Money-Making Scams

I begin this entry sitting not at a bus stop but on a park bench next to a bus stop, not far removed from one of the city's major universities. The world goes by me and around me, some of it shabby and ominously dressed, some of it young and very beautiful.

It's a sunny day. I sit in the shade of an old tree, I wish I knew what kind. The breeze blows gently on my neck. My leather jacket is draped over the back of the bench. I'm here because of a scam.

One of the Facebook groups I belong to published an alert about an ad on Kijiji looking for models. As curiosity took hold, I went and then saw a different ad on Kijiji that advertised background casting from a company I'd not heard of. I wondered if that was a scam too. The next day that same question was asked by member of that Facebook group and the reply came: no, they're legit. I went to their site, uploaded my info and got a phone call mere hours later (!!!) and that is why I'm here today for the Stephen King movie, "Bag of Bones".

I'm very early.

It's the Friday afternoon before the long weekend and my workplace shut down early, what luck! I drove to this part of the city and circled for a bit before I found a parking space. I decided to use my ages-old military training and do a quick reconnaissance on foot, locate Extras Holding, find out where my room would be today.

It's looks to be a gym you'd find in a small school, the floor marked with yellow lines for badminton courts and a stage with a drawn curtain to one side. It's odd to find this room here, this gym, because it's in a church. Chairs and tables are set up to receive a lot of people. A lot of extras are needed today. First there is a graveside scene and some of the people milling about here are dressed in mourning clothes. The afternoon scene, the one I'm in, is an auditorium scene, New Yorkers gathered to listen to an author read from his work. On the call sheet, there's a list of names about six pages long; a lot of people are here today.

The room stinks.

Maybe it's not the fault of all the people in it. Maybe it always stinks. I don't feel obliged to come back some other time to find out. And I'm not precisely looking forward to spending the day in it.

So, instead and two hours early, I'm outside in the fresh air, sitting in my shirt-sleeves on a park bench, my leather jacket slung over the back of it. Writing to you. Occasionally, I have to brush away some bug. Sitting here in my new least-favourite human posture - head down, thumbs tapping out words on some fucking phone or other - I'm mostly missing all the pretty girls going by. One just passed not speaking English.

In my car is a suit bag with three different suits to chose from and a sports bag with ties, shoes and some other extras including my book, only one book this time, I just started reading it. I decided not to wear one of my suits to work, instead I dressed in a black short-sleeve shirt, blue jeans, dark socks, black shoes and my leather jacket. A closer read of the costume requirements said that the auditorium scene will have different people dressed different ways from suits and ties to business casual to jeans and t-shirts with maybe jackets and sweaters. It said because of all the people that need to be here, we should arrive to set "camera ready". Perhaps I already am.

I wander.

To the park down the road, watching the people, the ducks, the geese and the time which moves slowly but I'm not impatient. I come back to the church (ha) and run into Laura who I only know from Facebook. She doesn't know me at first and almost not even after. I find a guy in a headset who tells me, actually my room is down the road over THERE. There's a Background Holding #2 that wasn't listed on the map, but it was on the call sheet.

Lots of time. I have more wandering to do, another recce. But first I return to my park bench. Tap, tap, tap with thumbs.

In my travels, I pass a young woman pulling a carry-on suitcase. "It's a long walk to the airport," I think to tell her but don't. Later at the room, there will be half a dozen girls at least with carry-on suitcases, packed with wardrobe choices. I won't be able to recall if any of them was the girl I passed, but I figure one must be.

I wander farther than I have to before doubling back and locating my room, a dark, empty studio space at the University theatre with no chairs but it doesn't stink. The people there aren't from Production, they are with the venue. We chat briefly and I leave to find Bliss which for today is the name of the street where I parked my car.

They said things were running behind. But I'll have my book. And you. For now, what I think I need is a better parking spot, but it turns out Bliss is a lot closer than I thought (... a parable?).

I return to the theatre and read for a while. By the time it's time to check in, a rabble has appeared around me. A PA arrives and starts handing out paperwork. We form a line and it soon begins to stink, oh dear, patchouli and body odour. The group seems so young. I might be the second oldest person here and I start to fear being mistaken for an authority figure. I only see one other person with a blue form, a tell, an indication of an ACTRA member. I wonder how many of the rest of these people know what they're in for. It might be fun to listen in.

Post-paperwork, a return to the room, where chairs are being arranged in a "U" with two or three rows. I quietly suggest one chair at the mouth of the room to face all the others. Not much of a reaction. I thought it was pretty funny. There's a paucity of conversation. All the tones are hushed. The loudest noise is the chair legs clacking together as they are brought out. A quick survey of the room reveals a collection of disinterested faces, like a collection of strangers riding the bus. Many heads are down, lost in the little screens of their smart phones.

We get an overall brief from the PA, boiler plate stuff for the benefit of the rookies. I look around frankly at the people assembled. No one looks back.

A second wave of extras arrives, the morning group from the other set. They seem more relaxed and happening. And older. There's a lot of people here now and still not a single soul I recognize. A very pretty woman almost sits beside me and then changes her mind, easy come, easy go.

We are now a bigger bus of strangers. I don't hear anyone telling tales of this shoot or that shoot they were once on, which is unusual. Just a collection of hushed conversations, not all of them in English. This feels more like church than the church.

People glance over and then glance away. There are empty chairs on either side of me when chairs are at a premium. Maybe it's me that stinks.

Laura arrives! I'm up to one (people I know). I say hi, she says hi back. I'm standing against the wall at this point (oooo, my back) and she walks past me eventually taking the chair next to the one I used to be in.

In dribs and drabs, more and more of the crew show up. The scene we'll be shooting will be in the auditorium that's on the other side of the curtain from where we're collected. The decibel level creeps up. And the tempo of things. I go to wardrobe with a small handful of others and after three tries, I have the shirt I'll wear. So, not quite set ready after all. Wardrobe wanted something coloured other than black so I/we don't get all swallowed up by some collective darkness on set. The shirt I'm wearing now is a baby blue, actually a fine check pattern of blue and white. After Wardrobe I'll go to Make-up where, hey look, I found a longer line. Laura passes by again without a word and I begin to fantasize about un-friending her. I wait in line before I decide to bail and come tap-tap-tap to you some more.

Someone has carved my initials in the extreme top right corner of the corkboard outside the hair and make-up room. And underlined it twice. It looks like it's been there a long time. I'm starting to feel the same as the line-up to hair and make-up refuses to creep or even crawl forward.

When I finally get to the door, I see they have people going three at a time. Earlier I did a rough count of how many were here and I got up to about 70. I think more have arrived since. A gentleman behind me was out-loud thankful we weren't there as horned beasts (I should have said, "Speak for yourself"), some such Star Trek 3-hour makeup job. When I finally got there I might have been in the chair for all of two minutes, trying unsuccessfully to get someone to colour the grey out of my hair, all these young people.

