2/1/2007
My Life in Hollywood and Beyond
The year 2007 marks my fifteenth anniversary writing for car magazines so maybe it’s time for a little reflection. My writing journey started in 1992 when I relocated from Massachusetts to Los Angeles at the age of 27. Having graduated from college with a B.A. degree six years earlier (Clark University, class of ‘86), I lived at home and worked a series of dead end jobs before I finally realized it was time to shuffle the deck and venture out into the world on my own. On Christmas Day, 1991 I loaded all my junk into a rusty but reliable ’76 Volare station wagon (powered by the rare K-code 360 2-barrel) and hit Interstate 40 all the way to L.A.
My plan (in order of priority) was to make it big as a Hollywood actor, write for Hot Rod or join the circus and become a human cannon ball. Anything would have been a better fate than continuing the process of stagnation that had set in back home. I figured I’d give it a year then head home if nothing materialized. Immediately upon my arrival, I signed up with Cenex (the non-union branch of Central Casting) and worked as an extra on movies like Sunset Grill (Stacy Keach, Lori Singer, Peter Weller), The Usual Suspects (Kevin Spacey, Stephen Baldwin, Benicio Del Toro), A Low Down Dirty Shame (Keenan Ivory Wayans, Jada Pinkett-Smith), and Renaissance Man (Danny DeVito, Mark Wahlberg).
Non-union extra work goes like this: you call the Cenex casting line every morning and hear a pre-recorded list of character types they’re looking for on that day or week. If you think you fit one, you jump in your car and drive to Burbank where you stand in line with all the other hopefuls. One by one you are assessed by the casting directors and either told “Thank you, next!” or – hopefully - “Go to the booking office”. The whole extra thing isn’t
about being a star. The fact is that extras are rarely close enough to the camera to be recognizable on screen and they never get spoken lines. But the pay is about a hundred bucks a day plus overtime if the shoot lasts longer than eight hours. And they usually do.
ADVERTISEMENT
The most memorable experiences include watching a gorilla-costumed stripper sing Happy Birthday to Danny DeVito between scenes on the set of Renaissance Man and playing a gun toting mobster who – along with five other mobsters – chased Keenan Ivory Wayans’s stunt double through a thin-gauge “sugar glass” picture window in a Santa Monica hotel during filming of A Low Down Dirty Shame. The stunt double’s first attempt at jumping through the window resulted in a loud “clunk,” no broken glass and a bruised forehead. The stunt man smacked himself so hard there were several moments of silence as he stumbled around in a daze. He was OK and the second attempt was successful. If you watch the movie carefully you’ll see me chasing him with a gun (don’t blink, you’ll miss it). Then after he smashes through the hotel window and lands in the open sun roof of a waiting limousine (hoo-ray for Hollywood), you’ll see me again walking along the sidewalk in a completely different outfit – playing the part of a pedestrian - as the limo blasts down the street during its big getaway. The sequence was shot over two days, allowing the production company to utilize the extras in numerous roles in the same scene. I think I made $250 on that one.
