Starting at 7:00 pm Saturday we will be screening the top 27 at Liberty Hall in Lawrence. Tickets are only $7 for general public and $5 for students. We will also have a costume contests during the festival, so dress for super success! The most heroic hero or vile villain will receive a cash prize and a DVD of the films.

Last night was the Lawrence round of judging. The judges were blown away by the quality of films this year. Along with the typical gang of local judges, we also enjoyed the company of local comic book writer Jai Nitz. He has written several comics for D.C. and Marvel. He is currently working on Hollywood movie comic tie-ins, such as the upcoming Green Hornet.

The judging may be almost over, but remember- every film is up for people’s choice.

Here is the screening list for Saturday night (subject to change).

Allied Soviet Service
Bruso
Jesus Christ: Super Hero
Stuporman
Captain Chivalry vs. The Feminist Foe
1800 Super-Date
Benchland
Evil Gets Whipped
Silent but Deadly
The Protagonists
Chain Male
Slaptastic
Heat Stroke

INTERMISSION

Stroking the Heat
The Revenge of Dr. Sun
Bustin’ Out
Superhero Man
Never Again
Go Ref Yourself
Super Speed Dating
Interrogation
Ball
The Doctor Is In
No Mercy for the Evil
Surf Girl
Match me if you Can
Against the Current

See you at the movies!

#3-Brushes With Stardom, or “Please Don’t Hurt Me!”

Celebrities are just like you and me. -Or that’s what everybody always says. Then you see how much press Jennifer Aniston’s (alleged) boob-job gets, or see the 65-page spread on Tom & Katie’s wedding and they don’t seem so normal after all. But one thing is for certain: They have to live somewhere. And since the “Media Machine” is in Los Angeles, it makes a lot more sense when you run into them checking out papayas at the Mayfair Market.

I wouldn’t call myself a particularly ‘star-struck’ guy, but my Illustrious Editor asked me to write about some experiences with celebrities since moving to LA. I’ve had a few.

One of the coolest ways I got near celebrities was when I signed up to be a ‘bleacher creature’ at the 2005 Oscars. Each year AMPAS (The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,) holds a contest for passes to the bleachers outside the event. You sign up, and if you’re chosen, you’ll get to watch all the celebrities arrive, walk down the red carpet, and go into the Academy Awards. It’s a lot of fun. I signed up at the AMPAS website on a whim, and was picked out of thousands of entries. They ran a background check on me, and as improbable as it seems, I passed and was mailed an ID for the event. When I showed up, I was frisked, metal-detected, stood in line, then given a gift-bag and a great view to check out Scarlet Johansen’s butt in a Valentino dress. Good times.

Since I’ve worked as an extra, I’ve met tons of celebrities on set. Well, not so much ‘met’ as, ‘stood near’.. or ‘seen walk to their trailer’.. They all have their own reputations in the BG community. Some of our favorites are Martin Sheen and ‘Crossing Jordan’s’ Jerry O’Connell. Story goes that Sheen got started as an extra, and he still likes to be around them. I’ve shaken hands and talked with the guy several times. As part of Jimmy Smitts’ secret service detail on ‘The West Wing,’ I’d be hanging out in front of Stage 28A on the Warner Lot. Martin would be working on the stage next door, and he’d sometimes check up on us. During an inauguration scene, we were forced to wear long overcoats in 80 degree Los Angeles. Martin kept the crowd going by stealing the ADs’ megaphone and performing an hour-long standup routine. Another time, he famously got a Craft Service company fired (the guys who provide mid-meal snacks on set,) when they were cruel to a extra.

Jerry O’Connell (once the fat kid in ‘Stand By Me’,) is beloved by background actors on Crossing Jordan. He makes an effort to introduce himself to everyone on set. I shook him up one day when I met him in street clothes, and an hour later in a cop uniform. He felt bad enough about forgetting me that we ended up laughing, and talking for ten minutes about my picks for the Superbowl. That entire set is full of gracious actors and friendly crew, -which makes it popular (and therefore tough to get work on,) as an extra. I hear the same stories about ‘My Name is Earl’ and ‘Scrubs.’ (-all NBC shows.. Hmm..)

On the flipside, there are a few stars who have horrible reputations with Background. It doesn’t do me any good to name names, but a mom on a heartwarming family show has been known to call extras “cockroaches.” I’ve never heard it, but the stories are bad enough that the only ones that will work the show are the new, uninitiated or the desperate.

