onto the front seat of the truck next to me, and set off up I-93 to the production company’s staging area on the outskirts of Plymouth.

On occasion, friends who aren’t in the business (the ones who made sensible career choices) ask me questions about what my working life is like, especially as concerns the few feature films and TV projects I’ve been involved in.  All they see, of course, is the world of “showbiz” as it is presented on the E! Entertainment network, or in the celebrity magazines – the “red carpet” at the Oscars, the Emmys, or the Golden Globes, with the designer gowns and millions of dollars in rented or loaned jewels; the multi-million dollar paydays; the retinues of personal assistants, lunches and dinners at the trendiest of celebrity chef-owned restaurants.  This is certainly a part of the life of those at the top of the food chain -- which the Union estimates is about 1 to 3 percent of the membership -- however, what my friends don’t ever see is the long (sometimes as much as 14 hours per day), tiring, maddeningly repetitive and decidedly un-glamorous process that is the making of a motion picture or TV show.  It takes talent and amazing skill and concentration to deliver even a basically competent performance under those circumstances, and the truly brilliant work that is turned out on a regular basis by many working in film and TV is all the more amazing to me, because I have been (albeit briefly) to the sausage factory and I’ve seen just how these things get made.

Celebrities, of course, do get perks – a car service to get you to work in the morning, personal wardrobe, hair and makeup people, a raft of PA’s  (production assistants) to fetch and carry for you, not to mention the money, fame and further opportunities that come to you. I’m reasonably sure, for instance, that Tom Hanks doesn’t have to show up at an audition where there are twelve or fifteen or twenty other guys, all his age and type, and all dressed alike, to wait his turn to read three lines into a camera in a windowless room somewhere.  For the majority of actors the grind of auditions (and rejections) and more auditions only occasionally resolves itself into a real, paying job.  If you are hired as a principal – that is, for a speaking role -- the Union contract to which you are signed sees to it that you are treated reasonably well and paid a decent sum of money for your time and talent (not to mention the residual payments – the gift that keeps on giving -- as the film is sold to cable, broadcast TV and Blu-Ray ).  As an extra, however, you are basically walking scenery -- the pay scale is considerably lower than that for a principal, there are no residual payments, and you’re pretty much herded like cattle during your time on the set.  Or, as was the case with this particular experience, forgotten about entirely.

I arrived at the production company’s staging area well before the dawn; the sky was clear and the stars and Moon were still out; there wasn’t even the tiniest sliver of rose-colored light to be seen yet on the horizon.  The place was a beehive of people and equipment; trucks full of lights and cable, trailers for the principal performers, and a makeshift production office.  A PA came over to me as I pulled up in front of the motorhome labeled “Wardrobe;” I told him who I was and he directed me to report to the assistant wardrobe supervisor while he went into the office to get the Union paperwork for me to fill out.  The wardrobe supervisor had me pull all the clothes I’d brought out of the front seat and hang them on a wheeled rack that stood outside his trailer.  He poked through it all, then came over to me and looked at what I was wearing – my old barn jacket over a worn flannel shirt, a pair of dirty blue jeans, and a pair of steel-toed work shoes.  “What you’ve got on is just fine – but would you mind changing your shirt?  I like one of the other ones you brought better.”  So, in the pre-dawn hours of a February morning in New Hampshire I stripped off my coat and shirt, fished out the one he had indicated, buttoned it up hurriedly and presented myself to him once again.  “Great,” he said, heading back into the trailer, “one of the PA’s will tell you where we’re shooting today; that’s where you can get breakfast and they’ll let you know when they need you.”

The PA who had gone off to get my paperwork was back by now, so I flagged him down and he gave me the forms I had to fill out for the day’s work – pay voucher, W2 form, I9 form – and while I was writing out my Social Security Number for the third time, he gave me directions to the house where the crew was setting up for the day’s filming, about a 5 minute drive from where we were.  I handed him copies of each of the forms, hauled my clothes back into the front seat, and drove off. 

