🎬 Actor – The Extra
Truly the best job in show biz: wear a stolen paper mache alien head, shoot soda out of your nose, crash through a sugar-glass shop window, and chase the motorcyclist who knocked over your fruit cart.
Right after we moved to Brooklyn six years ago, I was walking with my family under the DUMBO overpass, and I oh-my-god-suddenly-realized that it was in the Lost Film Location, a location I could never remember other than “somewhere very dangerous in 1984 Brooklyn.” I was a crowd extra under a bridge in a music video. The band was unknown. The song was called Life on Earth. It was my first time on camera.
But, oh, the relief of solving a forty-year nagging mystery! This, my grown children, was the day I melted my fingerprints off waving a Bic lighter in the air for twenty-two hours.
I never tire of sharing this when walking beneath it with my family.
Me:
“It is like passing through a time portal.”
My Wife:
“Yes. For me, too. You say that every time we walk under the overpass.”
Me (ignoring):
“This is the archway where the band was playing on a stage, and the extras were put in, like, a bullpen over here, or maybe it was over here. I’ve lost my bearings. Can we stop for a second? It’s incredible. It’s the Lost Location!”
Ungrateful Child, the Elder:
“You made a $1 an hour and the band wore paper mache alien heads.”
Ungrateful Child, the Younger:
“One of their heads fell over sideways like a broken corn stalk."
*
There’s no job on the planet that requires less skill than being a film extra, and I include museum guards, and a museum guard still needs to be able to throw himself between a masterpiece and an animal rights activist.
If you don't have to go through 18th-century hair and makeup, being an extra is the lowest stress job in Hollywood. You can start your career the moment you can legally work a 20-hour day — for non-union this is three months old — and then you can ride that $80 a day pony all the way to your death bed.
Other than a couple of hours of day of “work,” the last thing you want to do as an extra is “anything at all.” You want to sit and snack. And your employers are okay with that. If you turned into a prop department stop sign between takes, they couldn't be happier. The whole career is a glorified game of red-light green-light.
Green light:
“We need background on the set… and action”
“You there, yeah, you: run ten feet, shake your fist and then chase the girl motorcyclist who upended your fruit cart.”
Red light:
“Cut.”
And voila! You’re a prop department stop sign.
Snack table.
Green light:
“There’s a hair in the gate. Reset the fruit stand. We’re going again.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Really?”
*
It’s not just about the money. In a full career you might get to punch a blue-screen monster in the knee cap, knife into a rubber steak, or crash repeatedly through a sugar-glass shop window a good 150 yards behind the real actors.
The worst thing you can do as an extra is act. Oh, my god. If you are an extra and you start acting, you will be placed so far into the background you turn into a bald spot.
And woe betides these Thespians unloading great duffel bags of make-up, dog-eared volumes on method acting, curling irons, and high-grip Spanx onto their grey folding chairs. At 4:53 in the morning they are pinning SAG cards to their astronaut costumes, spray painting their bald spots, and working their way through vocal exercises at Shakespearean volumes: Lallery, Lillery, Lollery, Lullery. Oh, for a Muse of fire! Heavens of invention! The sound! The fury! And the strutting!
(But Blessed Are the Extras that work themselves to the front of the music video with elbows sharper than the spiked wheels of gladiator carriages for they shall be Visible.)
Green light:
“We’re going again.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Really?”
*
The Old Timers know this is the best job in show business. By Old Timers, I mean anyone who has been an extra for more than three days. They know the lowdown. First thing on the set in their morning, Old-Timers are filling their empty knapsacks with food pilfered from the craft services table.
They make runs to the liquor store, get high in the port-a-potties, and check if adding “comma asshole” to the end of the bag lunch Chinese fortune cookies is still funny on the third day of the shoot.
“Haha! Yes! Mine is! Try yours!”
“All your dreams will come true comma asshole. Now you comma asshole!”
“03 14 27 29 32 54 comma asshole.”
“High five!”
This is definitely not sitting behind a boring old desk. What a job! What if you could go back and tell your ten-year-old self that this is what you will be doing someday?
*
Break by break they storm and norm and form and burst into tears reading their resumes to each other. They steal “that guy’s” bald spot spray and paint Hassidic beards on each other’s headshots, remove screws from the folding chairs, sneak past power truck Teamsters asleep in lawn chairs, slip into the costume trailers, and, giggling like eight-year-olds, navigate blindly onto the set wearing, if I remember correctly, stolen paper mache alien heads.
“Hide! Hide! We’re fucked! You dented the head! It’s hanging halfway off your neck! Run comma asshole! Run! The drummer’s coming!”
*
But the best thing — the absolute 100% best thing — about being an extra is being treated like a complete idiot. Because being treated like a complete idiot in a group of other people that are also being treated like complete idiots, is a recipe for horseplay and hijinks! You find you’re turning your eyelids inside out at thirty years of age, firing soda from your nose for the non-union infants, and, whoops, vomit laughing. Imagine being paid to be in 7th grade music class with zero risk of being sent to the principal’s office.
Green light:
“We’re going again.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Really?”
*
My music video never made it to MTV. Maybe it was the crushed alien heads, but I never had a better day on a set my whole career.
“Honey, wait up, I think I just found the place where I was in the music video.”
I found it!
When I wrote this, I didn’t believe I would ever see the video. I watched for it on MTV, but it never appeared, then
asked the obvious question in the comments, “Does the video exist on YouTube.” Maybe I am getting too old for technology and turning into my grandparents. Of course, I should have looked on YouTube. Thanks, 🤣.
I found the video for Life on Earth! If you read "Actor - The Extra," then you might be curious about the actual video. I've attached at the bottom of the post.
https://www.adamnathan.com/p/actor-the-extra
Wow, comma asshole is better than in bed, although just for the record, the Chinese restaurants in Spain do not offer fortune cookies, but they do offer sushi or pad thai.
Great story, Adam - I humbly request to play your wife in the movie (I have just the wig, and I'm much prettier in person) just for the chance to deliver that line - look, I've already got it memorized: “Yes. For me, too. You say that every time we walk under the overpass.” I'll settle for a screen test, we have a bet going... 🖤