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.)

At The Trailer Park, Dreams Come True

In my last year of high school, I joined the VTR club. I recorded events to an ungainly reel-to-reel video tape recorder, mostly girls volleyball.

Years later, remembering how much fun that was, I started to volunteer at the local cable station. At first I operated a camera in studio, then later I progressed to working local sporting events. Near the end of it, I was learning how to use the editing bay.

One of the people working there... like really working, not volunteering like I was, one of the people on staff ... was Mike Clattenburg. Among lots of other things, Mike was producing a show called appropriately enough "That Damn Cable Show". Mike and I would often crew sporting events together, but my involvement on TDCS was limited to one sequence where I played "The Wrangler's" dim brother who was interviewed for camera on how he hadn't seen his him since he (The Wrangler) had mentioned he was going off to try to find the Squatch.

For those of you without a program, the Squatch is the Sasquatch and the Wrangler is Dave Gaudet, another Channel 10 staffer. I was the guy who couldn't quite keep a straight face through any of the many takes we did, Mike holding the camera, the both of us cracking up. Me especially. A bad failing for a comedy actor. But we had a great time shooting it.

Dave Gaudet has gone on to be an underwater cameraman for, I think it was, Ocean's of Mystery.

Mike Clattenburg went on to create the Trailer Park Boys.

I went on to direct a Truro production of "West Side Story", mentioning this only because said production included a talented young man named Corey Bowles who now regularly appears on a show called ... "Trailer Park Boys".

Life, she is a circle.

The people in my office, those that know I do some acting stuff on the side, have been almost desperate for me to get a part on the show. In six seasons of episodes though, I had only auditioned once. I hoped there might have been some kismet going on since that part was for a guy named "Mr. Maloney" which was also my maternal grandfather's name.

But I didn't get the part.

This year I had my second audition.

Now, I can't remember quite what was going on ... maybe I was out of town, I don't know. But I ended up doing my own audition tape from home. I figured (gleefully) that this was totally unfair to everyone else who auditioned since I got to do as many takes as I wanted and then run the tape through the computer to edit a final product. In fact, when I saw it, I realized I hadn't quite played the scene the way it needed to be played and so re-recorded the whole thing downstairs producing a perfect and hilarious take. The next day, a Saturday, I took the tape downtown to drop it off for the casting agent. It was so unfair. I decided I was going to do the rest of my auditions this way.

Now the funny thing was that my son also auditioned. There were two parts that I'd read for, a crown prosecutor and a father. For the father part, I'd included my son and gave him an ad-lib line: "Yeah man, you suck!", hilarious for a six-year old and delivered with panache. He went with me to drop off the tape at a downtown hotel. The casting agent was due to come and pick it up in a couple of hours. We might hear something later in the week. My son was already counting his chickens, figuring we were on TV.

Across the street from the hotel is a park. The two of us were going to make a day of our downtown trip and so, leaving the steps of the hotel in the bright warm sunshine, I started to explain to him, enlighten him, to bestow unto him - my son - all my great wisdom concerning this audition process into which he was now included.

"See, we did the audition, now we forget about it. Pretend we didn't do it. You can't expect that we get the part. Lots audition. Very few are cast. Nobody ever gets called to say they didn't get the part. Don't think you've ever got the part until someone calls and tells us you, You got the part."

At this exact moment - and I'm not making this up - my cell phone rings.

Twenty steps out of the hotel lobby my son looks up at me and says, "Did we get the part?"

Well, no. We didn't.

I confess it was irritating the way we didn't get the part.

It wasn't the phone call - that was just my wife calling to check in at the perfectest possible moment. My agent e-mailed me to audition for a couple of roles in Trailer Park Boys, an e-mail that I didn't get until after the fact. And - strangely - it loooked the roles were the same ones I'd done on the tape. And so it turned out. But why did I need to audition for roles I'd already auditioned for? It was a head-scratcher all right. I was irritated that I didn't get better notice of the audition before it happened. I was further irritated to find out later that the tape I'd made for the audition played ... completely blank. For reasons heretofore unexplained.

"Some things are just not to be," she said philosophically.

Oh, well and a sigh.

She asked if I would still want to come in sometime as background and I said yes, absolutely. She also thought my son looked great after visiting my web site and watching the movie-of-the-moment. (That nascent editing experience I picked up from Channel 10 having exploded full into producing home movies through the home computer.)