For the second show in a row, I meet someone I know from Bedford Players, Nell (not her real name). We sit in the front row next to each other as all the people who have gone through Wardrobe, Hair and Make-up swap from Extras Holding to the auditorium on other side of the curtain - we're now on set.

Not so fast!!!!!

Everyone up and outside. Like right outside, not Extras Holding. There are some lights to be hung or some such thing and we go outside where Nell shares with me her stories of food deprivation and thirst, conditions incumbent on non-ACTRA film extras. Up since 5 am, and barred from the coffee and donuts on set, told there would be nothing to eat, presented later with very meagre snacks, barred from eating lunch until all the crew has gone through first and then relegated to some distant corner to eat.

I wondered about having her guest-blog for me.

I read this to her and she laughs, "That's not true!" I wonder from having listened to her what part I messed up.

I steal away for a bite from the craft table. I'm asked if I belong to ACTRA and then all is cool. I have my snack beyond the sight of the assembled extras outside the door, no need to incite riot. As I'm not quite finished, the gathered herd moves toward me, ah shit: busted. But at the last moment they're steered elsewhere; it seems someone has opened up a separate craft table for the extras and the resulting scene is one like from "Piranha!!"

Back outside, the sun begins its evening slide and the temperature grows cooler. Mandated for the next while to stay outside as the set is blocked and lit, the extras grow chill. Jason Priestley arrives, ducks a glance over at our collected group (shyly ...? Really? Awkwardly...? Really? Is he ...Canadian?) and heads inside in time for first team run-throughs. I've met Julie (who earlier this morning met Laura, small world). She was keeping an eye on some of my stuff while I went to Make-up. Now I'm guarding her make-shift seat outside while she and Laura move off for a smoke. Seating, you might understand, is rather at a premium, here outside the building in the driveway. Sweaters too, as the wind freshens and the air grows cooler.

Some time later, we return to the auditorium. Some of us are specifically assigned places to sit, others, like me, just go find our own. I'm five rows up on the aisle. Stage right. It's cool in here too, but with the lights and 100 people, I'm not expecting it to stay cool.

Abruptly and completely unexpectedly, my name is called.

I've been wrapped!

Obliging but bewildered, I head behind the curtain to see the PA who soon realizes that the pile of ACTRA papers was mixed up and I'm not one of the union people who arrived earlier this morning and who are about to "turn into pumpkins" (ie - incur overtime). The matter having been quickly cleared up, I return to my seat.

The stand-in in at the podium in front of us is replace by the "first team" actor. I don't know him except it's not Jason Priestley. Jason must be playing the Agent in the scene. This other guy is the Author, the star of the movie, but I don't recognize him.

We're ready to shoot it.

Lock it up.

Clear the lights.

Roll camera.

Speed. Speeding.

"A" camera, scene suchnsuch, take one.

Marker.

Action.

Not until he starts reading to us do I realize the actor at the podium is Pierce Brosnan.

Wearing dark glasses, as he looks up from the book he's reading, he seems to be looking straight at me.

Allow me to say it was suddenly pretty fucking cool.

Doing the scene, I try to give it my best. Like my scenes in Mr D where I was WAY off in the background, I work it best I can, reaching for a feeling, animating myself in realistic ways, not wishing to be some dead-eye zombie extra, investing myself with subtle movement designed the reveal Life and Reality, never mind the camera may not even see me. I give it my best. I make specific choices for my reactions. Listening now, I hang on his words. I'm here to listen to my favourite author. I'm somewhat incredulous and horrific-comic at the outcome of the scene, but play it casually. It's film, not theatre. We do two takes. Mr. Brosnan is awesome in the first one and even better in the second one.

While cameras are being turned around, we're filed out of the auditorium, out of the building and then around to the service door where we will get supper (actually, I find out later, it's substantials, or "subs"). The mouth-watering smell of hot pizza wafts through the air.

But your subs are over here: a choice of veggie or meat hot dogs (small shrivelled weiners and keep your comments to yourself, thank you very much) with cheesies. To the crestfallen girl in line behind me, I explain that in the biz, we call that O.P.P. - Other People's Pizza.

I ate with gusto. Then back inside. Three more takes of the same scene, this time the camera is in front of us, riding rails for a tracking shot. The extras murmur amongst themselves after this first take that Pierce took his cell phone from his left pocket where in the previous set-up he took it from his right. Whether he knew this or someone told him, just before the next take he switched it back to the right one.

Finish, file back outside. I talk with Julie and Laura (who I will not un-friend after all) about the day; agreeing that it's a different kind of day, how there's so few people here we know, how some people have actually left after deciding it wasn't for them or they were too hungry or too cold or too something. I'd heard this had happened among the schoolchildren and teens on Mr. D, but I'm surprised to hear adults have bailed today. Laura is still recovering from a bad sandwich she ate early in the morning - it makes her ill talking about it - but she'll stick this out to the end. I'm very surprised to learn she's not ACTRA. It is a point of some consternation with her and we talk about that for a while before heading back inside to sit behind the curtain in Extras Holding where it's warmer.

Mr. Bronsnan does a few more takes of the same scene with a different camera setup but we can't see this one; we sit quiet as mice behind the curtain that's behind him.

As I was covetting a picture of me with the prop book (imagining me holding it up to show the back with the novel's fake blurb and its photo of Pierce Brosnan as the author on the dust jacket), I overhear the wardrobe mistress talking with two other members of the crew about the prospect of Stephen King (himself!) will he or won't he get a chance to come visit the set. Aficionado that I am, I couldn't help interjecting. "Excuse me for eavesdropping," I said, "but isn't it sort of a tradition for him to make cameos in his movies?"

Have you read me before writing this blog? Do I ever do this sort of stuff? Like, mostly never.

So one of the crew turns to me, a slender man with longish, grey hair, a sharp profile, dark-rimmed glasses framing an intelligent fox face. "When he's invited," the man said. "Only when he's invited. I've done a couple of his movies and..." And he went on to say more, but I might have been suddenly having a moment somewhere between Oops and Holy fuck. Mick Garris, director and executive producer for "Bag of Bones", this was the guy I had sort of interrupted.

Moving on.

Back to set where this time it was OUR turn, the camera tracking over Mr. Brosnan's shoulder to record our reactions. We're awesome. Two takes is all we need. Between these two takes Mr. Brosnan observes to us wryly about the scene that we keep doing over and over and a couple of people maybe laugh louder than they need to. But, hey.

The crew breaks down the setup while we're still in our auditorium seats. What next, I wonder. While I'm wondering I'm also reflecting how the mood has changed among the group, from quiet and introverted, all that hushed conversation, to now, when we seem much more relaxed and jovial.

The camera moves in for tighter reaction shots of individuals in our audience. They are pointed to the other side; they've picked a couple of extras to focus on over there. I'm safe for now. Just before cameras roll again, Jason Priestley moves into a chair and into shot and I think, "Oh."

