Happy Birthday Dana Grant

Dana Grant's stand in on our Love Boat movie was so-Dana Grant you gasped. If you had not seen Dana on set already, you were sure this was Dana. Once you looked at her for a second, you realized that she not only looked like Dana, but a lot like Helen Hunt. It made me wonder if black people always confuse Helen Hunt and Dana Grant, they look so similar. I immediately know the difference, but to someone of another race, they look like the same white girl with stringy hair, slight, and more handsome then beautiful.

This stand-in made me want to see a movie where the stand-in is almost perfect, and then gets a little surgery to become dead-on. Before long, the star is dead, replaced by the stand-in, who's aging better, and is actually a nice person. She's not as good an actor, but no one seems to care, especially when she hits a slew of dreadful, but financially successful blockbusters. Or the stand-in and star play twin tricks on directors, you never are sure who's playing who that day on the set. The director trap. A look-alike stand-in has many dramatic possibilities with mistaken identity, envy, lovers (the husband fux the stand-in by mistake), and if the gal is a lesbian, the ultimate actor fantasy: she gets to make love to herself!

We had twins in the background that looked a lot like Ray Liotta. I had a run-in with one on this Boat movie set earlier, when we were in Carson. He kept talking right-wing politics with me after:

"Hey, I think it would be best if we just agree to disagree."

Despite this, he continued to talk. I start pantomiming in my best big extra-pantomiming way that, look: I'm writing in my journal. Back off. He kept yapping like a stuck CD. So I had to leave. Actually got up and gave up my coveted chair, sat behind the cramped backstage of the children's auditorium we were housed in. God forbid, I get told I have to do scene with him and pantomime non-verbal communication. Ewww, like making love on camera to an enemy. Yuck.

Over the last four daze, I kept seeing him on the set over and over, and I was like: damn, why is this guy freakin' everywhere? Then I slowly realize there may be two of these guys. Another backie confirms it: yup, they're twins. And get this: his twin is as left-wing, as his brother is right. Somehow Ray Liotta needs to do a scene with these two. Maybe on the HBO show Entourage, about the h-wood star and his possee. I love the show, and once got to see the star of the show pull up to a premiere in a pal's beat-up caddy, jump out and walk up the red carpet, no big deal. Later he had two ladies hanging on him, and I didn't even mind. The Ray Liotta twins need to be on the show with this guy. And Ray Liotta. If only I could perfect my mind control and accomplish these kinds of things.

The haul on this set semmed to pull in a lot of world-class kooks. The Ray Liotta twins with their political zealotry. I noticed they spent no time together. At all. I have cousins who are twins and they hang out all the time. They must be those diametrically opposed kinda twins, like the ones they make a sitcom about when they're young and cute, and end up old and bitter, can't get work, one in a wheelchair, the other walking around with a butcher's knife muttering about "god's will be done." There was also a whole India-Indian family. Because it was a travel movie, they had dressed the Indian family in native garb. Uncle Indian was obvioulsy the go-to-guy in the family. He told me he had gotten them all extra gigs. I got the sense they were all wealthy, and bored with their real lives, so they started doing movies. It looked like Uncle Indian ran his dry-cleaning business from the set, he was always huffing and puffing around on his cell phone during breaks, and he had lots of conspicuous and orante jewlery on. From Bollywood to Hollywood. The family hung out, shared jokes, was very high-spirited. I want to be in the India-Indian family.

Backie Bitch was here too. She sat out with the smoker's circle. One of the probs of being in smoker's circle, is your group is so small, you can't really exclude a fellow smoker. Backie Bitch has a husband who's 10 years younger, and a "no good hippie." She works like a fiend, and he blows their money. To hear her tell it, he also lost their business. Her car broke down today. Her daughter's in dutch with the IRS. This is why most peeps can't stand her, the constant bitch about her life. I guess if you bitch about going union all day, that's different. I can handle her in small doses.

She's a recovered alcholic, and from where we are filming she can see one of Hollywood's greatest bars, right across the street: The Formosa. The Formosa has autographed pictures of John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart above the bar. It's been used in Swingers. I spent a few nights her myself in the early 90s, and one of our crew was actually a minor character in Swingers. I also hung out here with Luke Hazzard, the star of the collosal show Pals. This is where I warned him about the fleeting nature of Hollywood. All during this shoot, I kept thinking how nice a dark dank bar would be, with a cold g&t. I'm getting dreamy ...

Back to the smoker's circle, I quit staring at the Formosa. I'm being told about a backie, large lady on the movie Byzantine with Fondue Reeves. Apparently, she had to pee, so instead of asking an AD, she walked up to Fondue Reeves, on set, and said very loudly "I gotta pee!" He graciously found an AD, and then they graciously fired her. That's one of the nice things about background, in world where everyone cowers from law-shits, hesitating to fire anyone, if you are freakish background person busted for being odd or having a 'tude, you are gone.

Another Backie got canned on this set, and he started throwing chairs everywhere, and they had to escort him out with security. The standards to get on a set are astonishingly low. I've often thought, if I was a stalker/terrorist/bad guy, it would be so easy to get near my target by being an extra.