The call came a few weeks later to come in and play on set of the Trailer Park Boys. Come for two days. Bring your son. We were both happy to oblige.

Our scene was to involve a model train convention and the special guest of the show was a guy named Sebastian Bach. I smiled at the name, ignorant me, thinking it was made up. But no. It turns out that Mr. Bach is a real guy, ex-lead singer from the band "Skid Row" and now out on his own, touring, rocking, starring in an episode of TPB. From an article in the local paper: "I told Axl Rose about the show when we were on tour in Europe with Guns ’n’ Roses," Bach tells Clattenburg between takes. "He needs you to send him some copies. When he gets into something, he just goes for it."

Of his fame, I had no clue. The girls cast as the "rock chicks" knew. At least the way they were looking at him during and between takes makes more sense now....

So I'm hanging back as usual. The treats for me are to see Mike again after almost 20 years (my god.... ) and to be there with my son. Mike is the guy to say hi first and we shake hands and both of us ignore the fact that so much time has past. I don't mention the old days and neither does he. I remember him walking through the halls of Channel 10 Halifax with texts on film-making. Seems he taught himself well.

And he's having a great time on set. After doing this for years, Mike's relaxed and unstressed, taking people through the shots easily and efficiently, sitting back at the monitor and laughing delightedly as the scene plays out in front of him. He's like a kid. I'm so pleased for his success and I'm there envying him greatly, enormously, that he gets such a kick out of his work.

Some of the dialogue in the scene is made up on the spot. A scene is done and the actors ad-lib are sprinkled in, adding to the script that's written. They do another take and they build on the ad-libs from the previous take. Then they do another. And another. Building, crafting, embellishing the scene. Mike makes a suggestion. Sebastian Bach makes a suggestion. "Yeah, yeah, yeah!" Mike says every time and laughs.

Lunch comes at 3pm. We're all to head off to The Park in our own cars where they'll serve us. The park? I don't know what's the park. I pick a car to follow and I lose them, ending up following the wrong beige van into a Shopper's Drug Mart parking lot.

Uh-oh.

I head back to the set at full speed, hoping to find someone else who hasn't left yet. Turns out there's someone I recognize driving out as I'm driving in. It's Mike Smith. Bubbles. He's driving Sebastian. I hang a quick U-turn and head off in hot pursuit. There they are, three cars ahead. A car turns off. Another. We're on the four lane artery and I close behind them. They're driving fast. It's hard to keep up. They go through a light and I'm hard pressed to keep with them, barely making the yellow. We're heading deeper into Anystreet U.S.A. as my wife likes to call it. Car dealerships, cineplexes, fast food joints. A left. Another left. A right. The park? I'm thinking. What the heck is the park?

It occurs to me that I'll be very embarrassed if Bubbles is going home and I pull up behind him in his own driveway.

It occurs to me that he might realize he's being followed.

He pulls into a parking lot and I pull up beside him. He looks at me as he gets out of the car. A bit suspiciously I think. On the other side, Sebastian Bach is getting out. I say something to Bubbles (although without the glasses and the chin, he's untransformed and just "Smith"). He doesn't recognize me from the set straight off. I tell him we were following him for lunch trying to get to "the park" and the penny drops.

"Oh!" he says. "I'm just having lunch at Harveys."

Whoops.

Helpfully, he gives me directions to the exterior location for the Sunnyvale Trailer Park. Or just, "The Park".

My son and I show up about 20 minutes after everyone else and I go in and get a chicken stir fry. My son, six, doesn't go in for that at all and ends up having bread and honey. Had we followed the rest of the extras, we would have had pizza.

But, and here's the thing, after being on set for an hour or so, my son was no longer technically an extra.

Flashback.

We've shot some inserts, establishing shots, people gaggling around looking at train sets. The camera moves around combing pictures of us looking at the different models circling tracks through miniature stations, tunnels and villlages. After this, the cast and crew set up for the main shot where Sebastian comes in (playing himself) and addressing the crowd. The rock chicks are up at the front making eyes at him. There are about two dozen others gathered around the stage to listen. People are strategically moved. Posters are hung and then re-hung to better advantage. My son and I start out near the middle, are moved to the side and then nearer the back. We're set to go and we roll. We're standing for the next take and Mike comes up and asks my boy if he can say a line at a certain point in the dialogue. The line is, "The Swayze Train!" My son does the line for him and Mike laughs. We do a few takes like this and my son hits his cue every time. Mike comes back and asks him to say, "The Swayze train. BAM!" and point his fingers like he's a gangsta rapper. My son complies to the delight of all present.