The shooting location was a large house on a quiet residential street; it was clear they had been filming interior scenes in the house for a while because there were large numbers of lights and miles of cable visible in all the rooms on the first floor.  Craft Services (the catch-all name for caterers on a film set) had set up steam tables and equipment on the front lawn, and already there was a line of grips, PAs and other technical folk lined up for breakfast.  While I scarfed up a plateful of pancakes, sausages, and toast with jam, all washed down with very hot and very strong coffee, two other actors – my fellow extras for the day -- joined me.  All three of us were there with vehicles, and all of us were to be doing the same thing – driving through the scene to be filmed that day as part of the background action.  While we sipped coffee and went back for seconds, yet another PA came up to us, checked our names against the roster on his production schedule, and told us “Just hang out here for a while.  We’re shooting about three blocks away and either I or somebody else will come to get you when they’re ready for you.”  By this time Craft Services was clearing away breakfast and it was clear that we would be doing our waiting sitting in our vehicles.  The house was off limits because it was a “hot set;” meaning that all the lighting equipment, furniture and props were all ready to go from the last time the set was used and could not be moved or even touched.  So, each of us hunkered down, piled on a few more pieces of the clothes we had brought for extra warmth, and waited.

To this day I still marvel at how comfortable the front seat of my truck turned out to be.  Every twenty minutes or so I’d start it up and run the heater until it was reasonably warm, then shut it down and stretch out on the bench seat with the book that I’d brought “just in case.”   I think I even fell asleep for about two hours at one point during the morning.  Long around 11:00 AM (and mind you, we’d been told to arrive at the location at 5:30), my fellow extras and I noticed that the crew that had been working at the house seemed to all be leaving. We flagged down one of the grips (a lighting and rigging tech), who told us that lunch had been called.  So, in the absence of other instructions (there were no PA’s to be seen anywhere) we followed the departing crew to yet another part of town, and yet another building (I think it might have been a church hall) occupied by the production company that was serving as a makeshift lunchroom.  We joined the technicians on the lunch line, and sat with them as they regaled us with stories of how the shoot had been going so far.  To a person they all agreed that things had been consistently running well behind schedule; their considered collective opinion was that the director was treating this more like a feature film than a TV pilot shoot, requiring multiple close-ups, two-shots and master shots from many different perspectives, each of which required complicated and time-consuming re-sets of lighting and camera equipment each time.   While we ate, the PA who had checked with us earlier that morning came over and said  “Oh good; somebody told you where to go to eat.  Sorry, but things are running behind and we’re pretty hectic today.  When lunch is done just go back to the house and we should be ready for you by 1 or 1:30 at the latest.”

This is the part where, if this were a film script, the direction would read something like this --   “Scene dissolves to: Exterior – Later that Afternoon.  Camera dollies slowly past three vehicles, each of which has one person in the front seat bundled in large amounts of clothing, trying to stave off both frostbite and boredom.”  By now it is almost 2:00 PM, and we are getting excited because, in one hour, we will have officially gone into overtime without actually having done any work to that point.  Finally, yet another PA wanders by and we ask him, point blank, if there is any hope in hell that we will get used at all today.  His answer shows us just how important our presence on set is to the overall project – “So, what exactly were you supposed to be doing here today?”  After the three of us stop laughing, he assures us that he will check into this, and leaves, returning about 30 minutes later.  The verdict is in; things are running so far behind schedule such that they are nowhere near ready to shoot the scene we have been contracted to do, and there is no point in our remaining.  He notates the time on our pay vouchers (we miss going into overtime by fifteen minutes), signs them, and thanks us for coming out today.  Furthermore, we will in all likelihood not be called back at a future date to shoot the scene we were supposed to have done today; it appears that the situation on set has gotten so out of hand that the network production accountants have come East to get the expenses under control -- stuff is being cut out of the script left and right in order to keep on time and on budget.  So, the three of us bid each other a fond farewell, and head to our respective homes to wait for the checks that will pay us modestly for a day spent waiting in our cars, punctuated by periods of eating the production company’s food.

The coda to this little adventure comes about six months later, when the first episode of the series finally airs.  As it turns out, despite all the money and time that had been spent to make it, the network was not at all pleased with the pilot shot in New Hampshire.  The whole thing was scrapped, several of the principals were fired and the roles re-cast, and a new pilot shot – this time, in a small town in Northern California.  After only six episodes of the series aired, it was cancelled by the network because of low ratings.