Dispatches From The 7th Circle of Hollywood

Troy Hauschild

#1-Life as a Movie Extra, or ‘Will Somebody Get The Meat-Flags Out of the Way?”

When I was asked to create this column by friends at WWFF, I thought “What the hell am I gonna write? I’m a struggling.. well.. producer, actor, technician.. I don’t even know what I’m doing in LA, what job I’ll be working next week, let alone know how to write about it.” My illustrious editor told me: “Write whatever. Write about life in LA.” So here we go.

I moved to Los Angeles four and-a-half years ago from Chicago, but I’m all Kansas at heart. I have credits as a producer for documentaries and reality shows and have flown to eight or ten countries for my work, including Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Hong Kong. I’ve done some acting and extra work, including a stint as a Secret Service guy on The West Wing. But for the most part, I’m a likable but unknown voyeur on the chaos that is Los Angeles.

I thought I’d start out with an explanation of what being an extra is all about. Extras (or Background Actors) are the guys in the back of any scene, while the principal actors go about their business. We’re the policemen in the squad room while the chief screams at the reckless rookie, (played by Colin Farrell.) We’re the townspeople in that big crane shot throwing snowballs at each other while the single mom strolls home (played by Julia Roberts.)

It’s a relatively unglamorous job, filled by the people who look most like the one-word description: cop, townsperson, soldier, surfer, or criminal. Anyone can do it. All you have to do is go down to Central Casting on the right morning, fill out some paperwork, and have your picture taken. In fact, a persistent (and most likely true) rumor in the BG community is that when convicts are released from California prisons, they’re advised to sign up at Central to get back into society. -After all, you get paid quicker than most jobs, and you get a couple of catered meals a day.

The pay is lousy, around minimum wage, (unless you’re in the union,) the hours are long, and the working conditions often suck. So why would anybody go through it? Well, you get to be on set. I mean, right where the action is. I’ve had drinks with James Caan, talked poker with Martin Sheen, done an uncomfortably close scene with Jennifer Garner, and been beaten up by the cast of The Shield. You get to see how they work (for instance, Clint Eastwood never yells ‘Roll Camera’ when he directs. He thinks it’s too jarring to have someone scream in your ear before you do an emotional scene. So he makes a circular gesture with his hand, the camera operator starts the camera, and Clint says calmly, “Okay Hillary,” before she says her lines.)

The other reason to do BG? To get your SAG card. Actors in LA aren’t taken seriously in LA until they have one. To become eligible, you have to get three SAG vouchers- basically pay stubs for working at the union wage for the day. But how do you get them? Well, that’s sticky. The shows are required to hire a certain number of union actors on each day of work. (The exact number depends on whether the show is TV or Film, and how many SAG principal actors are working that day.) So however many vouchers are left go to the SAG extras that might be hired that day- and then, if any are left, they go to the non-union extras that the production staff thinks deserves them.

How do you deserve them? – Well, if you get booked a lot of days on a show, work hard, and the ADs (Assistant Directors) love you, you might get one. If you go above-and-beyond in a particular scene- agree to do stunt work, or let the crew use your pet hamster in a shot, then you might get one. This is also where the whole ‘Casting Couch’ comes into play. (I’ve witnessed more than one hottie walking out of a dark corner on set, with one hand holding a new voucher, and the other holding onto an AD.) I got one for agreeing to take my shirt off in a locker room scene.

Another way you can get into the union is by being Taft-Hartley’d. That happens when the production company or producers decide to give you a line, even though you’re not SAG. It doesn’t happen very often, but it can be pretty exciting when it does. I saw a girl on Spiderman 3 get pulled out to say a line. -She played a waitress, and in the scene she walked Tobey Maguire to a table and said ‘This way Mister Parker..’ or something like that. The director, Sam Raimi just picked her out of the crowd, and bam! I don’t know if she was SAG already, but if not, she would be able to join immediately. She was upgraded to a speaking part rate – $600(+) and she was also given a trailer. And if it makes it into the film, she’s gonna get residuals x the number of screens and DVDs that the film is seen on. (And buddy, that’s a few!) I bet she’ll make upwards of $50,000 when it’s all over. Just the right girl, at the right place, at the right time.

Some crewmembers have a low opinion of BG. My favorite nicknames for us are “Props that Eat,’ and ‘Meat Flags.’ (Flags are a piece of grip equipment used to block light- suggesting that blocking light is the only thing extras are good for.) But they’ve got a good reason for the bad opinion- because a lot of the extras I’ve worked with are crazy. I knew an extra that refused to wear a shirt the wardrobe department gave him on the set of Alias- and promptly threatened to burn the studio down. I had an extra on the set of The West Wing predict the day that World War Three was going to start- down to the minute, and suggested I get out of town. (It was in March last year, so don’t worry. Both of those guys are still working, by the way.)

I saw a fight break out on set once too. It was on The West Wing a couple of years ago, in a scene that took place in the aftermath of an Oklahoma tornado. They tore the hell out of a street in Long Beach, turned over a few cars and presto- tornado! (It was very realistic, except when they had to stop shooting because of the ships blowing their horns in the harbor nearby.)

There were lots of people booked as cops and townspeople. I was actually playing an Oklahoma townsperson, (which kept me from playing another part on West Wing for a while.) Anyway, there was a guy dressed as a state trooper, and a girl dressed as a cop, told to be standing and talking as the president arrives. The two extras had met right then, and over the course of the day hanging out, they made a little love-connection. Well, lunchtime came around, and after they went through the catering line, she sat down at a table. One of the regular secret service agents sat next to her.

As the Statey comes to the table, the agent says, “You can’t sit there.”

“What do you mean, I can’t sit there?” Statey asks. “I’ve been talking with Julie all day. I’m gonna have lunch with her.”

After he set his tray down, the agent picked it back up and threw it in the state trooper’s lap. And then the fight began.

Nobody knows what was going through the mind of the secret service agent, but when the ADs got there, they went to the girl. They told her that the agent had been working WW for a long time, and they’d never had any trouble with him. -And they didn’t know who was really at fault, since they didn’t see the fight start. They gave her a choice: All three could stay and continue working, or all three could be sent home. She said that she didn’t feel safe on set with the agent- so the three packed up and left.

You never know what kind of people you’re going to meet doing extra work. On ‘Spiderman 3,’ I spent most of my days talking to a PhD psychologist who was bored in his trade and decided to try acting. On the sci-fi film ‘The Island,’ my best friend was a retired pro volleyball player who gave up a $100K a year stockbroker job to move to LA. Some of my fellow Secret Service agents were: a lawyer, a USMC drill instructor, and an appliance salesman. And the stories these guys had were priceless. I keep close with some of the guys, years later. Partly because of the shared experience of suffering on set- like soldiers in the same foxhole. Partly because of the great stories and fascinating histories these guys had. -And now I have a lawyer and get great advice on appliances.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 19th, 2006 at 11:40 pm and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.