One take. We're done, we're thanked, we applaud, we file out to be officially wrapped.

On the way out...

not by design but from a collection of purely random actions by about one hundred different people...

... I find myself walking directly behind Pierce Brosnan, for those few instants, following in his footsteps.

Back To School

It's August, and the school I'm in is empty, partly because it August and there's still a month to go before classes start up again and partly because it's just past 7 in the morning and I'm a whopping 45 minutes early for my call-time on the set of "Mr. D", a TV series about a teacher.

The Alice Cooper song has been running around my head since I got up.

Even at this hour, people are beginning to trickle in. My room over here today is a cavernous cafeteria. Two of the four walls are glass and the early morning sunshine is pouring in. It almost feels like outdoors. I sit facing west otherwise I'd be blinded by the sunrise. It's a very nice room.

Crew and extras start to fill up the room and the countdown is on to get signed in and move on to what will hopefully be a highlight of the day: the breakfast burrito.

Score.

The burrito includes bacon and eggs, cheese, salsa and comes with a nice cup of strong black coffee. The paperwork includes a statement of citizenship, an agreement for one dollar in exchange for the rights to any appearance I might make in a behind-the-scenes DVD ... and a confidentiality agreement.

I'm sitting at a corner table in the cafeteria having just been introduced to a very pleasant woman who turns out to be one of the stand-ins and will be here for the duration of the series and whose name I can't publish because of the confidentiality agreement.

It's a very private school.

After only one hour, some of the kids have already been moved outside. They're here to play school children and I reflect that I've never worked with children before (other than that one time with my own) and I wonder what that will be like. Unknown to me at this hour, after today I will still not have worked with children. We're shooting outside today, to start at least, and today "today" will act as several other days and I will help (apparently) by changing shirts several times, the wardrobe lady having picked the ones I am to wear and in what order.

Unknown to me at this hour, I will only ever wear the one I'm currently wearing in front of the camera.

It's unusual for things to be moving so quickly so early, people getting in front of camera this fast. I wonder, is this the difference between TV and movies? Some kids are outside but so far I still sit in the corner next to the Extra's Holding sign, alone now as the stand-in lady also seems to have left for set.

At two different times background kids come in and sit down to tables at the west end of the cafeteria and are politely told to move over to the east end - where I am - because their part of the room is over here.

I'm out at 9:00 for filming. Wow. At 10am we're back, on a short break as they turn the cameras around to shoot the same scene we've been working for the past hour. I have no idea what the scene was about, I was so far away. My role as a teacher was just to walk down the pathway leading away from the school, far from the camera. In my last job it was like I had a role and a function and a name and even screen time with the heavy hitters. This time I'm a speck passing somewhere way in the back, a true background performer. But who knows what the rest of the day will bring.

Performing with me is a woman I know from having worked with the Bedford Players. As we make our crosses far from the range of the boom mike, we talk about acting and actors and directors, movies, web sites, kids and plays. Two teachers having a discussion, is what it will look like. I tell her a little about this blog and she's concerned I'll write about her having brought a Danielle Steele book to read. I reassure her with a reminder of, gee, even if I wanted to there's that confidentially agreement.

I wouldn't usually use this space to write about my bathroom breaks, but....

I'm heading down a long hall, passing classrooms and lockers and labs until finally I find the bathrooms - one's for men the other's for staff. There's maybe the tiniest hesitation, but after all I'm not a teacher, I just play one on TV. In the men's room, the urinals are REALLY low to the floor. I speculate idly on whether the staff toilets are at a more adult height. These urinals are low AND waterless. Lettered in a semi-circle around the drain is the company's 800 number. I think, this must be the only company in the world that advertises their 1-800 number (actually 866) where it's read from underneath your own piss.

The things you learn on set.

Hey, my cousin's here too and I wave but the guy who sees me first and says hi isn't my cousin but one of the executive producers. He may have had a hand in casting me for "Black Harbour" all those years ago. His wife and I were in "The Sound of Music" together all those more years ago. These days I see him much more frequently. His son and my son play on the same baseball team. I help coach. We say hi and shake hands (I washed before I came out).

At 11 it's back outside where I show off my range. Where originally I was walking on a concrete path away from the school with another teacher, for this part I'll be walking on a different concrete path TOWARD the school (and this is the part about showing off my range) ... ALONE.

It's a tough call, which scene will I be more obscure in. The first one maybe.

At a little after noon, I come back inside for a sandwich and some applesauce. Out of deference to the kids who are all still outside shooting and who aren't permitted to have sodas from the craft table (reserved for actors and crew), I have some water and a grape juice pack. Just so you know, as a card-carrying member of ACTRA I am entitled to the craft table.

But why make waves.

I finish my book.

I start reading my next book, absurdly pleased with my own foresight to have brought a second one along.

Can you FEEL the glamour of it all?

The third teacher in our triumvirate told the Bedford Player's teacher he was from Persia (so, Iran, right?). At the moment he has his head down, catching not forty thieves, but forty winks. It seems to me like a great idea. Later he and I will improvise a game of no-limit Texas hold-em with juice boxes, straws and empty plastic straw wrappers and I bust him six times in a row.

Oh yeah, by the way, as I settled in earlier this morning, I caught a single word spoken between two of the kids and that word was "Neville". Later, I noticed a boy who looks remarkably how you thought Neville Longbottom would look all grown up when you saw him in the first Harry Potter movie. The resemblance is striking and uncanny.

When they are not on set the kids aren't reading books like us old fuddy-duddies. Almost to the last man (even though some are girls and the rest are only boys) they have out their smart phones, an uncollected lot of kids, a half-dozen to a table, all of them independent and ironically disconnected from each other, thumbs tapping out whatever in their separate isolated spaces.

(Sez the guy tapping this all out on his BlackBerry.)

I duck into an open classroom to change into a different shirt. It might have been the French class. There were posters on the wall for the French Riviera and a sign on the wall: "Le respect n'est pas donné. Tu dois le mériter," which I figured the kids hadn't done, otherwise the sign would have said, "Vous devez".

The 2nd A.D. (whose name I'm dying to say because I REMEMBERED it, small wonder, but can't because, say it with me, the confidentiality agreement), the 2nd AD asks me if I've heard from the casting agent. I confess no, I haven't, to which HE confesses that they had me in mind to read for a part, well, well, well. The casting agent had been distressed to hear I was already there for background work but he-who-must-not-be-named assured her I was deep in the background..

"Economically advantageously deep," I said, grinned and he laughed.

HOPE!

The thing with feathers.

I sent an e-mail to my agent as a heads up and then, taking some initiative, I went back and asked the 2nd AD whether I should make a point of hanging back in the deep background to protect whatever future role there might be for me. The inference being not just to suggest a course of action, but to somehow make it official, this course of action, because there are a lot of people here on set who make decisions and none of them are me.