Maybe my biggest ‘sighting’ happened on ‘ER.’ I was standing outside Stage 3 on the WB lot with a bunch of guys -all playing paramedics and firemen, having their morning cigarettes. There was a real sense of bravado -they were talking about this chick and that fight, when a black Cadillac SUV pulled up. The conversation broke just long enough for Angelina Jolie to step out, flanked by some bodyguards. It was like a bomb had gone off. The guys just stood there, jaws open, and silent. Maybe sensing her interruption, Angelina actually smiled to this crowd of savages. Then she walked a few feet into the Section 8 office (Steven Soderberg & George Clooney’s company.) A half-hour passed, with the guys all talking about their take on her- what she was wearing, was she as sexy in real life as the magazine photos.. (-and yeah. She was.) But I think she noticed how the guys reacted to her too, because when left, the bodyguards pulled the Escalade up on the curb and she had to walk maybe two feet before getting in. -They weren’t going to take any chances with her being accosted by the extras. She drove past the crowd, and didn’t acknowledge them this time. But it was all I heard about for the rest of the day.

You can bump into famous people at any time in LA. A great place is the gym. I was doing curls at the Hollywood YMCA, when a guy passed uncomfortably close to my weights. I almost chewed him out when I realized it was Tim Allen, walking in with trainer. (He’s a big patron of the YMCA, so it’s probably good I didn’t yell at him.) Another time, I was listening (-or eavsdropping) on a conversation with Ron Livingston, of ‘Office Space’ fame. He was talking with another guy about a film and couldn’t remember the name of it. I interrupted with the title. Ron thanked me and since I was wearing my cubs shirt, Ron asked,
“Oh, are you from Chicago?”
“I lived in Chicago. But I’m from Kansas City.”
Ron’s eyes lit up, and he got very serious for a moment.
“Are you a CHIEFS FAN?!”
“Yeah.” I said. “Of course.”
“ME TOO!! We’re from Cedar Rapids, man! Come meet my brother.”
I spent the next half-hour BS’ing with Ron and Nick about how our football team was going to do that year.

One of my favorite stories is running into Mohammad Ali in Hollywood. -And I mean running into him. Of all places, I was walking out of a magic shop near Hollywood Boulevard and Cherokee, and physically ran into the man! So what would your first thought be, when nearly knocking over a boxing legend? Mine was “Please don’t hurt me!” Now, I know, the man is pushing 70 and has Parkinson’s Disease, but I couldn’t help thinking he could knock my head off if he wanted. My second thought was “Shouldn’t he be taller?” I’m 6’5″, but when I saw the man, I just assumed he’d be bigger than me. He was maybe six-even.

So all these thoughts are going through my head, and he’s just trying to get into the magic shop. (I guess he likes performing tricks for kids in hospitals and stuff..) So he’s standing there. And I’m standing there. And all I could come up with to say was “Hi!,” and run away as quickly as possible. That was my meeting with Mr. Ali.

For the most part, my brushes with the stars have inspired me. Meeting these sucessful actors (or sports legends) has broken a barrier in my mind about what’s attainable here. I mean, if a guy like Ron can make it from Cedar Rapids to a cult-classic film, to a prime-time TV show, why can’t I? I just have to stay a Chiefs fan along the way.
______________________
Dispatches From the 7th Circle of Hollywood is a regular column on Wild West Film Fest.com . All rights reserved. Questions or comments can be made at circle7@wildwestfilmfest.com.

#2-Which Reality is Real? -Really?!

A lot of the work I’ve done in LA is in Reality TV. So I thought I could do a primer on how Reality works, what it’s like to be on the crew, some of the fun and pitfalls..

Most of the shows I worked on weren’t hits. Here’s some highlights: I was Associate Producer on a show called ‘Playing It Straight,’ a contest-dating show with one girl and fifteen guys, half of which are gay, on a dude ranch in Nevada. (I think FOX aired 2 episodes before cancelling it..) I was a Camera Assistant on ‘Strange Love,’ a documentary-style show about the strange romance between rap star Flava Flav, and Rocky IV actress Brigitte Nielsen. I also AC’d a pair of shows about billionaires- ‘The Benefactor’ with tech-entrepeneur Mark Cuban, and ‘The Rebel Billionaire,’ with Virgin Airlines founder Richard Branson.

So what are your first thoughts about Reality TV? Maybe you love it- Maybe you think it’s fake-er than the breasts at White Lotus on a Friday night. The thing that people don’t understand about Reality shows is that most of them are game shows -complete with rules that govern them, (-Congress has even spoken on the subject. Ever see the movie Quiz Show?) What that means is that as fake as shows may seem, they’re not ‘rigged.’ The producers can’t outright ‘rig’ them because they’d open themselves to huge lawsuits, and maybe even criminal prosecution.