I'm completely upstaged.

The casting agent goes back to the office to draw up contracts for my son who is now an Actor and could now get into the Union should he so choose.

Six years old.

I'm on set with him reflecting that in this very blog I had written somewhere about extras who would come on set and hope to get a line and how this NEVER happens.

It happened for my little boy. First shot out of the box and he's a star. But because he got a line and was elevated to "Actor", we only got to work the one day (it would have cost a lot to bring him back for the 2nd day as an Actor where he wasn't going to say anything). But it was a good day. A very good day.

I keep asking him if he'd like to do more of this kind of work. Free juice, cookies, snacks, lunch and pretty girls. So far he remains non-commital.

When the cheque comes for the shoot, his is going to be for a lot more than mine. I may be forced to change careers and become his manager.

"The Dead Do Not Earn Residuals."

I got a letter from ACTRA yesterday and a cheque. The amount on the cheque was for $39.89. The letter explained this was a payout based on revenues received by Alliance Atlantis for Season 4 of The Lexx. I'm figuring this was my share of the DVD sales that included the show where the carrot went up my bum.

As a coworker pointed out to me today, some people would be happy to do it for free.

Out Searching for the Real Killers

A funny thing happened on the golf course yesterday: I got recognized.

My improperly wired brain would lead you to create the mistaken impression that I have a following. While there continues to be zero comments on this here blog site...

("Comments? Maybe you should make some posts every once and a while, never mind comments!")

... while there continues to be no comments on this here blog site, I did get a guestbook signing on my family home page with a note suggesting there was someone (a wonderfully singular pronoun) who was looking forward to reading more about of my limited acting and movie-making exploits.

She's from Germany, he said proudly.

Last year's income tax return is another reminder of just how little of that that's going on.

The guy on the golf course (whose name was Darryl) is a lighting technician as well as a very good golfer. He recognized me ... umm, remembered would be a better word ... he remembered me from the Liography show we both worked on. For some reason, I felt vaguely embarrassed and uncomfortable that he recognized me. I mused over that later. Here was a guy who works in the industry for real, and I a mere pretender. Maybe it also had something to do with my perception of the pecking order. The Crew rules. See previous posts and the title of this blog.

Darryl and I chatted a bit about "the biz". Mostly we played golf and talked about golf and had a great, sunny Sunday afternoon on the course. Industry tidbits were sprinkled through our conversation. Darryl's having a very busy year this year and it follows last year's busy year, confirmation of what I heard from ACTRA when I went to renew my dues. The film intustry is booming in my province.

Yet here's me with no acting income to report. And no blog entries. And auditions only rarely.

Availability continues to be the biggest issue. You should know that the other blog I write concerns the third person in our golfing party of three: my boy. My son. My beau petit fils. There's a hint.

It's a fair trade.

As he gets older, my boy, there's a subtle shift in circumstance which brings a premonition I'm unable to justify beyond an offering of hope. Things are changing just enough that I feel on the verge of being more able to get back into the game.

Stay tuned.

Domestic Disturbances

More money for nothin'.

Originally, I was going to title this post "Hugh 2" since it's a follow-up to What Hugh Grant and I Have In Common.

To get you caught up, once upon a time I made a series of commercials for Champlain Place Mall and Crystal Palace in Moncton. They aired originally back in 2003. I remember the date since the only time I saw any of these commercials on TV was the one I saw when I visited Moncton in the Summer of 2003.

I had a really bad back. It's better now, thanks for asking.

I also have this home-grown video project that was years in the making, a one-hour and 20 minute opus called "Way Back in Aught-Three". One of the chapters related to the Moncton trip. So that's how I remember the year. The Hugh Grant post on this blog site was about a cheque that showed up in the mail about a year later. Turns out it was because ACTRA noticed Cenex re-aired one of the Crystal Palace commercials after the contract had expired. It's wildly hilarious, that blog post. You should go back and read it again.