Either he picked up on this or he had exactly the same idea because the next thing he did was get on the walkie-talkie to let the 3rd AD know they should keep my face more or less hidden from the camera for the rest of the day, however else they wanted to use me, all of it a moot point as it turned out.

"Your pretty face," is what he actually said.

I twirled and laughed. "I think I'm in love!"

Two-thirty comes and it's lunch.

Quarter after four comes and lunch is still the only thing for me on the go, digesting too slowly in my stomach. That was a lot of potatoes. Somewhere something is going on but it doesn't include the rest of us still passing the time in the cafeteria in various sundry and generationally appropriate ways. Some new actors showed up (at least one that I recognized and so would probably you if you're Canadian) and they're off filming something at the moment with a small group of the students, just down the hall which is why a PA has shown up to shoosh us all. The shooshing interrupts a meeting with a former neighbour and personal trainer of mine who has suddenly appeared with her son. He and my boy used to play together regularly before she moved away from our collection of condos. We have more than a nice few moments of catching up.

Natalie (happy to use her name since she's not cast or crew) tells me she's also now a life coach ... and then asks me what's so funny.

This, I said, posted only a couple of days ago.

Once upon a troubled time, many years ago, Natalie gave me one of the best hugs I ever had. It was sometime around Christmas, a holiday hug from a random encounter at a movie theatre that no longer exists, she with her boyfriend, me by myself, a moment she probably doesn't even recall and something I've never forgotten.

At seven oh five, more than six hours after last the leaving set and 139 pages into my second book, we wrapped.

My New Facebook Friend: Tom Selleck

Back before the great age of technology, I would get a call from my agent telling me there was a gig somewhere. No longer.

We're not huddled around radios anymore, people. And there's no one fiddling around with the rabbit ears to get rid of the fuzzy picture on the colour-TV. Now it's all HD plasma bigscreen TVs, baby. And Facebook.

(Because it's waiting for me on my DVR, sometime this week maybe I'll watch the movie about Facebook on my HD plasma bigscreen TV.)

I still feel guilty that I don't pay my agent a commission for doing background work; it's a change from my last agent and it's her rule, not mine. She might not even know I'm here today.

The casting agent (different from my "talent" agent) posted a whole mess of stuff on her Facebook site and wouldn't you know, I'm available for some of it! I left her Facebook page to browse over to her casting group's web site where I've already set up an account for myself. I logged in, clicked on the projects I'm available for, and a day later she gave me a call to tell me to come play! Slick as you please. It's just the one I was hoping for too, whattaya know. I'm going to be the Medical Examiner for a scene in the new Jesse Stone movie.

It's Tom Selleck. Again.

The shoot is outside of the city in Sambro, a small fishing village that's a half hour or so from my place. The first big decision of the day was what to wear to set and at the last minute I panicked and removed the clothes I dressed in to start the day - tan shorts and an orange, cream and rust coloured "Charlie Sheen" shirt (we FINALLY have a warm and sunny day) - in favour of a cooler looking shirt and jeans combo and my leather jacket. After my earlier excursion, I needed to feel confident about myself. And earth tones just weren't going to cut it.

The second decision is whether to drive to the spot for crew parking or Extras Holding. Small, stupid things like this are why I need to dress with confidence. I correctly decided on crew parking and after a brief chit-chat with the security guy (who talked about "Tom" the gypsy who has so many different locations to travel to for this movie), I'm shuttled to Base Camp where Extras holding, I'm told, is behind the porta-potties.

Well of course it is.

We're in a 16 x 20 shed with a concrete floor and a long, oval conference table with about 10 office chairs, a telescope and a computer table with a small plasma screen showing static security video from a nearby wharf. The talk is about some forewarning of "interaction" we've received where some of the forensics people might be ... what? Talking with Tom? Who's also the writer apparently? There are implications here.

And then everyone else is gone to wardrobe and I'm alone here typing this out to you.

What will the day bring? That's the excitement, the anxiety and anticipation in the room. It's a beautiful sunny day fraught with potential.

After a short period of being forgotten by the P.A., I walk across the gravel parking lot to the wardrobe trailer where my own best suit is picked (it's the Hugo Boss, Christine) augmented by a shirt and tie not my own. I'm sent to the "five-banger" to change. This is a new term for me, five-banger. It's the long trailer divided up into five dressing rooms, hence, five-banger. The doors are labelled with paper signs: Tom Selleck Stand-in, Doc Perkins, Tom Selleck stunt-double, Stunts. The last door has no sign. It's door #5 where I've been told to change but wait because there's a girl inside.

I wait.

It's so sunny and warm.

The sun washes over me and as I wait, I have some growing appreciation of the logistics of all this, just to back up and arrange all these trailers along this Government Wharf. Setting up Base Camp.

Time keeps on ticking and I begin to suspect that maybe there's not a girl behind door #5. I knock. No answer. I open the door and peer through the gloom and the screen door, taking the first step up into the trailer.

In the deepest part of the room, my eyes adjusting to the dark, there are four men sitting in a single row. They're looking at me. No one says a word. As I start to gasp for something to say (they've scared the piss out of me), I realize they're dummies. Foam dummies. All of them dressed in the uniform of a "Paradise State Trooper".

Things like this don't happen in my real job.

Dressed and having won the Wardrobe Department's seal of approval, it's back to Holding, but not for long. We're travelled by van the short distance to the set. Piling out of the van we head up and over a grassy knoll where a man sits off alone to my left, obscured by a black baseball cap, his features hid by his hand as he talks on the phone.

It's Tom. Of course it is. As people talk and joke creating the hubbub of conversation and crowd noise, Tom's voice, even pitched low, cuts under it all like a strong bass line. I can't make out words and I don't try to. But there's that voice. Again.

And I confess to the thrill of getting to hear it in real life.

The new place for Extras is outside an old, grey, two-story fishing shack. The wooden deck that surrounds it is newer and extends out over the start of the shoreline. Folding chairs are set up for us to sit and look out over the bay. It's quite beautiful. Seagulls croak and call above us. Today my room over here is the great outdoors.

Tom's director's chair is now empty. He has left to shoot a scene.

We wait.

Tessa (the girl who wasn't behind door #5) and I stand by ourselves around the corner of the deck and lean against the wooden rail, looking out over the water. She tells me about working with Hillary Swank and her excitement over the prospect of getting to work with a woman, a strong woman, a tall, strong, important woman - and then she met Hillary who was all of 100 pounds.

I tell her my theory of economy of movement for cinema. Tom Cruise is small. Dustin Hoffman is small. There's a grace and elegance that goes with being slight of frame. It's physics, I say. Put two pennies on a rotating record, the outer one has to move faster than the inner one to travel the same distance. So here's me, tall and maybe gangly and maybe awkward on camera, lumbering my way through space where a shorter, slighter person would move through the same space looking more graceful and much more elegant. Economy of movement. The camera likes smaller people.

About 30 yards away, 6 foot 4 Tom Selleck looms in a silent rebuttal to my theory.

