Dig this Grave

Did the popular show: Grave Diggers yesterday. About a family who operate a private cemetary. Never liked the show, felt the director/creator was a bitchy theater queen who viewed normal people as sideshow freaks. This director did a movie about suburban people that had no resemblence to any cul de sac culture I ever knew. The movie had housewives in the 90s listening to Bobby Darin singing South Pacific (ah, no, they would have been listening to Sting, or Kenny G.), military fathers beating their kids like outta James Dean 50s movie. Oh, and a girl searching the internet to have breast-enlargement surgery, and, when she reveals her breasts in a scene: they're huge!!! Oh, the irony! Fraud! Liar! Big-breasted girls want reduction surgery! They are as equally weirded-out by the unwanted male attention their boobs have been getting them as small-breasted girls are weirded-out by the lack thereof.

On this show, Grave Diggers, I watched the opening epie, and said "no thanks." The first scene is the wife being told her husband is dead. She's cooking, dressed like she's on the Donna Reed show circa 1950, not a houswife today, and when she hears the news, she tumbles and bumbles through the kitchen, knocking off all the pots and pans and ladels (oh what a metapor!), with this weird movement, that feels more coregraphed by a modern dance instructer. Then, sitting on the floor, she looks up at the camera and sez dreamily "the potroast is burned." Wow. What a bunch of hooey.

Anyway, we were doing a scene at a convention for the Mortuary crowd, and one of my favorite actresses, Zillie Stewart was on. She was the longtime gal-pal of the director Bart Goali. He's easily one of the great art-house/commercial directors we have in Hollywood, hasn't made anything good in a bit, but his resume includes such films as Sulke Driver, Before Daylight and the gangster classic: Bad Dudes.

Zellie Stewart gets lil' parts here and there, and always brings great engergy and zest to whatever she does. In today's scene Zellie was seducing a guy in a graveyard, and they started shimming up and down a rather large obelisk. We were milling around the graveyard, it was a daylight scene, with commercial booths being set up on the graveyard hawking products to the Graveyard Association convention goers. Apparently, it's based on a real event. I got a convention nametag for "Thomas Lynch," someone on the show is in the know. Thomas Lynch is a real-life Michigan funeral director, a world-class poet, and the author of this great book: The Undertaking. I've given the book as gifts to several friends, and I can no longer find my copy, I must have loaned it out. I kept the name-tag (for shame! return all props to props), and am sending to him with a story of being on the set. Hope he gets a kick outta it. I have a sneaking suspicion this show was based in part on his book, but he never got any credit or money from the project.

I was paired with a patrician lady, who was doing extra work as a lark. I think she is star-struck. She's also a wiz at scene stealing. She ignored the directons the A.D. gave us, and steered us right to where the camera would get the meatiest shot. She was from my neck of the woods, Michigan, but she was from a different tree than me: Gross Pointe. She's got kids, she's a former world-class dressage rider. And yet, some 24-year-old A.D. is talking down to her like she's a convict. The lady doesn't care, she just smiles politely, and then goes and sticks herself in the shot. She literally yanked me into the scene once, when I thought the backies had congested an area. They were all congregating in this area, because they too had figured out it was the most visible place to be. She yanked me into the shot, and shoved people outta the way. Fierce. Then she started waving her arms as if to say hello to a friend across the room, taking the focus off the principles.

Great lil' momma-bird, I'll bet her kids never missed a worm. Looked like a pint-sized Anne Bancroft, and yet she's played spanish folks often. What irony, the person making 50-bux-a-day playing the maid in a scene, actually employs one for her Calabasas McMansion. Her maid prolly gets 100 dollars (+) a day ...

I had to do a costume change for two different scenes, with costumes I had brought myself. This should mean a bump in pay, but the brisk PA, Franielle, said "no" when I brought this up to her as I was signing out. So, I walked back a few paces in line, asked one of my fellow Backie's the A.D.'s name, repeated loudly ("Franielle?"), loudly enuff to get Franielle's attention, and dramatically brandished my cell phone as I walked outta the holding tent. My perpiph-real vision showed her staring daggers at me. Yes, I called SAG and informed them of her name, and her not letting me get a bump for this. May she rot in hell. I am tired, tired, tired of the braying phone messages telling us to bring 3 costume changes, 3 armani suits, etc., when no one informed us we would need to outfit our own lil' wardrobe department when we signed up for this life.

It's ... just ... fucking ... tacky. Grave Diggers is a hugely successful show in it's Fifth season. Your wardrobe department should be just that: a wardrobe department, not a place where bitchy people can yell at you for not having three three-hundred-dollar dress suits on your $50-a-day salary. As I've said before, McDonald's pays you the same, but at least they give you polyester to wear, and all the fries you can stomach. (I can't wait till I get the call to be an extra on a McDonald's commercial: "PLEASE BRING THREE POLYESTER SUITS. IF YOU DON'T HAVE THEM YOU WILL BE FIRED.")

I don't think I would have the nerve to be standing high up in my wardrobe truck, on my successful show, looking down at some background performer making $50 a day, and castigating him for not showing up with three business suit changes. I just don't have that kind of gall. This explains why I went snitch-mode when Franielle, the A.D., would not give me my costume penalty I was due.