Okay, I fibbed about the hilarious part. I just wanted to see if you'd go back again. Look. The link is right there! I put it in TWICE! It's gonna kill you to take a look?

Well, if you did go back and read it, see that part about me hoping they'd show the Christmas commercial too? Well, they didn't. And the link to watch the commercial doesn't work either, I know. You think you're disappointed. Cenex updated their site and the not-so-famous clips of ME were removed. Rats. It's all I had to show off with. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Two months ago, I'm in the cafeteria with my cubicle brethren (and sistren) when G. tells me he saw the Christmas commercial while the Grey Cup was playing. The Christmas one is special because it's the only bit I've ever done where it was just me. Special or especially horrid. Take your pick. So there's G. watching TV at home and suddenly there's my face filling the TV screen.

"Hey!" he exclaims. "I work with that guy!"

"Fuck off," says his wife.

"No really! I work with him!"

"No you don't," she says. And then, twisting the knife, "Why do you do that?"

G. is telling me this with an appropriate mix of mirth and outrage. I laugh and at the same time feel bad because somehow I'm at fault for this fight between him and his wife. I didn't mean it! Honest!

About a thousand miles away, there's a former employee of mine, S.,  all by herself in her Ottawa home, watching Oprah that's been taped from the satellite. She's fast-forwarding through the commercials where she notices my accelerated image dominating the picture. She bursts out laughing and rewinds to watch the commercial, yelling my name. The room is empty. She's mad as hell 'cause there's no one to tell. She should have called G., I guess.

It's a powerful thing to be on TV and be able on a widespread geographical scale to create discontent like this, let me tell you. A powerful thing.

So anyway, there's a cheque in the mail. A bit under one large. In anticipation of it finally finding its way to me, I bought a new shirt to wear into the office. I have it on now. It's a nice, royal blue.

I bought it at Winners, big spender that I am.

It's my G & S shirt.

Extra Bacon

While holding at Cougar Helicopters the other night, I was reminded of this game called "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon". Have you heard of it? Click the link and read what Mr. Bacon himself has to say about it.
Now that you've gone through the mess of following the link and reading the article (you have, haven't you?) I'll tell you (again) what it's all about, Alfie.
The theory goes you can connect Kevin Bacon with any other actor using at most six steps. I shall describe this process more clearly in a mere moment since it dawned on me one day that I, an actor who if you described me as an actor of no note at all would be overstating my noteworthiness as an actor, I can be connected to Kevin Bacon in six degrees.
And I only need five. I'm figuring the good people at UVA didn't count me when
they made this chart. Feel free to e-mail them.
Here goes.

• Me to Jamie Bradley (a local actor; we worked on the same episode of Black Harbour)
• Jamie Bradley to Malcom McDowell (The Lexx, 1.4 "Giga Shadow")
• Malcom McDowell  to William Shatner ("Star Trek: Generations")
• William Shatner to Eric McCormack ( "Free Enterprise")
• Eric McCormack to Kevin Bacon ("Will & Grace")

Ta-da!
A tid-bit to entertain you just in case it's another year and a half before I get my next acting bit.


2015 UPDATE, I'm down to four:

• Me to Emily-Rose (Haven - Season 5, "Perditus")
• Emily-Rose to William Shatner (Haven - Season 5, 4 episodes)
• William Shatner to Eric McCormack ( "Free Enterprise")
• Eric McCormack to Kevin Bacon ("Will & Grace")

Holding Pattern

Perhaps by design, you never feel smart on a film set. You find yourself asking the most rudimentary of questions. Like, "Is this where I'm supposed to be?" There’s no way to ask this question and appear smart. But we try. I remark to myself that background people adopt this kind of - authoritative tone when they speak. Not bossy, more like, I-know-what-I'm-talking about. As if compensating for some inferiority complex, go figure. I'm probably guilty of it myself. I reflect on this as I park in the crew parking lot and start to look around for someone in a headset who can tell me where I’m supposed to go.

But here I am. Crane shot flying in, circling down from above, finds MAN in parking lot. Viewer asks self, “How did he get here?”

Well, I’ll tell ya.

I got a call late the night before I started writing this, asking what my work schedule was like for the next day. Good enough, as you can no doubt tell only this far into the post.

