Extra! Extra! Read All About It

Extra! Extra! Read All About It

Once, back when I was in high school, there was a big hullabaloo on campus about some Karate-Kid-like Mickey Mouse Club movie being filmed nearby. They needed extras, a ton of them, and all of the popular ROTC guys took a day off and tried to get into the movie. I actually got to see one of them when the movie finally aired on the Disney Channel. He sat among a crowd in the bleachers, and his bold blue, gold, and white letterman jacket stood out like a beacon.

“Oh, my God!” I exclaimed. “There’s Ernest Escalante! Oh, my God!” I was never so excited in my entire life.

My mom actually had a chance at being an extra on a serial drama once—a speaking extra, no less. They shot Silk Stalkings down in San Diego, and on one of her days off from work she decided to try to get in it as an extra. She came home that night and told us that they wanted her to come back and play a Filipina maid—one with a line to be spoken in Tagalog, even.

I was so excited that I started raining questions on her, but she quickly doused it and said she wasn’t going to do it. The pay was so low, she reasoned, that it wasn’t worth doing; she’d rather go to work the next day and get paid three times what the studio paid extras. Her reasoning made sense, but I was disappointed just the same. She would have been immortalized had she done it.

One of my choir classmates, however, didn’t seem to mind the low pay of an extra. She went to the Silk Stalkings set regularly for a while when she was in her acting phase.

My cousin Zee, on the other hand, was an extra on Ocean’s Eleven. You have to watch it on DVD, though, because she’s on it for about seven frames, and even then she’s a blur. Still… she’s immortalized! She also wrote me recently about being an extra for a new NBC show coming out in the fall, so she’s immortalized twice!

H.E. takes the “extra” special cake, though. He was once or twice an extra on Cagney & Lacey, and he had lines! So he is forever immortalized with a fake Bronx accent in some lady detective show. Something to show the grandkids if it ever comes out on DVD.

Me, I’ve never been an extra for a TV show or a movie. I’ve acted and directed in school plays, been on TV a few times, and all in all had every opportunity to stand around all day for low pay, waiting to be an extra. I just never got around to it.

I would totally have loved being an extra on Monsters, Inc., though. The only reason they couldn’t use me? I had one eye too many and three legs too few. Plus, my tourist visa to Monstropolis wasn’t long enough for me to stick around. My disappointment could not be contained.

How about you? Have you ever been an extra?

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15 thoughts on “Extra! Extra! Read All About It

  1. Hey,
    No I wasn’t ever an extra but many I know were for various films
    on both East and West Coasts,
    but more importantly
    HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

    maxwellgrant
    friend of Minn’s
    on
    livejournal

  2. They should have loved your monster hair though, in Monsters Inc. And I am sure Faux April Gem would have been a great hit as well!

    But now is the time to wish you a Very Happy Birthday April!

    Pam’s Canadian Friend

  3. I’ve never been an extra, but my duet partner from high school was a regular on Sabrina for a few years.

  4. Just wishing that today’s celebration of you birthday had been enjoyable and noteworthy.

    Hopefully, you took a few photos with that new camera of yours and you will post them so we can all see how you enjoyed your day.

  5. Shawshank was filmed at the old Mansfield Penitentary in Mansfield,OH, just 15 minutes from where I was an undergrad at Ashland. I was an extra as an inmate, but never did see myself in the final cut.

    Friend of no-one. Sniff-Sniff

  6. Shawshank was filmed at the old Mansfield Penitentary in Mansfield,OH, just 15 minutes from where I was an undergrad at Ashland. I was an extra as an inmate, but never did see myself in the final cut.

    Friend of no-one. Sniff-Sniff

  7. Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday April. Happy Birthday to you. Phew.

    *plays a kazoo*

  8. I come from a family of five!
    So there were many time when I felt like an extra…
    Happy (belated) Birthday!

  9. i wasn’t an extra but i appeared in a quiz show, called kab kyon kahan, in india, back in the mid 90s, we lost by ten points 😉

    came here through this route,
    rice bowl journals -> minnie -> ur blog

    regards,
    ubaid.

  10. Thanks, everyone, for stopping by and wishing me a happy birthday! 🙂

    Friends of friends of mine are friends of mine. That should cover about everyone, I think. 😉

    As for how my day went yesterday, I should have some photos to post later. Fauxtos to come even later, if any.

  11. Shoot, I missed your birthday. Poop! Hope it was thrilling! Or at least had good cake. 🙂

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