Did you know they actually brand you on a set? Before they herd you off to slaughter? They have hand-stamps for the union extras, that way they can quickly indentify, should you try and sneak treats. The craft services tables are carefully guarded on the huge shoots, and if you are not a union extra, you have no business taking that gum. Often, the non-union treat table will have only the remnants of three apple-raisin bagels, while if you could just get past the guy they have guarding the craft service table on set, you could have piping hot breakfast burritos. Sneaking treats, stealing CREW and CAST food is a big no-no for non-union background, and thus a highly covert operation. There are background artists who are known for their stealth and generosity, they come back to small clutches of us, brandishing their booty, taken while others of us distracted the treat's sentinal. One ex-hippy dude, we just called Furry, he could get three hamburgers in his pockets faster then a villan in a Dicken's novel.

Fat clown Blake-the-Bozo fool is back today. He of the vespa scooter, and $35,000 teeth paid for by the realtiy show "Mr. Nobody." (http://no-biz.blogspot.com/2004/10/fuckstop-hotel.html)He has some knowledge today. It's Dana Grant's birthday. Fat Clown Bozo has decided to go up to and sing Happy Birthday to Dana Grant. He's telling anyone who will listen his plan. Another Backie tries to dissuade him: "It's in appropriate."

Fat clown Bozo: "It makes it fun! I just try to have fun while I'm here!"

"It's not about your fun. She's working, birthday's are personal." Or, how about she had a fan who tried to blow up the New York Times building in a bizare attempt to garner her love. Fan is short for fanatic, ya know? Another Backie and I decide we need to talk Fat Clown Bozo into his celebration. We jolly-boy him up, what a swell idea to sing to Ms. Grant. If he gets placed on set, it's a go. We are excited about seeing him combust in such a spectacular fashion. Fat Clown Bozo was running around singing "We are the World" yesterday, changing the words to "We are the Extras." People were parting in his wake, like a cheesy red sea effect. His existence is inappropriate. You have to wonder if its glandular. Does he have a gland that just secretes inappropriate deeds and annoying actions against his will? Or -- does he actually contemplate which behavior is the most obnoxious and then proceed for full effect? The numbers of peeps I meet who loathe Fat Clown Bozo grow daily. Even the sweetest old man, a nice WWII vet turned to him and said: "You're TOO out there!"

"I'm just trying to have fun!" The theme being: my fun trumps all other concerns.

A backie called me by my name the other day. "Hey Josh," he said. Ugh. It really knifed me. I had hoped to slide through this life anonymously, and he had broached that. Hollywood is transient, and nothing is more transient than the background life. People are so dense here, that they forget from one set to the next who you are. Someone will start to tell me there lifestory for the third time. Stop! I know you joined the merchant marines at 17. Stop! I know you hate that lady over there in the hat. And yet, another Backie yelled to me as I passed by "Tequilla!" He had remembered I liked patrone tequilla. My hope to pass unnoticed is starting to evaporate. The guy who called out "Tequilla," then went back to singing an original blues song he wrote about the Bible.

Other freaks on set today: The Incest Family. Well, maybe. Pure background conjecture at this point. They book as a family, and the father is always going on about how beautiful his daughter is while he strokes her hair. He also tries to pimp her out to stars, once on a movie he called out to John Travolta to come say hello to his pretty daughter. This is the kinda guy that gets the background put in their own tents, their own food, and on strict notice not to talk or look at anyone. There's a freaky-dekie Michigan kid here, talks with a lisp, blurts things out. Doesn't take medicine, doesn't believe in it. Had an operation performed without pain-killers. Seated across from me is a lady making childish shape drawings. Not childish, as in the beauty of children! Just childishly bad drawings. She showed them in a coffee shop once. I can't imagine the weirdness trying to get a blueberry muffin that day in the coffee shop, while she showed her pathetic paintings. Her eyes flit about, she can't hold serve with your eyes while you chat. She declares she can't be in the sun, hasn't been outside much since the early 90s, when she surfed an El Nino wave. She went to a school with the sons and daughters of Hollywood's rich and famous, and has decided she likes poor people the best. She considers people who make $50,000 a year "rich." You can't buy a house on a $50,000 salary in LA. She's a former vegan who's doctor made her eat meat. She looks a painting of the big-eyed ghost children. Irrevocably haunted, yet she keeps repeating her mantra "Happiness is contagious."

Then there's the nutsy kid across from me who declares "I want fame, fame, fame!" He wants to shoot his own film, it's about coffee swirling in a cup. He seems to have no story ideas, and blames his lack of success on not having connections.

"The Olson's are sluts," he sez. He goes up to the foreign people on the set and asks them to write his name in different languages. He's decided to take out a free ad, in a free weekly paper. It will have his picture, and proclaim his ability for acting, writing and directing.

There's an orthodox jewish kid across from me, who hails from Paris. Sez his mom can't drive. He just sits down and starts talking to me, mid-story. Non-sequitors. I think a lot of these folks had the shit beat outta them as kids, I've never seen more pathologies, and nervous ticks.

Meanwhile, it's Dana Grant's birthday on set, the crew surprises her. Sadly, she was not surprised by big Fat Clown Bozo, he was never placed on the boat today, set in extra holding all day. Because it's such a big amount of extra's in holding, they've rented out an entire soundstage to house us. Inside the sound stage, people are playing the game of Life, playing Beatle's songs on guitars, gambling for small amounts in Poker, knitting, watching DVDs on computers, making bad paintings, or scribbling in self-important journals.