More waiting and minor conversations until 3:15 when someone decides we're not going to do anything before lunch and so we're travelled away from the set to where catering has been set up. As is protocol for a film set, we, the background performers, will sit at a table or two by ourselves and wait until the crew has gone through the lunch line before we get our turn. I have been on movie sets where this protocol was not properly observed and the result was UPSET.

(There are lots of people who work really long hours in this business. I do this for a day here and there and they can be long days. Standing around growing tired feet. The crew does this the same as me only their days are even longer and they do this for a whole lot of days in a row. So it's understandable when people get cranky.)

So we sit and are patient. I've been resisting the craft table so far today and now the aromas of impending lunch waft over and make my mouth water. Tessa, the cheater, breaks out a baggie of trail mix.

At the other end of the room, there's an actor at the lunch table that I recognize but can't immediately place ... until several minutes later when I realize it's Stephen McHattie who, among his host of credits, recently played Hollis Mason, the original Night Owl in "The Watchmen". The cool factor of this goes way up.

After lunch where the conversations were more about our children than anything else (me strongly missing my Boy) we returned to the set and our Background shack and the wooden deck and the water and the views. A small breeze had come up from the water and the air felt a little cooler. It's a very good day to be paid to sit outside.

I reflect how, at this point in the proceedings, Tom and Stephen are like spirits; you don't see them around very much but you can feel them like a presence. Or maybe it's just me.

Time goes by. The sun starts to move around to the other side of the shack.

At this point in the writing, the cameras are being turned around. I've been to set. We've rehearsed and then shot the scene one way with two camera coverage and now the crew will switch around so that the cameras look at it from the other side. With this angle, we'll see the body hanging from the rafters. They're getting the stunt man ready to hang by his neck but not really.

But before, this is what we did:

At around 5:20, I got my "potsie", my buzzer, the tin, my gold sergeant's shield that hangs on a chain around my neck. An hour after that we blocked the scene for rehearsal. Apparently from the script, my name's Herb. So as we start rehearsal Tom, out of character, says to me, "Hi Herb".

Deep, rumbling voice. Casual. Friendly. "Hi, Herb."

After a pause of about seven very long seconds, I reply, "Hi. Jesse."

I'm so fucking smooth.

Once we've rehearsed the blocking, we clear the space for a while and get propped up: purple rubber gloves, a medical clipboard and some pens, a shiny, very sharp silver poking instrument thing that I will use to point at things and REALLY try not to jab anyone with ("How to forever earn the nickname: "Prick").

My cousin is working the shoot as the second assistant director. We've met once before and today we have a pleasant re-introduction. Stacie, who plays one of the forensics detectives, says she could already tell we're related by our eyes and nose. I think to myself, "But Jason got all the cool genes." He's doing very well in this, his chosen career. I'll cop to a fair amount of envy. Jason tells us there's even more Shipleys now; he's just had a new daughter. Another cool moment.

We run the scene and now it's for real, cameras roll, about a half a dozen takes or more and I settle nicely into my M.E. business. Preston, the 3rd A.D., comes over after the early takes to offer suggestions. I do better. Tom gets us out of the scene with a really great line, and CUT. Between takes I'm caught up in the (and, sorry, I have to over-use this word again) coolness of doing a scene with Tom Selleck and Stephen McHattie. Tom stumbles over some words during one of the takes and laughs. Do you say "hung" or "hanged"? It's weird that I remember a very similar conversation being played out in an 87th Precinct novel between the two homicide dicks, Monaghan and Munroe. From reading this I know that the correct usage is "hanged" but Tom decides to say "hung", not because it's the right word but because it sounds better and there's the difference between books and TV.

The sun is creeping toward the horizon and I hear that they are shooting again, without me or ANY of us for this take.

Just the hanging body. The Hanging Man.

The cameras are repositioned and reset. We shoot again. Little bits of business are added to the front of the scene, an extra cross (which I made up on my own, he says proudly), and wow! I'm given a mark! Orange tape on the carpet to nail down EXACTLY where I have to end up when I've finished walking around the Hanging Man. I think the camera is getting good close-ups for cutaways; holy crap it's pointed right at me.

The sun has set. The dog is wrapped (good dog!). The cast is wrapped. The interesting parts of the day are all done. The rest is dénouement. The background is held back and presently we shuffle around the garage space, moving around The Hanging Man who is more comfortably perched atop a step ladder as the camera is also wrapped and we're there to record "wild lines", audio of our footsteps crunching and scraping on the gravel now that the sound-muffling carpets we used to be walking on have been rolled up and put away. At the end of it, the 1st A.D. pours out a bottle of water to the ground directly under the boom mike. Maybe it's the Hanging Man who's finally pissed himself. The last drops dribble out and there's a CUT! and then laughter.

We're wrapped. Before heading back to Base Camp to take care of some final paperwork, change back into my street clothes and get one final startle from the gang of police dummies, I have a brief but nice farewell with my coolest cousin. It was a great day with a fine group of people: Tessa, Stacey and Stacie and Chris and Paul who is also Chris, you had to be there.

No. Really.

Me at the Mental

The room is about 8x8 which is to say SMALL. There is the suggestion that this is the good room because there is an air conditioner here and the rest of the facility is HOT. There's a cold fog outside but by afternoon it will be gone - and this is July so the entire rest of the facility is HOT. Our small room is the only one air-conditioned.

The facility is a mental hospital.

In this small room are seven people, six women and me. Five of these women will play residents. One of the five is Michelle with whom I've done a play and played golf, but we hadn't seen each other in years. It's a nice little reunion. The other, a young girl named Cathy) is a nurse and I've just learned from the director, Thom Fitzgerald, I'm supposed to flirt with her while we watch a horror flick. Hallowe'en 2, he tells us. As the day goes by I wonder if maybe he was just fucking with us.

The name of the movie is "Cloudburst". I'd seen lots of background calls for it from Erin Hennessey's Facebook messages as well as a piece in the paper just the day before yesterday which suggested they were almost finished shooting it. I felt a regret over never having got a chance to play from ALL those opportunities, but here I am today! The call sheet says it's day 33 of 34. So I feel very lucky.

Craft arrives. I debate putting a banana in my pocket. The whole flirting thing, you know.

I travel to wardrobe and I'm fitted into a set of industrial green scrubs. Between our little room and the wardrobe cubby, the crew is setting up the shot and I discover that it will take some self discipline today to keep from gawking. The two principle actors in today's scene are the stars of the movie. Both have both won Academy Awards. I've racked my little brain and I cannot ever recall EVER having worked with someone who's won an Oscar. And here I am today (day 33 of 34) and there are two! Olympia Dukakis (Moonstruck) and Brenda Fricker (My Left Foot).