They're shooting a movie about the FLQ in our little city. This ain't going to be that movie, but I mention it because I auditioned for a speaking part in the FLQ one just a few days ago. At the time, thoughts of this blog flitted through my head.

Here's how all these universes are connected:

The Trudeau movie prequel finally aired two weeks ago. In the wake of that, a couple of co-workers excitedly asked the "Was that you?!?" question. I had two, count 'em TWO, lines in that two-part mini-series (and when they aired, I missed them – my wife called from another province, “Did you SEE it?!?!?” “See what?” I asked and then flicked on the TV, but waaaaay too late.) I filmed these historic lines a year and a half ago. Ever since then... nothing. As by now you should have noticed, Gentle Reader, from the gap between posts.

I left my FLQ audition feeling hopeful, which I'll remind you in this business is a no-no. I got to thinking that if I got consecutive speaking roles, I'd be disrupting the whole theme of this journal, dammit, it being designed to focus on the lowly caste (pardon the pun) of Extras and here I was getting consecutive Actor roles.

But when the call came last night for this, I figured...

Oops. I must interrupt myself. Sorry. Someone just told me we're all in the wrong room. Ha. Our room, apparently, is somewhere else, and so a traveling we will go. Over there.

Quick as that, I’m back. My paperwork is all done. I’m signed in. At the moment I'm actually getting my hair trimmed. For what, I’ll tell in a sec. Just let me get back to what I was telling before we moved.

So anyway, I figured when the phone call came last night I needn't fret anymore about suddenly becoming an Actor and having no more opportunities to post as a Background Performer since the work I was being called to do was obviously for background, ergo, I didn't get the role for which I auditioned.

But wait! Come to find this is a different production called "A Christmas Wedding". So perhaps there's still hope for an Actor part role in the FLQ series.

(Okay, no there isn't. Rule number one about Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club. And rule number one about auditioning is you walk away and expect nothing. The numbers are always against you. Got it? Got it.)

The first room today smelled of pool. It was a large size banquet room that doubled as cast and crew lunchroom situated in the bottom floor of the airport hotel. The pool was across the hall. But we moved to be closer to set and now we’re in a somewhat cramped office space adjoining one of the non-descript hangers that border the airfield. I keep having to move my legs as people try to manoeuvre around the space. At some point  I realize this is office and hangar space for Cougar Helicopters, the company that provided the helicopter for one of the early shots introducing the research ship in the movie "Titanic". This room is one degree of separation from the Oscar for Best Picture. I realize that sitting in this extras holding area in this helicopter hangar might be the closest I'll ever get to the Academy Award.

Now stay with me: somewhere in the middle of the last paragraph I went away to Wardrobe, stripped to my briefs and came back in costume. In the scene we're doing I'm a pilot. I'm currently outfitted in a blue blazer with four gold stripes on the sleeve and a set of gold wings pinned to the breast.

I got a look at the cast list after I put my clothes back on. There wasn't anyone whose name I recognized aside from one local guy. Seems this blog entry is destined not to be about “who”, but rather “how long”. Notwithstanding, somebody mentioned that one of the stars is from “The O.C.” only I wouldn’t know an “O.C.” cast member if I fell over one. That's not aspersion, just a fact.

Here’s another annoying break in the narrative to let you know that the low-battery message on my iPAQ caused a forced cessation of creation while I finished my day on set. It’s now the next day and I’m concluding this post from my computer. There’s not much to sum up from last night that can’t be summarized by me telling you that my eyes feel like two piss-holes in the snow.

To explain, a timeline:

• Call time 3:30pm - arrived at Base Camp about 15 minutes
  early.


• 3:20 pm Arrived at Lunch room, hotel airport


• 3:30 pm Moved to relocated Extras Holding


• 4:00 pm Wardrobe.


• 4 - 6:30 pm  - Holding


• 6:30 - 7:00 - Lunch


• 7:00 pm - 12:30 am - Holding


• 12:30 am - Recostumed from "pilot" to "passenger"


• 1:00 am - Travelled to set. Rehearsal. I get headphones to pretend to listen to music in the airplane's business class. My seat mate is to pretend to read a magazine and she's handed the current issue of Cosmo opened only incidentally to where there's a sample pack of KY Jelly which is at the same time both intriguing and irrelevant.