Back on the boat, the extras are forced to stay in the one area, while the crew assembles and sings happy b-day to Dana Grant. The famous producer Ryan Mulch shows up for the birthday, and they have a giant blow up of her hanging from the rafters of the soundstage. Mulch is a big part of my tour at Hollywood Death Cab. I have to talk with him on the DVD, pretend to have an interactive conversation. I saw "have to," because various tour guides have tried to leave out this part of the tour, and it always gets back to Mulch, and we catch hell. I think he sits in his house, ear pressed to the window, listening to hear himself pontificate over our loudspeaker all day. I tell the guy next to me that I should say "Hi" to Ryan, and tell him I have to "deal with him five times a day," over at Hollywood Death Cab. The Backie tells me this would be an excellent way to get fired twice today.

Meanwhile, I can see all the hoo-ha for Dana Grant's birthday, but we are told not to move near the party. I hear quite possibly the best description of the background experience from one of our more well-adjusted members: "Being an extra is like being at a family gathering where you are not technically family --- you don't belong, but you can't leave."

Alexander The Great

I saw a headline in a magazine today:

What made Alexander great?

I mean, really. The guy's been dirt for 1000 years and he's still Alexander the Great. That was one great dude. Or his publicist was great. Will I be "Josh the Great"? For a 1000 years? Or will I be "Josh the Schleep." I guess being known as "Josh the Schleep" for a thousand year run would have the same bearing on my carcass.

I stayed up too late last night watching "True Grit." I don't even like westerns, but I wanted to see what John Wayne got his Oscar for. Playing a drunk. As Eddie Murphy once lamented about the plight of the comic actors: "Don't forget, I'm black. So not only would I have to play a retard, I'd have to play a retarded slave to get nominated." Of course.

The gal, Kim Darby was the better one in my mind, and I totally forgot Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper where in this. 3AM. Stupid. Now I'm on set trying to stay awake. It's a good set, nice peeps, good vibe. It's a sitcom called "Don't Even Think About It." Has two cast members who are alumni of independent films. They are truly funny, and don't play every sitcom moment like catskills cyborgs. It's in its last season, but I think folks are OK with that. Not a lot of anxiety on the set. Had a longer run (four years) then I think anyone gave it credit for. As I said, the lines are delivered more like amongst funny friends, not uber-sitcom-inside jokes. On one hand, I support older peeps when they bitch about this industries ageism (cuz I am old), and yet there's no denying the youth is a lemon twist for this canned drink of sitcom.

Guy in front of me in the wardrobe line just got dissed. They make the extras go line-up before wardrobe to get their come-from-home wardrobe approved. If you are good to go, you don't have to give them your voucher, thus saving you a little time to get off set earlier. Every extra strives for this. I strive because it's the only creative decision I get to make generally. Look, I've gone into my closet, and come out a hot dog vendor! Anyway, the dude is dissed. We have been told to come as upscale shower guests. Wardrobe lady gives him the regal, withering glace and sez:

"Are you the hobo?"

Ouch. She okays me, and I start inventing backstory for my character. Yessss!

Lotsa knitting today on set. Four knitters. The Hollywood hip are recycling the granny generation. One of our best friends, a beauty who works a lot as the cutie-pie knits. The director jokes about one of the stand-ins knitting slightly more Walmart wear than one of the series co-stars.

The co-stars are sitting with us today, in the bleachers. This show has no audience, that's a seven grand expense. The warm-up guys, the guys who just keep the audience rolling, total hack comedians, showing up with unicycles and juggle balls-- they get Three Grand a gig. It's kewl on this show that the guest co-stars mingle with background. One background sez to a co-star before an entrance into a scene:

"hey, I'll move, I'm just background."

Co-Star: "Hey, we're all just unemployed actors after today."

Give that man a medal. The distinguished cross from the backie brigade.

Been giving thought to the chair question. Eventually, everyone has to figure out how they come out on the chair. Does it mean being a lifer? Once you get yourr fold-up chair, with the stirups to put your feet in and snooze, are you on-board for background as a career? And if you resist, does it mean you're just a dork with his pride still looking for a place to sit.

A black backie just showed up forty-five minutes late. She's doing a whole comedy routine, a sorta big-fat-momma-crazy-love woman, not to be limited by the boundaires of time. Uh huh.

Is it okay to notice cultural differences? To complain about them? Does that make me a racist? Or just like the comedians on my favorite show BET Comic Strip Live?

Reaching out and touching someone on the set. A cell chat with my pal Putt-Putt. Putt-Putt is a great character actor who gets gigs without an agent. He may be the smoothiest runner of a room I've ever seen. Has the Texas folky thing down cold. He's a republican in a town noted for unforgiving liberal leanings. Even having a goy german name in this town can be bad news. David Hasselhoff told stories about having agents tell him to change his name, no one would hire a son of the gestapo.

I respect Putt-Putt for his politics, even though our politics diverge. Putt-Putt works alot as the boob. The boob authority figure, FBI, Cop, Pit Boss. Putt-Putt and I did a lot of standup together in h-wood, before my nerves got me. Or, maybe my lack of funny material. Either way, he's been able to eek out a living as a bit player. Day player. He's telling me right now that he was at one point, up for the movie that made the star of "Don't Even Think About It."