A new addition arrives to our tiny room. Her name is Doreen and she tells Michelle that she's the grandmother of David Carol of Sons of Maxwell who famously has written "United Breaks Guitars". Doreen doesn't want to be here but her grandson David coerced her into being here and I, sitting across from her, appreciate the great irony of her being forced to be here in the rest home. I tell her this and she laughs. I like Doreen and I will spend a lot of the rest of the day making her laugh. She calls me naughty.

Ruth is another in our tiny room and she tells me she's 90 years old. The wardrobe mistress comes by and Ruth balks at having to wear a hairnet that's in the script. I say to her it's because she grills burgers for the group and health regulations would require the hairnet. She believes me utterly and is pleased to have a role to play. Flipping burgers!

I have no shame. I let her believe the lie for longer than I should have. Long enough for the director to have come over and hear it. Whoops.

I reflect on the difference between last time with the provocative French maids and this time with all these lovely old dolls. I think of this but politely say nothing.

There is a very happy vibe on this set.

Given the extremely long days that so many people have to work together putting one of these things together, it's understandable how the mood can get generally surly. But not here. I noted it when I arrived, felt lost (as usual) and carefully asked someone how to get to Extras Holding and the girl I spoke to brightened and said to me, "Oh, you're Ken!" She introduced herself as we got in the elevator. The guy carrying all the sound equipment did likewise.

The sign outside the door to our little room (now populated with four ladies made up to look very geriatric, one nurse and me) says, in fact, "People Holding- now with more cool A.C. than ever before".

Just outside and around the corner from our cooled room, Ms. Fricker runs lines with Ms. Dukakis which is even cooler. Surreptitiously, I watch from another room. I think how neat it is I get to watch this mini-performance for free.

Presently they shoot it for real and following the director's call of "Cut!", I overhear Ms. Dukakis bellowing belligerently about wondering what fucking side of the fucking frame she's supposed to be on. But it's all in jest. Nicole, the nice lady from the elevator and the 2nd a.d. informs me that Ms. Dukakis' character is very gruff and the actress had confessed on an earlier day that she was impressed with how her character swore ALL the FUCKING TIME.

Time began to pile up as it often does. Ennui follows. Doreen confessed a wish to me and then the director that she wished not to be here. The director was ready to let her go, it would be okay if she left, he said (kindly) and I said gently that I hoped she would stay with us. In an example of art imitating life, Doreen and I walked slowly through the hospital, eventually to stand outside on the front steps to get some fresh air, her with her cane and dressed in a nightgown and robe, me in my orderly scrubs.

We talked. She told me a story about her husband who's now dead. "I didn't kill him," she added quickly.

"Because that's the first thing I thought," I said. "You said your husband was dead and I immediately wondered if it was you that killed him."

Doreen laughed, delighted.

For a while, like Noah's ark, they brought ladies to the set two by two, Doreen first with another of the ladies. For the time we'd been waiting, there time in front of the camera was over almost in an instant. Shoot two women in their room, wrap them, shoot two more. Then wrap THEM. After these two scenes, lunch (at 4pm) and the plan was then two shoot the two old men, a mysterious duo who had arrived on set some time ago but on whom we had never laid eyes. I was starting to suspect they might me saving me for last, which in terms of personal revenue was a good thing.

6:46 and the nurse has had a scene, but not me. I've finished the book I was reading (80 Million Eyes), reviewed this here little transcript and threatened to open the second book I brought with me. I arrived at 10am and now the first hint of darkening dusk has crept into the sky.

Ruth is wrapped and she and I (gently) shake hands and say goodbye as she gets set to leave, pushing her walker ahead of her. On the way past, she shares another goodbye with Ms. Dukakis who places her hand over the other woman's and says that it was a pleasure working with her. Olympia says. With an honest smile. It's been a long day and one of the wardrobe gals is massaging a knot from Ms. Dukakis's shoulder. She makes appreciative noises. Later, she's finished a take and is sitting talking to members of the crew about how she used to do a jigsaw puzzle every summer and apologising for having been too tires to come out with them last night. I stand eavesdropping behind her and remembering what I wrote years ago about Tom Selleck and how remarkable was his voice that first preceded him into the room. Olympia Dukakis has the same remarkableness to her voice, at once authoritative yet friendly, vibrant yet weary. That weary, New England accent an aural trademark. She's wonderful just to listen to and I wonder how much is it - that quality and distinctiveness of voice - that makes an actor something beyond regular, that makes an actor great. It not something that's put on for the cameras, I realize, standing behind her, listening to her.

It's just her voice.

My son called at 8:30. I only note this because at 9:00 we were wrapped and on the way home. In that in-between time Cathy and I did one rehearsals and two takes of the two of us coming around the corner, flirting and then me walking off back where I came from around the corner and out of frame. Sitting there looking up at me after every take was a 78 year old lady in a pink bed-robe - Olympia Dukakis.

Looking me right in the eyes with a little smile.

You might think that I would have felt intimidated, but no.

Only inadequate.

Happy Times

Wait a minute... I get a trailer? I'm here for background work and I get a trailer?

This is an interesting beginning to my day as an extra on the new series "Drunk and On Drugs: The Happy Funtime Hour".

So, sitting in my trailer, all I'm thinking about is getting breakfast. My call time was for 7:15 in the morning and I'm about a half an hour early, just to mitigate whatever parking issues I might run into. It turns out there was reserved parking - orange traffic cones blocked off a section of Robie Street by the Commons, the yellow and black placard declaring "Crew Park". Background Performer is an extension of the crew, right?

Gee, I sure hope so.

Now with time to spare (and a trailer to sit in) I start this entry and from somewhere nearby, through the foggy, grey, heavy, drizzly air of the morning I can smell breakfast cooking. And I'm hungry. But a PA (production assistant - or maybe she was an AD, an assistant director ... I never did get a really good look at the call sheet) has alerted someone over the headset that I'm here and wardrobe should come and check what clothes I've brought, so I dare not move. First things first. A keen sense of priority is a good thing to keep about you on a film set.

I'm writing mere moments later! She's been here and I'm dressed as they want me. Let's see about breakfast!!!

I got the last burrito. Don't tell anyone.

Down the line a bit, there are three others also here as background players who are sharing another section of the trailer. So far I have my part to myself. It doesn't feel like a special consideration, it feels like being ostracised - but maybe that's just a glimpse into my personality. More of that to come....

So the waiting begins and with it a vague uncertainty of "am I where I should be?" At this moment, to my moderate relief, the PA comes back to shepherd a few of us "diners" to hair and makeup. We're intercepted on the way by the hair and makeup lady who lets the PA know that for the shots we're doing, we don't need anything done. About face and back to the trailer but not for long. It's time to be travelled to Extras Holding.

Now that's more like it.

The shooting site is "Cousin's Restaurant", remade to be the Stoned-Os Cafe. Across the street there's an Inn (the Commons Inn, actually) and the first hurdle is: find a door that's not locked so we can get in the Inn.