• 1:30 am - Cameras roll


• 1:45 am - Scene and extras wrapped - returned to Extras Holding


• 2:00 am - Signed out. All in a day's work.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a lot of holding.

You should know that I point it out not to be judgemental of the process but just because it's the way things go. Remember the first episode of the Lexx? We showed up at seven in the morning and never got to camera until nine-thirty that night.

There's a lot of hurry-up-and-wait in this business, you'd think it was the Army.

And I'm not just adding this caveat because I'm sucking up to whatever production people might be peeking in ... since I mentioned this website Chris, one of the A.D.s and Chris a very nice guy and all who wrote the address down on the back of his hand which got me to wondering what the heck have I might have said on this site now that my cover is blown....

Oh well.

What the heck was I talking about?

Oh yeah.

Timelines.

Those of us in the union were a bit surprised we weren't wrapped at 12:30, that being the magical eight working-hours from our call time (you don't count the hour for lunch) after which 8 hours we turn into "pumpkins" (first time I've heard it put this way). This is when union rules kick in to up your hourly rate for overtime. So when the cheque comes it will be richer.

And I'm never going to have anything bad to say about getting more money.

In the short term, I'm kind of stumbling through the day, rather sleep deprived (does it show?), having driven a fellow cast member home (she ain't no fellow, I remind myself) and finally getting to bed at 3:30 a.m. This morning I'm up at 6:00 because I'm getting a CT scan on my schnozz and surrounding area. In my fuzzy head I wonder if I'm going to kill anyone on the way to the hospital, not the least of whom might be myself - I'm so deep into zombie-land after 2 hours sleep but here I am, about to go out and operate the heavy machinery that is my Acura. 

My son gets up and before I go I make a point to tell him I love him.

I do the CT scan, and come into work. I tell a co-worker I was up late and then answer why. She say, "Cool!"

No, it ain't cool. It just seems that way when the scene shows on TV.

And that's Hollywood, baby.

A Seinfeld Post About Nothing

"If it weren't for bad luck," the saying goes, "I'd have none at all."

It's been very quiet on the acting front lately. So quiet that I've resorted to posting about auditions (witness my last post). Make that "audition" since it's the only one I've had in months. Well, it's time to take it up a notch and post about an audition that... well, you'll see.

Work at my "real life" job has been busy and eventful. I do continuous improvement work and lately there's been a bunch of money that's come down for CI. So my left-brain part has been quite occupied with writing up contracts and coordinating training and acquiring materials from our private sector partner. I get to go up to Toronto next week for one of their events: a quality awards gala. It's even more significant because for the first time one of our units will be getting an award. I go up on Monday afternoon next week. Tuesday is the big day and the gala dinner in the evening and I fly home on Wednesday afternoon.

There's also a strike going on at work so on Thursday I was out on the virual picket line. Back at work on Friday, there was voice mail from one of the local casting agents telling me that she was looking to arrange an audition for me with the director who's in town to do the new Tom Selleck movie.

The audition's on Tuesday. When I'm in Toronto.

So this ends up being a post about no audition.

Bollocks.

Displacement Issues

I don't usually give auditions a second thought. I think I've talked about this somewhere else in this narrative. When you start, you tell all your friends you have an audition and it sounds cool. You keep doing this until you realize that this hobby of yours is based mostly on rejection and you end up having to tell your friends over and over again, no I didn't get that one either.

They're about to shoot a tourism commercial for my neck of the woods, and they were auditioning golfers. Well, this would be a dream job. Have someone pay me to hit a golf ball. I'm a golfing addict. Just spent a whole bunch of money on eBay lately to get new clubs, new shirts and other, miscellaneous golfing paraphernalia.

I show up for the audition looking very natty in my black pants and new, red Greg Norman shirt. I'm asked to talk on camera for a bit about golfing and the guy asks me to show off my swing. This I did, despite the fact that there wasn't a golf club anywhere to be seen.

So about a week passes and the audition is done and pretty much forgotten about when my new agent calls and tells me I have a call-back. "You must have impressed them," she says. Based on this short supply of information, I figure I must pretty much have the job and the ad company wants to show me off to the clients to get final approval.