Remember when I told you the co-stars of this sitcom are veterans of Indie movies? Ya know, lotsa art, little pay, but the chance to play. The Independent movie. Well, the sitcom star I'm with today was in a great movie called "Rockford Rules" all about a guy who bases his life on the Rockford Files. Putt-Putt was in the running for this part. Would Putt-Putt have disowned me if he got the movie, and then this series? Or would I have been his simmering stand-in, wondering why he can't get me a guest star shot. H-wood does nasty things to friendships, especially when you're prize is just across the table, and you are absolutely sure you friend could pass it to you if he wasn't such a dick. Meanwhile, he's thinking, why are you the 70th person hitting me up today? I thought we were friends.

I hadda friend make it once, he became a permanent cast on a sitcom. The first time I talked to him after the big news, he was wary. Like, oh yes, I've made it now, and what do you want? Or maybe, oh, this is that person from my former life, I know I shouldn't blow him off, that's too cliche, but it's tedious to talk to him now that I've passed through the mirror. Was I projecting? Maybe. I know that making it in a big way, prolly let's out a lot of suppresed egotism, a lotta supressed hostility for having to suffer the lower rungs with lesser lights than yours.

My pal actually called his own sitcom shot, not unlike The Babe pointing to centerfield where he would park his home run. We were on a double date, this pal-o-mine, and the girl was giving clear signals he could have sex with her. As an unemployed actor, this is like water in the wildneress. He said no, she wasn't pretty enuff. "You are in no position to be this picky, my friend," said I.

he sez: "When I get my sitcom, I'll get the kinda girls I want."

I used to tell this tale for the kind of tale it was: the cautionary tale. This is my theory on why so many decent, ordinary and okay-looking girls have a ruff time out here finding a guy: everyone's waiting for the BBD. The Bigger Better Deal.

"I know I said I would go to the play with you tonight, but I just got Laker tickets!"

Actually, it would suprise me if people even called to tell you this. Most of the time they just don't show up, and then seem peeved when you pressed them on why they ditched. Like your a dork who plans out his social calendar, when the wind could blow from any direction, at any time. Of course, my friend DID get a sitcom. Did buy a house off it. Did date stewardesses. So much for caution. Granted, he's the one in a million friend, the rest of them did not get shit. And, his sitcom lasted a year, and he's never been another in the ten-plus years since. But on that night, he was right in waiting, there was a bigger, better deal out there for him.

It would seem everyone on the set's crew are warriors. There's certainly enuff camoflauge wear to go around. I thought I was the only one who was into this craze, I got a bunch of pairs of camo shorts at the Army/Navy surplus store about a year ago, but it appears the hired hands have gotten themselves deep in the shit. Ya know, when in a good Nam movie and they say they're deep in the shit? With all of a set's testerone, and apparetus, war clothing seems an appropriate choice. There's certainly a campaign going on each day for the shooting. Victories and casualties.

"Medic, we just lost a craft services! Got dammit Medic, get me a bazooka ---

ARUGHGHGGHG. ... static ... [Viet Cong voices] ..."

The chief AD looks up back at basecamp after monitoring the foregoing scene on walkie.

"That was a damn fine breakfast burrito. I salute you craft services."

"Dude, are you gonna get em backup?" sez the Second Second AD?

"Fuck em' and feed em' beans" sez the Chief AD, and with that we know the grunts doing the fighting, the background, will be hoping those extra cheetos bags they stored in their jackets last through the night. Beyond the war parallells is the more obvious one: these sound stages look like a giant kids playhouse, with the different sets being large-scale barbie playrooms, and the fiefdoms of the technical support looking like forts.

The stars are the kids climing the monkey bars, and it's amazing how natural the star of "Don't Even Think About It" is. He's a genial everyman. Right now he's holding forth for the crew on the Lacy Peterson trial. He's doing the fake grief voice of the killer, talking to her brother:

"Ohh, yes, I'm so sorry. I wish I knew where Lacy was."

To the side of the living room he's sitting in, is a faux back yard for the house. Here the cheerleaders are practicing. This is the second sitcom I've been on with cheerleaders. Cheerleaders pose problems for me. I remember wrestling once, getting pinned, and looking at the lights. I had always heard the phrase "look at the lights" from the older wrestlers, and now I was like, "Hey, I'm getting pinned, and wow, you really can see the lights!" All of a sudden through this haze, I looked my head to the left while I was fighting the pin and saw the cheerleaders yelling

"Go Josh Go!"

Go? Go fucking where? I mean, isn't there a "Fight that Fucking Pin" chant? Or, was wrestling so lame, they just thought they had done us a favor by showing up? I really focused on them shouting

"Go Josh Go!" They were not focusing on me. They were looking all different directors, chewing their cud, wiggling ass for old perverts. I gave up. Ref's hand slams the mat: PIN! I truly remember thinking, what's the use. What a joke. Go Josh Go! Fucking cheerleaders.

So I get off the set of "Don't Even Think About It," where I've been working as a lowly extra, and I met a pal of mine with big-time connections. We get into a show at the ultra cool John Anson Ford Theater for free, and then I get to meet one of his friends and one of my favorite directors: Bob Barker. Not the gameshow host guy, but the director one. He calls himself Robert Barker to differentiate. He looks like a wrestler actually. I'm tempted to say to him

"Up or Down? Ready, WRESTLE!"

