Am I an Apple?

Once you're jumped into the background life with an extra beat-down, a backie boot party, it is indeed

'fo life!

Currently, I'm duded up as a Belgium officer for the movie The Sad Belgium. I'm back in The Suck, The Shit, a Hell Hole. Okay, enuff of the grisly gang&war metaphors, I'm really at a beautiful garden out in Arcadia. Next to me is one of the Ray Liotta twins (http://no-biz.blogspot.com/2004/11/happy-birthday-dana-grant.html). He's dispensing advice as Daddy Hollywood, a role he often takes when not preaching his rabid right wing politics.

"If you want to act, you have to learn how to make faces."

"Really?" sez sad-sack extra who's his new pupil.

"Oh yes, my acting teacher, Sphingy Spongey

"Who?"

"Oh, Sphingy Spongey has acted for SIX DECADES. He told me acting is all about making faces."
On some level I agree with Daddy Hollywood Ray Liotta Right-Wing twin, even with Sphingy Spongey. Despite all the rich inner life, the work, sense memories, we all started pulling faces in the mirror. I wish more pompous acting teachers would be this honest. I saw Julianne Moore on TV the other day describing the face her child made when fighting tears. I knew that Moore had cataloged that sad mask for her repertoire. Back to more nuggets from Daddy Hollywood:

"You can act with your voice. If someone sez 'I like your voice' and offers you a commercial -- say YES!"

He sez YES very enthusiastically. I guess he was afraid his pupil might say "NO!" to such an offer, but he was ready, ready to say "YES!"

The star of The Sad Belgium is Clem Gooney. He is as garrulous as advertised. He tells clumps of background after the director, Ferdie Feganburger, request another try --

"You're only giving 50% on that take! I blame you!"

Then he blames camera.

Then he blames himself.

"Smoke em' if you gotta em," he sez to Extras. We are in a fancy dinner party of yesteryear, when folks smoked. Then he mimes a vibrator on his neck, like a dude without a larynx and sez:

"Thank you Ferdie Feganburger."

An extra next to me has asthma, she does a grimace laugh. She's stopped props twice from propping up folks in her vicinity with ciggies.

Then Clem Gooney calls Ferdie Feganburger "Mr. Coverage" after he shots a relatively minor movement five times. Feganburger does not laff. Gooney sensing he's uptight, calls him "Mr Checking-the-Gates" after he finally is satisfied. Feganburger gives Gooney a "I get it, leave me alone" smile.

Ferdie Feganburger is dressed in a suit coat, red t-shirt with squares on it, and shorn head. I was on one other movie with him and I've never seen someone so present and focused on the task of making a film. You get the sense if there's a crouton missing from Craft Services, he knows it.

Speaking of croutons, an extra told me he saw a meltdown last week so severe, that the COPS were called, not just set security. An extra had it out with Craft Services over a crouton. I laff nervously, picturing myself finally snapping over just such a thing. A crouton, no napkins, making me put back a soda -- the energy in the proton is released with a collision of the smallest items.

The extra who witnessed the crouton crisis, doesn't miss a trick -- he's pointed out to me on set a guy nipping whiskey from a bottle he keeps in is backpack and a young kid behind the bushes getting high. I make a mental note to hide my proclivities from him.

I say hi to my pal the Art Director in front of a particularly wound-up A.D. Letting her know he's my friend. Back off Bitch equivalent. She's made her decision that extras are all refuse washed up on the shore of her pristine existence, and it broadcasts with every movement and word she speaks. In extra's holding, off set, she's calling groups of extras "Apples, Bananas and Coconuts" to differentiate for use in a scene, meanwhile the A.D. inside has named us something else. So, when a well-meaning extra tries to clarify how her nomenclature corresponds to theirs on set, she gets short & crabby with everyone and announced loudly

"You should know if you're an Apple or not!"

One extra sez to me:

"The guy inside said I'm in the this-half-of-the-room group. I'm dodging her apple. She can't throw apples at me."

Suddenly my whole life's awful trajectory becomes explained to me -- I've never been sure if I was an apple. While mulling this point I take stock of my surroundings. We're in this fabulous mansion in Arcadia. It's got cases full of rich people things. Soup ladles worth more than your car. A silver cherry bowl from China. Horns used for a hunt. At some point, did the lady of the house ask herself '' Do I really need this carved ivory box to store my invitations in?" I hope my life amounts to more than a collection of rich person things. That you have to build an ornate cabinet for, so you can show your rich friends -- look at all my things that I can't even use!

Now, as my mind is bouncing around like an extra pinball you won for a high score, I look back to Clem Gooney. Jesus, he's effing good looking. I decide I would love to do him. He really should be president. He deserves to be the leader of the free world. He's just the most distinguished gentlemen looking person I've ever seen. Better than Cary Grant. President is part ceremonial, just have some crusty CIA veteran running the country while Clem Gooney waives to the masses, flashing the grin that sits above the mount rushmore chin. I tell people I saw Clem Gooney on set today later that night, and they immediately say "shouldn't he be president" without any goosing from me.

Gooney is doing this scene with Ted Tunnel. They're both standing close enuff, I can pick up stray bits of conversation. Gooney is doing weird humming and making Tunnel laff. Tunnel laffs heartily at everything the star Gooney sez. Tunnel's eyebrows ar as bushy as his fathers -- Lars Tunnel. His brother Jim Tunnel is also a famous actor, and together they made the film "The Magnetic Bosco Brothers." Somewhere they have an unheralded sibling deep in therapy.

I'm still as deluded as ever -- when the action starts, I get so into my conversation with my fellow extra, I don't even listen to the great acting icons actually speaking just inches from me. Nope, I'm miming a conversation, looking deep in the eyes of the other person and ACTING! I may be furniture, but I'm furniture working on my craft.

If you go to prison -- you really have no excuse not to write a book -- and the same with extras. If you're in the gulag of being background, you can use the time to really try acting when no one's really watching you. You've got a long day on set, much of it sitting in holding areas, tents -- and if the only product of that is reading Soap Opera Digest cover-to-cover you've missed the gift of investment in yourself this job allows. I was wishing they would give us barbells like in the yard, so we could pump up like prisoners. The Second-Second would love the muscled-up extras demanding smoke bumps!

Back in the room, we're all sweating buckets. Our period costumes are made of wool, for the Belgium winters. Add in the movie lights, and you have makeup peeps running around dabbing at us, sopping the sweat off our foreheads.

I look at one of the grips setting lights -- sheezus he looks just like Pauley Shore. I'd like to see Pauley Shore survive in the ultra-male world of the grips. That'd be a reality show worth watching.

We are set free early, and I change in room with full view to passer-bys. The main men's changing room is a zoo, so I drop trou here with the "I don't give a shit" attitude that comes with being wrapped. Or so I thought. In our street clothes, sound has requested our services. They need "walla-walla" -- crowd party noise back at the scene of the party. It's actually the most fun I've ever had doing walla-walla, they encourage us to speak in French if we can. I do my fake French so well (recite verbs, but do it with a great accent) that the person I'm talking to is actually surprised when I switch to english. I never let them on the secret that I was just saying "I do, I am doing, I have done, 70, Depardieu, very good, shit brother, mother." As we leave the mansion, heading back to sign-out for the day -- Clem Gooney appears. He is also wrapped, and has shed the first layers of his costume. He looks at us, the extra lepers and sez:

"Hey guys, thanks a lot, you were great, thanks for the day!"

Now that's a movie star I'd crawl through cactus for.