So how do producers make a show more interesting? Creative casting. How boring would it be if all the girls on “Flavor of Love” got along just fine? From day one, producers look for people who are going to fight with each other, compete for Flav’s attention and if they’re lucky, one will spit on another by the end of the show. They’ll also change the challenges inside the show to make the competition more exciting- like changing an individual game to a group game- to force contestants to work together. But again, if there’s a chance that the contestants could have a lawsuit from the changes because the game has become unfair, the answer from the EPs or the network is always “no.”

What does that mean for the guys working on the shows? Well first off, we have to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements, that say we won’t ruin the surprises or let anybody know how the show ends -or pay a penalty. When I first started, those NDAs were for one or two million dollars. Everybody signs them. But as I moved on and the shows got bigger, those numbers changed to five, six, and even ten million. It became fun to guess what the number of each show would be -as if that implied how cool the network thought the series was, or what kind of adventures we might be on. They’d also include a new clause every time. (One said that we wouldn’t gamble on the outcome of the show -I understand some execs at a network went to Vegas to bet on a winner.. I think they’re doing jail-time now..)

It also meant that as crew members, we weren’t supposed to become friendly, or sometimes even communicate with the cast members, because it could seem like we were giving one preferential treatment over another. Even if they would ask us to hand something to them, we were instructed to let them get it themselves. -and shoot whatever happens. (Maybe they’ll drop it on their foot!) Of course, it didn’t always turn out that way. One of my crew buddies slept with a cast member on a show, a very sexy model. And it either helped or really hurt his career, depending on who you ask. (Everybody was either proud of him, or jealous..)

Life on the road could be long and tough- and you build amazing relationships with the people you’re with. Probably a whole article could be devoted to the “Showmance.” When you’re on the road with the same group of people, hook-ups eventually happen. For “The Rebel Billionaire,” we were in a different country every week, but saw the same thirty faces on the crew every day. We were experiencing all these amazing places, and working our asses off. -So it just makes sense that a few people fell into bed together. I didn’t find out until the end of the show, that the girl I was interested in was fooling around with my buddy for two months, under everybody’s nose. (If a showmance gets serious on the road, we call that a “Locationship.”) They were a great couple actually, but when they got back to LA, situations changed and they fell apart, -like most showmances do.

I wouldn’t say I made great money working on Reality shows, either as a Producer or Camera Assistant. But I got to travel to some amazing places, and see things that I never would have had a chance to otherwise. For “Strange Love” on VH-1, I went to Milan, New York and Las Vegas, shot backstage with Public Enemy, and had Brigitte Nielsen scream ‘CIGARETTE!’ at me repeatedly. (Fetching smokes is not part of my job description, by the way..) On “The Benefactor,” I was on the ice at the Dallas Stars’ hockey rink. And I watched bums having sex outside “The Next Great Champ”‘s boxing arena. For “Playing It Straight,” I was used as a guinea pig to see what we could put the contestants through. (-the idea being: “If Troy isn’t killed, they probably won’t be.”) So I was taught to lasso an 800 lb. steer, then actually wrestled it!

There are a lot of changes in how Reality’s shot these days. The “Laguna Beach” trend is to shoot entire scenes on tripods and long lenses. The end product is really fantastic looking, but blurs the line into scripted work if you ask me. Instead of cameras following the subjects, the subjects have to be asked where they’re going to be and what they’ll be doing, so the cameras can set up in time and cover the scenes correctly. -And if the cast blows a shot by getting up in the middle of a scene, the producers might ask them to do the scene over again. Is that Reality?

I worked on a show last Christmas that’s coming out in a few weeks. It was called “The Great American Christmas” and follows several families as they experience the holidays. Our story was about a kid who moved from New York to LA to be with the girl he loves. From the time we started shooting, to the time we finished (Christmas Eve,) we went through every stage of loving, hating, being interested in, and sick of each other as a crew. I worked as camera assistant covering two cameras and managing all the tech gear. I probably averaged 4 hours of sleep a night.

There was a gorgeous girl on our crew that all the guys tried to get the attention of. In the beginning, she seemed interested in me. Then later she seemed into my buddy. After a week of sleep deprivation, I lost any ‘game’ or sense of humor, and I think all the guys finally gave up on her. That seems to be a theme, at least for me- not hooking up, but getting close to hooking up, or close to something, then it just falls apart. (If she were reading this now, I’d tell her I was sorry about how our last few conversations went.)

When I think about my time in LA, I think a lot about my adventures on Reality shows. The travel, the amazing people, and the possibilites around every corner. If there was an argument for why I suffer through hard times here, it would invariably center on those stories. Like getting stuck in a hurricane off Richard Branson’s private island, or getting in a fist-fight in Marakech. And when I go to the bar back in Kansas, nobody says “Fight in Marakech?! That happened to me too!!”

#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.