He's wearing non-descript clothes that don't have a h-wood look-at-me-I'm-dressing-down look to them. We chat about his new movie on wrestling. It's a remake of one of my favorite movies of all times, Visionquest. He's even got a female wrestler who can wrestle. He sez he cast for wrestlers first, actors second. He's legendary for getting great performances outta first-timers, and he came up through the Indie Movie scene with one of the slyest documentaries ever: Little Red Car, where he took a little red car, a black guy in rapper gear, and then had him drive through the south. A camera crew and helpful bouncers were hidden in a Hostess Snack Products truck following him. The black guy would follow all posted signs, yet invariably he would get pulled over by the cops in the small towns. He would mouth off to the redneck cops, not anything illegal, but just defying the natural order of things down there. It made for compelling drama. It made the Justice department get on some local lawmen in our southern states.

So here I am talking to Bob Barker. While he's called Robert in the credits, he quickly corrects you to call him "Bob." I tell him wrestling stories, we laff. We both watched too much daytime TV, we start trading our favorite Dinah Shore stories. I tell him the tale of the huge stoner wrestler who threatened to beat me. Every day I walked past stoner wrestler dude. He had a moustache at 13. He had a manson-like posse of chix, one who even scratched her forehead one day, like Squeaky Fromme. Every day the dude called out:

"he's a NARC!" at me.

I was dressed in total preppy clothes, I was an honor student, on way to being gay, etc. I would dread walking past this guy, but there was no other way to cut through the yards to my house.

"Narc!"

Finally, one day I found my voice and said: "You know, I walk past you every day, I see you smoking pot, and yet you never get busted. So why do you continue to call me a Narc?"

I was sure I would get punched, and in the most dramatic pause of my life up to then, I waited for the fist to come at me.

"HEY MAN, THIS GUY'S COOL! HE'S COOL! HE'S NOT A NARC!!!! MAAAAN, YOU'RE COOL!"

For the rest of the year, anytime he saw that, he would shout it out to whoever was around. One time he shouted it out to a science teacher who thought I was perfect, and when the stoner wrestler guy shouted this out, I went down some in the science teacher's eyes. He started accusing me of going to smoke pot every day when I used the restroom pass at precisely 1:45. He did not know that my bowels had aligned into their most perfect short-lived symetry ever. When he broke up my routine, but not issuing me the restroom pass anymore, I think he broke my bowels heart, and they were never that regular again. This story brought many laffs from Bob Barker.

In the end, I got a drink and talked to a friend at the concert and lost Bob in the smoke, sound and haze. Should I have hit him up for some union vouchers? And ruined a night where the director treated me like a human being? After the concert I alternated between thinking I was a fool, a goy without moxie, and feeling glad I had just been another dude, hanging out with Bob Barker that night, trading tales.

Skeet Shooting

You're sitting in an office in the mid-90s, and you have a hot ass-istant. You work for a major record label, go to lotsa free concerts, listen to lotsa free records. You deliver contacts to Mick Jagger, you get the best weed on planet earth. And what are you today today, on October 11, the year of our lord 2004? Background work. Playing a skeet shooter out in Pomona.

Or: you are sucking the mother's milk from the corporate teet of IBM. You've been there fourteen years, you have a high-tech, high-demand, computer job. The kind that could never be replaced, the kind that could only be done here.

Or could it? Hello, my fellow background artist, let the AD know before you go to the restroom. Put your hand up and ask if the teacher if you can go poddy. There were actually two former computer guys out here today. One was still driving a flashy Mercedes, but willing to work in the film biz for 50 buckos a day. Makes me wonder if the bottom ever falls out of the Indian computer industry, that they will all go Bollywood and be extras.

Ran into this guy I met on my first day of signing up for service. If it sounds military, it is. Just like the military, we can't refuse our assignments. If you haven't told your calling service you are NOT available for the day, you must accept whatever work they book you on. We hung out and talked the whole time. I think I judged him harshly the first day I met him. Anyway, he told me a great story about talking to a guy on set for a day, and then the guy wanting him to TRADE apartments! He has a Venice beach apt., and the guy wanted him to trade for some dingey dung-hole in Valley Village.

"We could, you know, trade."

He also said that there is huge stoner culture in the Backies. What could be better to bake and then sit around munching on free food (yup, they have Cheetos on almost every set) and having intense converations about conspiracies? People have offered to bake with him, one guy farted the minute he walked off set, and then pulled out a pipe while the fart was still floating. Barely off-set, the guy who almost farted on him then wanted him to inhale pot fumes, not ass-gas.

We talked about mutual backies we loathe: the bozo-haired clown freak (http://no-biz.blogspot.com/2004/10/fuckstop-hotel.html). He also knew the background guy who walks around talking to himself, although he said he thought he had tourette's. Got thrown off a set once for saying "fuck!" Hmmm, I think this guy is the subject of much conjecture, but little cooroberation. We also talked about the background culture of complaint, usually the worst from the union folks, the one getting the good $$. They're absolute insistence on doing the least work, on a job that really is about doing the least work even when you're working.