With the departure of the driver we're suddenly a collection of Extras who've been left entirely to our own devices, never a good thing. We loiter through the bottom floor and then wander up a staircase and eventually run into a guy straight out of Central Casting, "The Manager", who collects and pleasantly let's us know that our room is over HERE, room 209 in the Inn and it has a sofa, two armchairs a bathroom and a queen sized bed.

Wow this is better even than the trailer! What's going on?

Next to me is an ice bucket that's sadly missing its bottle of champagne. And ice. Across from me is a young girl with Lulu Lemon sweats covering her waitress costume. She doesn't seem at all nervous about sharing the room with the bed and three good looking guys. One of these guys, Glen, also has a blog and we swap URLs. The other introduced himself as Andrew and it clicks - the reason he looks familiar is that he's Andrew Gillis aka Les Ismore, the newsman-bluesman from the radio station I used to listen to several years ago. I mentioned how I found his Sunday night Blues show one night coming home from the movie "Crossroads" where I'd fallen in love with that brand of Blues music. That was more than 20 years ago, boys and girls.

The PA is back and wouldn't you know it we're in the wrong room. We're travelled outside of the Inn and across the street to a nondescript apartment building where there's a sign that's the best clue that we've FINALLY found the right place.

The sign says:

Washroom
&
Holding

Perfect.

Inside is a cramped and dim space, one hundred and fifty year old wooden floors and the smell of must and mould. Some grey fold-out chairs are lined against the wall and a dingy blue couch is set at the other side of the room. This is it all right. Inside are a couple other players who have found their way without us. Two are dressed in French maid uniforms and I try not to look.

I'm only here for a moment before we're called to set, me and two others. The set is a diner across the street. Inside is a mini-city worth of film crew. All the Trailer Park Boys are there, but Mike Smith (Bubbles) is the only one you might recognize. He's wearing a long blonde wig, a moustache and vintage 70s aviator sunglasses. And powder blue short-shorts. JP is the most eye-catching guy there with a receding hairline, a long black ponytail and dark sunglasses. It's the hair-lip that grabs your attention though. Rob Wells spent the whole time sitting with his back to me. All of his lines would be mumbled like Marlon Brando's godfather. The last guy at the table I didn't recognize. In front of him was a blue cookie that he was trying to snort like cocaine.

I was at the luncheonette counter with my own blue plate special: remnants of a sandwich, the bread flecked with green and blue, blue-stained lettuce and royal-blue salami. Complementing the dinner is a glass of mysterious blue liquid. During the scene, I do two things: one is to keep my face hidden from each of the two cameras and the other is push the toasty crumbs around on my plate in my best imitation of James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano. Have you every watched that guy eat on camera? Pay attention next time.

The biggest problem with the setup (while I was there) was the view of traffic through the door, a door that was eventually covered with placards on the inside and a thin white sheet of paper on the outside. From time to time I get up from my round luncheonette stool to stand and stretch my legs. I complain to Glen that by the time we're done my bum will have gone completely flat. It's just after nine before we get everything the director wants from that first scene. He has re-adjusted the camera shots and is cackling to the guy next to him, "We're breaking the rules!!"

"What are you, like six years old?" the guy says.

"I get excited about stupid shit," the director says with a grin.

Yes, I think and I'm reminded of a Japanese management professor I met once in my real life. He spoke with a classic Samurai accent and cadence telling us, "Old business model: Start with customer. NO!!! New business model: Start with joy."

Yes.

Start with joy.

After returning to Holding, updating my entry and filling out my paperwork for the day (ensuring I'll get paid), Glen and Andrew are called to set as soldiers. They undress and then dress in vintage uniforms (we actors are an immodest lot) and I'm left behind with an apple and the two French maids, Tina and Veronica, who resist coming over to sit with me on the couch.

So now, waiting. One hour. Three hours. I listen to the French maids tell tales. One spent a season with The Actor's Studio in Los Angeles. The other dated Matt Mays. They each have splendid stories to tell, stories populated with Names of People You Know and they tell them back and forth as I listen in, rapt, attentive and silent, hearing about different parts of this business that I know very little about. There is a vocal style to the telling of their stories, a gloss which maybe comes from being young and female and maybe has something to do with being in the Biz. A third girl, Jackie, arrives wearing even less than the maids. Later in the day as part of the scene, one of the actors will dip his fingers into her cleavage (she says: "I have to act like I'm happy about it"). She shows off her costume at the girls' request and then bundles up again in a black jacket. She looks naked from the hips down because she is, except for a pair of beige and brown cowboy boots. She's the perfect blonde with that carefree, happy look emanating from wide, blue eyes, a look that may or may not be part of the act. At this point, from this thought, I reflect over my OWN impressions of all this: the girls, the Biz, vive le difference and all that, and I wonder over the possibility that I might be so cynical and jaundiced and old.

I work really hard at not being impressed by how pretty all girls are.

At 12:00 noon I go back to the set. The French maids follow a little while later and I notice all the guys noticing them which sets off a whole other series of metaphysical thoughts about this male-dominated biz. As the day goes on I'm reminded more and more of - and this, Reader, is where the difficult part of the day begins - of how uncool I am, like seriously.

Over the space of a couple of hours it really corrodes at my psyche and already-fragile self-image. One of the other girls, Kirsten, is dressed up to strongly (like, REALLY) ressemble Kate Winslet. I say to her we could do our own show together: "The Movie Star and the Shmoe." Later, Cheryl, a lovely girl who has been my waitress in a scene on set and who is suffering from progressively worse back spasms as we sit alone together at Washroom/Holding, she and I have a nice chat about many things, including this image issue and at the end of it I feel a little better.

To end the day I stood on the sidewalk and later in the scene wearing a Hallowe'en Dracula cape, a black t-shirt, no pants except for the blue silk boxers with Santa Claus playing golf, black dress shoes and black socks pulled up to my calves. I'll leave it to you to determine whether or not this added to my cool and sexy feel.

Big Fat Media Whore

I’ve just returned from entertaining myself with …. ME.

I think any artist creates just to make himself (or herself) happy. Whatever else happens after that – fame, fortune, career – is incidental. In the act of creation, the artist’s first goal is to satisfy himself. I know it’s true for me, inasmuch as I'm an artist. When I’m writing or shooting and editing video or playing my drums or whatever the hell it is, I’m doing it because I enjoy it. I write to make myself laugh. I produce little home movies to move me. When I’m done, if there’s an audience (and if there is, you’re awfully low profile) and you laugh or you’re moved too, then great. But I really did it all for me.

If I write one more time how it’s been a long time between posts, I’m going to puke. Because it’s too much of a recurring theme around here. A whole year and more have gone by since my last acting job (Trailer Park Boys – which movie I have still not seen) and I’d be hard-pressed even to think whether I’ve done an audition. My agent and I have had a bit of a row. I’m separated now from my wife and there are new contact numbers. Three times now I’ve passed them on. After two tries, audition notices were still being sent to my Z-wife (“zed” because it’s the end, but it’s not quite “ex”). So there might have been auditions except notices went where they shouldn’t have. Finger-pointing and accusations have followed.