But when I show up at a local hotel for the call-back, there are more people there than there were for the original audition! Granted, not all of them were there as golfers. I'm paired up with another guy who's there in shorts and carrying his driver. Eventually we're asked into the room and the other guy starts chirping about how he had - just this morning! - shot the best round of his life, an 81 at Indian Lake (only a par 59, you should know, which makes that 81 look not quite so good ... meow). So the guy's going on about his game and the director goes on about the guy's shorts ... those are the kind he's been talking about and the two chit-chat about his shorts, and then his driver and then about the director's driver and okay thanks for coming.

I'm standing there, feeling a bit confused, until the director finally addresses me and says, you too, thanks for coming.

I leave wondering what the hell that was all about, a bit miffed about how it all went, how it seemed like a waste of time since anything they had got from me (which was nothing ... except for a nicer blue and black shirt) they could have got from the original tape.

I fretted and walked away feeling like the Invisible Man, which for the audition process, ain't good.

What Hugh Grant And I Have In Common

Not a lot actually.

But there was this movie he made called About A Boy where he played a character who can sit around the house all day, a really nice house, an expensive house,  lives large with no job ... all because his father wrote this very famous Christmas song for which he (Hugh) gets piles of dough because the residual cheques keep pouring in.

(You can read this next part in your Forrest Gump voice. It'll sound funnier)

Well, my commercial for Champlain Place Mall got picked up. Again. And I got two more cheques in my mailbox. Again.

I'm hoping .. almost expecting now ...  that my Christmas commercial gets picked up too.

Oh yeah, and I have a new agent. It's nothing I did, the reins have again been passed.

Christmas Comes Twice in July

The cardinal rule of background performance is this: “Remember that you are nothing!” Running a close second is that you only get one, count 'em, ONE! role in any picture. It’s to maintain suspension of disbelief, you see. That's a fancy way of saying that the producers don’t want you, the viewer, to be a smarty-pants and point out the goof-ups. Hey, look! One of the dead guys from the beginning of the picture shows up later in a bar scene, just over the actor’s left shoulder. Look! There he is! Wait. I’ll rewind it.

Viewers are a bunch of smarty-pantses. I know 'cos I am one. Just ask me about my favourite goof-up from "The Untouchables". Sean Connery's magically opening and closing collar button.

We're like hawks, us smarty-pantses.

So anyway, I got called to do Finding John Christmas, a movie filmed here for CBS last July. I showed up early in the morning to play a fireman. I have to say that the nicest thing about showing up early in the morning for a film shoot is the free breakfast. The “Breakfast Burrito” is pretty much a staple on the early morning film set, bacon and eggs and cheese and salsa in a tortilla; it is especially yummy. I got dressed in my station house firefighter duds and went out to get me one.

Outside there’s a guy there standing next to the catering truck and he's giving me the hairy eyeball. I look back at him. There's a moment or so before he relaxes and tells me okay, go ahead. Seems that he wanted to make sure I was really part of the day’s shoot.

Here's where I need to provide a little back-story.

There are signs that tell you when a movie shoot has come to town. Literally, signs. Yellow signs with hand-drawn black lettering. They pop up along the highways and by-ways, marked with a strange kind of code. Sometimes pictograms, sometimes initials or partial words. If you can break the code, you figure out the title of the movie. The reason for all the signs is to help the team of drivers who have been hired for the movie. The signs go from "base camp" and other pick up points and lead to wherever the day's shoot happens to be. Need to get to the set? Just follow the yellow signs.

Well, when your city starts to be a hotbed for movie shoots (as has become our little neck of the woods), the locals start to figure this out, this thing with the yellow signs. The craftier ones (pun intended for all you film savvy folk) further realize that every day’s shoot generally requires a fresh crop of extras. Unfamiliar faces show up for work almost every day, anonymous "extras" that really aren't worth anyone's attention. Who deigns to talk to mere extras? Ignore them, please. They just aren't worth your time.

Hey and wouldn't you know, at every one of these movie sets, at a certain number of times a day, food is served. Food, glorious food.

So, putting it all together: Follow the signs, pretend to be an extra, be ignored, get a free lunch. Giddeeyup!

The guy next to the catering van told me all this. Slyness on this magnitude never would have occured to me in a million years. I marvelled at the rat-fink ingenuity and then chowed down on my burrito, legitimately earned. Yum.