This same backie tells me about being on a depression-era drama. Everytime you shoot, they have to give you a fucked-up haircut. He knows this, so delays getting his hair chopped until the series wraps. Then, he spends 50 bux he doesn't have on his hair. His one extravagance in a Ramen-noodle existence. Guess what? He gets a call, he's been booked on the Depression-era show again. They are doing reshoots. His hair, being just shorn a week ago, will get him past the hair gargoyles. He knows he's supposed to go to hair, but he toys with the idea of just going to set. Finally, he figures there's no way they could have an objection. He pokes his head in the trailer:

"Sit down in the chair."

His thought balloon reads: "FUCK FUCK FUCK"

The Backie allows himself a rare unedited moment, his sub-serviance breaks and he sez:

"Do I really need a hair cut, I just had one last week."

The hair care club is bored. He has given them purpose, life.

"You ARE getting a hair cut. Do you have a problem with that? Do we have a problem here? Do I need to contact the AD?"

He's being hit with shrapnel stares from all the cutters.

"No, no, I just had my hair cut a week ago, it was expensive, and ..."

"Well, how much was it?" He's sitting in the chair now. The cutter has the sharp object in her hands.

Meekly: "Fifty dollars."

She shreiks: "Fifty dollars for this!"gesturing to his head. And it starts. The kalediscope of shame. Each turn of his viewpoint reveals another hair shrew taunting him.

"You paid Fifty dollars too much."

"That's one sorry-ass fifty dollars."

"Let's see if we can get it to about 30 dollars."

So he sits and grits. Grits his teeth, indulging in fantasies of mutilation, leaving carcasses to rot out in the Angeles National Forrest. And they hack the shit outta his hair, hateful of their low-paying hair trailor jobs.

We're out in Pomona at a shooting range. Prolly the most democrats they've ever had at this place. I'm sure they'd like to use us instead of the skeets for target practice. Hills are starting to turn green, it's pretty out here. The hills even have decidious trees, it could pass for the east coast, or midwest if you navigate your shot away from the odd palm tree.

It's a show about Confidence Men, called "Cons." Stars the dude from Animal House, and he looks EXACTLY, I mean EXACTLY like he freakin' did. I sure don't look like I did 20-plus years ago, but this guy does. Fucker. They've got live bullets out here today, because the scene requires a guy to hit the skeet. The first shots fired by the actor, are just blanks. But they have color-coded shells for the shotgun, to know which contains the bullets. One of the backies points out that we are shooting the guns in the general direction of the freeway. I wonder how far the bullets carry?

Women director, quite possibly my first woman director. She has a really nice long down jacket on with cool fur collar. Easily the most stylish director I've ever seen, most of them dress like Schlubs. I thank Stevie Speilie for that, but it would be hilarious if as a director you started dressing over the top-again. Big and showy. Not on the mark of the old time ones, you should dress in today's garb, but it still should be broad.

I start yakking to the Union extra. He's also a stand-in, looks like he had to memorize some lines for a scene i see them rehearsing. He sez, no, I'm not an actor. Has too much respect for real actors, but then goes on to say most of them are crap actors. Respects Jim Garner a lot, was on Rockford for years and talked to him all the time. He also was on a TV show recently, one I had never heard of.

I asked him who the star was. He said:

"Fuck if I know. I don't give a shit about some star. All I know is if we reach for the doughnut at the same time, I'm gonna get it."

We didn't shoot shit today. They let us go without using us.

Musing on Murray, and other things blurry

Oh fuck. Just got engaged by a rambling boob who would not shut up. I'm here on the set of the Dana Grant movie I mentioned getting fitted for earlier. It's a cattle call, huge legions of Backies to play the extras on a Boat. We don't end up as dead as on the Titanic, but it's a "thrill ride" (I use quotes for phrases that are dangerously close to cultural extinction -- we've over fished them).

Anywho, a Backie was on the edge of a conversation several of us were having, and he decided to make me his sounding board. I tried to be pleasant, really I did. But when he said that gay marriage was "like the Shakers, a religious group who practiced Celibacy, and were therefore a cult, and went against God's plan to make "beautiful things, the English are to blame for America's slavery, not us" -- well I asked him to stop talking to me.

"It's cool," I said, I just want to write, we all have different opinions. Then I proceeded to furrow my brow and concentrate on writing. He wouldn't stop, so I scribbled as furiously as I could, broad strokes like the background artist I am. But a vein in this nut was split open, and out came every bit of warped history he had garnered on right wing revisionist history sites. I had to move and leave his blathering mid-sentence. I've found the furthest place in this school we're being held at, and I notice he's still lurking. I'm finishing a phrase to someone commiserating about the recent election with "right wing" and I see the freak-a-zoid spin around. Oh god, he's heard me, he's gonna debate me, shit, shit, shit! We actually lock eyes, and then he shuffles away. Shew, that was close. After this guy, I'm not going to complain about the Backies who latch on to you to complain about not getting a meal allowance. This guy ticked like a time-bomb who's works had been triggered.

We're in the auditorium of a Catholic School down in Carson. There's a painting on the wall of some priest. The painting looks botched, I'm guessing this was a local guy, not a famous priest. They can paint your picture and put it on a wall, but your still dead, and no one knows who the fuck you are eventually. Our A.D. is nice enuff to read us the entirety of the scripted scene we are hear to shoot. It's the final seen in the movie, where Dana Grant leaves a holding area for tweaked passengers from the Cruise Ship. Our expectations gets flipped here, the bad guy is actually a blonde white girl! The good guy is actually a Moorocian in a turban! ZZZZZZ.