The sun continues to rise and set.

So I’ve had this mini-post in mind for a couple of weeks and I’m finally getting around to crafting it. Immediately before opening up MSWord, I was on the blog site re-reading and, yes, enjoying the earlier posts on the main page (with little frets about spelling; perfection is the enemy of the excellent).

(Heh. In the last sentence I spelled “enemy” wrong and Word suggested “enema” which I thought was sort of a cool alternate word choice for that phrase….)

Anyway.

Hi.

There has been stuff happening and to be rid of the vacuum, I’m posting about it.

The first thing has been the release of the Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day. Gleefully now, free from the constraints of the confidentiality agreement, I tell everyone that I shot Randy! Even though I was aiming for Julian.

“Do you have any lines?”

*sigh* No. No lines. I was an actor, had my trailer and a screen credit and made good money for only a day’s work. But no lines. “Security Guard #2”, that’s me. Not number one, number two. We try harder.

When I filmed it, a year ago this past July, I was the heaviest I’ve ever been. Around this time I resolved I was going to get trimmer and that very month (I remember because it was the last family vacation) I started running. I’ve since finished two half-marathons and lost over 22 pounds. But there I am in the movie at my fattest, saved for all posterity. If in fact I made the final cut. Like I said, I still haven't seen it. But I saw the first trailer and I was in that, although I'd have to get it and freeze frame it and point out that tiny person in the background, yeah that's the guy that just fired the shot, that's me....

Also this summer, the Halifax Mooseheads called and I ended up on a billboard with my son.

Three years ago, Santa was very cool in bringing my son a jersey, the white, home jersey for the Mooseheads with #20 on the back (the number of his favourite player, Jakub Voracek) and his name on the back, “IAN”. The next year, Santa brought and left for me the Mooseheads third jersey, white with “Halifax” scripted across the front, the number 9 and my name on the back: “IAN’S DAD”.

We’ve been season ticket holders for the last couple of years (the 15-game pack) and apparently our jerseys were noted because when I asked the Mooseheads' marketing guy why we were called, he replied, “Everyone knows Ian and Ian’s Dad.”

Really? That’s pretty cool.

So we’re on a billboard. And a fridge magnet.

When my zed-brother–in-law invited me to Newfoundland to play drums with his band, I figured this was the hat-trick and should at least be worthy of a note in the Blog, even though it technically runs outside the theme of this journal. Or maybe not.

After all, what extra doesn’t dream of becoming a big, fat media whore?

Just keep in mind I’m down 22 pounds.

Mirage or Oasis?

After an era of inactivity, a flurry of auditions (is four a flurry?) resulting in a job.

The job is with the Trailer Park Boys. They're shooting a 2nd feature film.

The original audition was a couple of weeks ago, fraught with its own drama; I had arrived with something extra and something missing. The missing bit was the first page of the audition script which was very vexing and leads me further down the path of believing I need to change agents. I had received two pages, but one seemed not to have anything to do with me or any character that I might read for. My inquiry to my agent about this suspicious second page went unanswered. I arrived for the audition and saw that the page I had learned was really the second page of two. Fortunately the auditions were running a little behind (they often are) and I had about ten minutes to memorize the lines from the first page. It gave me a different appreciation on how I wanted to play the character. In fact I changed my mind about three times before I went in and consequently suffered a significant crisis of confidence during my performance. I came out feeling not very good about my audition, not very good about my agent.

The extra I brought was an improv.

Remembering previous auditions and knowing how Mike C. likes to shoot his scenes, I thought about what kinds of things the character might say if we were told to improvise anything following the read-through. Sure enough, the two of us doing the audition were told we would have to get ourselves out of the scene and I used the two “improv” bits that I’d come up with.

Despite my own evaluation of how the audition went, I got a callback a few days later.

Turns out the script we read was a fake script. I had an inkling it might have been, since the title on the top of the pages I got read: “Trailer Park Boys Fake Scene”. For the callback I was told that there would be scripts available either early on the day or at the location for a cold read, but of course, no there weren’t. It was to be completely improvised.

I don’t consider improve a strength of mine. I generally am very reliant on the written word. Back some years ago as an extra on the set of “Blackfly”, Ron James was doing a scene were he was trying to make up a line that echoed the “My name is Joe” ads for Molson Canadian. Remember? “My name is Joe and I AM CANADIAN!” Well, Blackfy was set in the pre-Confederation days and Ron and the director and the other actor in the scene were trying to come up with the word that would substitute for “Canadian”. They didn’t get one so that particular bit wasn’t used. Later, I saw him outside and I told him, the word you were looking for was “Colonial”. My name is Blackfly, and I AM COLONIAL!” Ron says, “Why didn’t you say something?!?!?!” I told him truthfully because I’d just thought of it.

See, I’m funny but I’m not quick. That makes for good writing, but bad improv.

So I’m sitting in the conference room at the Lord Nelson Hotel in a suit and tie, having just come from another audition about an hour previous in another part of the city. I’m the second guy to arrive. The first guy to arrive won’t sit down. He paces. And paces. And paces some more. I’m feeling pretty relaxed and calm despite the looming requirement to improvise some scenes (in a suit and tie remember, for the Trailer Park Boys, remember) but all that pacing is starting to drive me bat shit. Two more actors arrive. One of them invites Pacing Man to sit down, but the guy declines. This is how he works, he tells us. Thankfully, he’s the first to be called in and I tell the other two guys how the stress level in the room suddenly has gone WAY down. “My God!” the guy says. “He just wouldn’t stop pacing!”

“Fucking actors,” I say and we laugh.

A couple of days later I get the call that I’d won one of the roles. Do I have to add “Improv specialist” to my acting résumé now?

The role is for a Brinks Truck driver. He’s dropped off his partner and surreptitiously detouring to the liquor store at the end of the day. Getting out of the truck, Julian runs up and breathless asks if he has a gun.

“Yes,” I said carefully, “but I’m off duty…”

I like to think this was the line that won me the role. It could have been that Mike remembers me from our Channel Ten days of pre-glory. Either way is okay with me.

As for the day of shooting, well, I’ve signed a confidentiality agreement, so you’re going to have to watch the movie to find out what went on. We were out in public, right in the core of downtown Halifax and had a lot of people around watching us. Many figured I was part of security for the shoot and approached to ask questions about what was going on. THEM I told because I hadn’t signed the agreement yet. Also, it was kind of all happening right there in front of them.

Would it be telling too much if I told you we were shooting guns?

It was pretty cool and a lot of fun. I thanked Mike at the end of the day. He let me know that there’s a shot that features me prominently. He doesn’t know that I’m very comfortable toiling away in obscurity. I’ll have to send him a link to the blog.

With a note of gratitude, of course.

(Posted much earlier than the date shows; re-posted to remove a link to a sex site. Sheesh.)