The morning went by at a leisurely pace and I finally got to do my scene in the fire station with Valerie Bertinelli.

That is to say, she was there and I was there.

If I implied that there was any interaction between us, surely that was purely accidental! (Okay, yes, I was funning with you for a sec.) At one point there she was sitting quietly and by herself in her director's chair, me only a few paces behind her. A chance to chat her up, did you say?

Well, see, what do you say? Hey. Having a good time? Liking our town? Still in touch with that rock 'n roll guy? All good ways maybe to get your butt kicked off the set (some maybe better than others). So you stand there, silent, and most of all: employed. Be a professional, godammit!

I've bumped into several movie stars and with the exception of James Rebhorn who I almost accidentally killed in the bathroom (that creates an instant sense of fraternity, I guess) I've never chatted any of them up. It simply comes down to the fact that there's ... really ... just ... nothing to say. Also, you shouldn't.

(Also, alos: I'm severely socially handicapped, the subject of a different kind of blog. Help me, please help me!)

She is a sparkplug, by the way, that Valerie. She's not tall, not physically imposing or anything, but boy, when she speaks, she becomes the center of the universe. She's got that little girl voice that, somehow and pardoxically, explodes into a room.

She is made entirely of pleasant energy. I found her remarkable.

For the scene, I was just there to mill about in the background. The 3rd A.D. had us going to and fro, poking through the coats and boots and helmets that were there on a rack. On behalf of the entire group of extras, I decided that we were looking for the cat (an actor must have his motivation, after all). It cracked us up, somehow - gave us our own energy. We were rooting through pockets, checking out the big rubber boots, looking for the firehouse cat. "What cat?" someone asked and we giggled.

A few weeks later I got a call to do John Christmas.

Well ... hang on. I've done that one already. See Rule number two above, and all that. But the casting agent was desperate. It had been a long shoot and she'd pretty much run out of people. She asked me which scene I'd been in and I told her. Given the types of shots I was in, she figured it would be safe to use me in a second scene. Given that they were looking to pay me more money, I figured I'd do it.

For the second go-round, I played a doctor.

It was hot that day. I parked near some construction on a dusty road and schlepped past all the trailers for the stars with about forty pounds of clothes over my shoulder – you bring lots of options for the wardrobe people. I get myself to Extras Holding and they gave me scrubs to wear (too small and tight enough to show my religion). They even provided me with sneakers and white socks. I got to keep the socks. The perks!

There was snow in front of the building, this in the middle of July. On the hottest day. There it was. A front-end loader carted it in, more and more ice-as-snow to keep it fresh.

We makers of magic.

Speaking of magic makers, the executive producer for the shoot was Daniel H. Blatt. During my part of the shoot, a short, almost timid looking man showed up and kind of limped around behind set. He looked at me almost tentatively and I said "Hi". I'm a friendly guy, after all (socially retarded, but friendly). He nodded back. I didn't know who he was, but in spite of his less-than-imposing presence, I kind of got the sense that he was "somebody". After supper was over that night, the last night of shooting, the Executive Producer got up and made a little speech. It was the man from behind the set, Mr. Blatt. He thanked his cast and crew for their work on what had been a long shoot, especially Ms. Bertinelli who was present and appreciative. Following the thank-you speeches, everyone from the film’s cast and crew received a gift. This is customary. Hats, shirts, sometimes jackets, stuff like that - a customized memento as a thank-you from the producers to cast and crew. Since I was there as a background performer, well … I’m not part of the cast and crew, so, no gift for me (not counting the socks). But I thought myself fortunate to have been there for that day, because I got to share in the vibe, that feeling of the moment.

The gift consisted of a box, a perfect cube, about 4x4x4, wrapped in white paper and tied with a coloured ribbon. Unwrap the paper and what you found was a a mini-, aluminum case (imagine the picture in the link only silver and square). Inside the case was a watch. On the face of the watch were the exec producer’s initials. The crew was genuinely impressed and appreciative. This was a group of folks I recognized from many other shoots. I heard many of them saying it was the nicest gift they’d received on a shoot.

Christmas in July.

----------------

Still To Come
-----------------

• Hey! I'm all caught up! Stay tuned for the further adventures of!!!