Anyway, it feels like the restless Backies are being read a nap-time story by our kintergarten teacher, I'm looking for my mat to lie down at the conclusion of the scene. Queenie Backie I worked with on the Car shoot the other day out in Bontana gets a Birthday cake. Queenie is about a subtle a gay guy as Harvey Fierstein. He cracks bitchy jokes, will start singing "Streisand" given a chance, he's managed to charm a lot of Backies. I don't know if he brings out my self-loathing gay stuff or what.

The Backies on this shoot have been here for a month, as the passengers, so they've all gotten quite chummy. The second group of passengers, of whom I'm amongst, are for steerage. We're new to the set today. We'll be the one's dancing the merry jig while the waters start seeping in and the swells take all the lifeboats. It makes for one giant fuckstick today: the legions of backies used as passengers (new like me, and previous like I mentioned), and then all the FBI, Bomb Squad, Cops, etc., who have come in to find out how are boat ride got outta hand. Peeps walks around in Swat uniforms with riot vests that weigh 20 pounds. They have real guns with the guts removed.

My pal from Nepal is here. He complained to me on a previous set that he always gets stuck with being cast as a terrorist, but I tease him that in the land of the free, today he's playing FBI. I wonder if he'll play a Sherpa someday? Nah, they'll prolly use a peruvian.

Between the small space and buzzing background mob, this sort of paramilitary garb is sending out bad vodoo. When you get to be in a more elaborate costume, it plays to my worse traits. Ham. Ham it up. I'm in a costume, I'm in a movie. I'm making up a character arc for myself (remember, I'm the Amusement Park Engineer from Antwerp). I give myself a name, "Walker Evans," which is a passenger name written on a chalk board on set. Ansel Adams was on this flight too, as well as most of the 1997 Indians baseball team, leading me to believe the Art Departement person who created this prop was from Cleveland.

I like the fact that I didn't have to audition, I get called up, fitted, put on set, and then I get to act with very little consequence. No one is really watching me closely, there's no penalty for a bad take. It's like singing in the shower. I'm doing it for pure joy, zero performance anxiety. Why can't I just have a service get my speaking roles like this. One phone call telling me where to report, I show up and start playing the buddy role opposite Tom Hanks?

"Josh, we've got you on set with Tom Hanks today at 7AM in Pomona. You'll be playing his best buddy, Marvin. Marvin works as a Carpet Shampooer. We'll fit you for your costume, you can make up your lines to the ones Tom has scripted, and they'll just let the cameras roll. But you still have to eat with the non-union extras. I don't want to see you trying to nick a teabag from craft services."

I had an audition yesterday for a short film. Aside from being outta practice in doing scenes, I got so nervous, I felt I was actually playing the scene as a bad actor. Like, okay, I'm gonna overact how a bad actor would act this. Wink, wink. Get it, I'm overacting here. That's how little control I had over my body. I was supposed to be an evangalist, but in the end I just raised my voice to a phoney AM radio broadcast level. Experiences like this make me really long for the world I describe above, just bring me to be in your movie, this auditioning is not nice and a terrible burden to me.

I got a cell call from my dad today on the set. The amount of waiting allows extras quality reach-out-and-touch somebody minutes. My dad told me a good story about his first job in the North. He had been raised primarily in the South, but had gotten a job at a Drug Store/Soda Shop. Black dude came in wanting a milkshake and my dad looked around frantically for a paper cup. He goes back to Abe-the-owner asking if they have any paper cups.

"Why?" sez Abe.

Dad: "Because there's a black guy up front who wants a milkshake."

Abe: "He wants it to go?"

Dad: "I didn't ask."

Abe: "Then why do you want to give him a paper cup?"

Dad: "Well, he can't stay in here obviously!"

That's when my dad learned that black folks in the North could actually buy a milkshake and sit down and drink it. My dad was happy for it, he said he always hated the way blacks basically had to scrape and bow when they walked down the streets of his little southern town. Good stories like this make the background experience palatable.

In some ways, the extra bullpen, the waiting area, is like a bar without booze. People are all telling you their tales, their woes, their big fat lies, etc. It's great when the stories are great, but tedious when you hear for the 15th time how someone can't wait to be in the union, I wonder if we'll get off early ... I'm hearing another good story now from a Backie about Bill Murray. Apparently the Backie was in a Murray film where Murray was playing a motivational speaker. Murray gets all the folks in the audience to form a real pyramid of bodies, and at the top, there's a cute lil' girl. She's an extra, but Bill decides to start talking to her, positioning his mic (remember he's miced for sound for the movie, but you can see his mic cuz he's a motivational speaker, so they don't have to have a boom mic) so that she can respond and be heard. The little girl gets an automatic bump in the union to "day player" status.

I don't know that this means, but it has such a nice ring to it. Maybe at the next party I'm at, when it comes time for the "what-do-you" portion, I'll say Day Player. Murray, tries to make a day player the next day, when he's talking to an overweight woman. Again, she's background, but Murray starts talking to her about her weight problem. Again, he positions the mic so she can respond. She doesn't.

He prods, even going so far as to say "You can speak, right?"

She would not. Speech had been bred outta of her as a Backie. Being a Backie is really more hobby than job. If you work five daze a week, 52 weeks a year: maybe you'd have $14,000. As a non-union background artist. The Math is not promising. Union, you can certainly make more, but you ain't gonna get rich. You've also got a have someone in your corner as a union dude who will make sure you get booked. The union side is a much smaller portal to crawl through, between the quantity of union people, and the tiny number of jobs. God forbid you get a parking ticket, you've just lost a day's pay if you're non-union. Finally, the big fat clown Blake-the-Bozo is back today. I first encountered him on the Fuckstop/Diner set. (http://no-biz.blogspot.com/2004/10/fuckstop-hotel.html) He of the Vespa Scooter, lord, I can't believe he rode his scooter all the way down to Carson today?

The sun is streaming in the windows and it's illuminating his fright wig, making his frizz look on fire. I've decided these character I see need to end up in a movie. A movie where the Foreground will be played by non-speaking background, and the extras will all be actors. I'll cast myself as a foreground person, just so I won't have to audition. I've also decided that Bill Murray will play one of the background dudes. The kind of Backie who sits down next to you and gives you his well-rehearsed life story speech. Bill tells me he's a retired, a manufacturing parts rep for the Vacuum Cleaner industry. Does this to keep from being too sad about his wife recently dying. Lying. Bill was lying. I find out from another extra that he always tells the new extras an elaborate backstory. Each as believable as the last one. The guy who informs me of the ruse, sez Bill pawned himself to him as the director's malcontent brother, made background as a punishment, and was the only employment Bill seemed able to keep. Bill has been an extra for 40 years. The longest of the long-timers. The word is, he came out here to act, but he couldn't audution. In the daze before beta blockers, he couldn't keep it together at auditions. So he settled into the background life. All the old-time directors use him, because's usually better than the principals. He gets tons of face time in movies, and you can actually see a sad montage of how he ages, trapped in the background, like a little boy trapped in a painting by a witch. Every now and then a new director will use Bill, and not get who he is, disrepecting him. Bill will actually chew the guy out and then oh-so-dramatically say "I'm tearing up my voucher." Of course, this act is predicated on the old-timers throwing him work, but it's getting harder, directing is a young man's game, so he doesn't pull this as often. Suffers the slings and arrows now more. The Backie goes on to tell me that he's seen Gary Marshall walk right up to Bill on the set, and whisper to him, "help." "what's wrong with this seen." Bill whispers back concisely for a bit, as Marshall goes back, gives some new direction, and the dream plays like a scene. Bill sees that I'm talking to this other guy, and comes over and sez "did he blow my cover?" We laff, become good friends, and eventually on another movie, Bill confides in me "I'm not long for this world. I've got AIDs" I'm not sure if he's up to trix again, but after conferring with the other Backies, we decide to do the unspeakable. We enter the director's lunch tent, who on this movie happens to be Mr. Gary Marshall, and ask if he would do something wonderful. He denies Bill's helpful genious at first, but after shaming him for never helping Bill out, despite knowing his gifts (what, it's only family you help Gary? did he have the wrong last name?), Marshall agrees to our plan. The next day on the set, Marshall asks Bill to ad-lib some with the principal. Bill does not do so well. He freezes, while the principal tries to make the best of it. Then the director tells Bill, don't worry, it won't be on mic, so you can do whatever, even "walla-walla-walla" (this is indy-slang for the background making the background noises at a party, a courtroom, a horserace). Given this freedom, Bill improvs beautiful, better than the principal who happens to be Robin Williams. They keep this up, and Marshall, who's been directing this movie like comedy hack, starts to see a whole new movie opening up. Marshall starts calling for reshoots, and at his point in his career, reshoots are not too cool, but intrigued and invigorated for the first time in a long time, Marshall puts what could be his final job on the line to keep following Bill Murray's particular genius. Finally, after lots of elaborate ruses to keep Murray from knowing he's being miced, Murray finds out. Three emotions wash over his face. Shame. Sadness. Gratitude. He's ashamed that he could not act without being given the permission to not make it count, sad to have spent his life in the background up until this moment, and yet touched that all his pals helped to get his star to shine. Great moment. Of course, Bill doesn't have AIDs. Of course, the film is a big hit as an indie, although not the blockbuster the studio hoped for (the studio pulls the funding, the director uses his own personal fortune to fund the end, and thus keeps mucho more of the profits). It wins Canne, and Murray becomes an arthouse staple, and the movie ends with two incredibly young film students watching a later Murray film. Murray is terrible in the film, hammy and wooden. "He's a freaking bad actor."

"You're right said the teacher," whom you only see from the back. He made 8 films as a principal and in 7 of them he totally sucked. Couldn't be natural. But did you ever see "Flambe?"

Kids: "That's the arty one that the hack Gary Marshall directed?"

"Yeah," laffs the teacher, turning around. Of course it's me with age make-up on.

The kid: "Oh that's right, that's him. Sheez he's freaking awesome in that, I forgot!"

And I say: "So was I kid, so was I." And you see me get out the Flambe DVD from a box, and continue talking as the sound dims, telling them my background stories. Fade to Black & Blue.