2001-01-15 - 23:59:03

Casting Call

Lily and I did something unusual yesterday: we tried out for parts in a movie.

Surprise!

In spite of the fact that nobody with eyes would associate Frown Town and environs with the glamour of moviemaking, the fact is that a good number of movies have been filmed around here: The Way We Were, Billy Bathgate, The Age of Innocence, The Horse Whisperer, Ironweed and others that I've forgotten. The reason for this is simple: this is an ideal area for filming period pieces because there is so much OLD stuff around here. Many of the buildings here are relics of a bygone era. In the neighborhood I lived in fifteen years ago, there were buildings that were nearly 300 years old. Even the Hamster Palace is about a century old, by my best guess.

Also, I imagine that the locals are willing to work for peanuts.

The movie that the casting call was for is a remake of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine and they are going to be filming the sequences that take place in 1899 around here. And for this filming, they need extras, and that's where we come in.

Originally Lily was going to go to the casting call with a friend of hers from school, and then I asked if I could go too. Lily was surprised, but pleased at my interest.

The casting call was at a community theater center in the middle of a commercial wasteland, cracked pavement as far as the eye could see. The community theater was in a cinderblock building next to a music store. We waited in line in a hallway with several dozen other people. A lady kept urging us to keep to the right side of the hall due to some sort of fire regulations. I complied, but now that I think about it, it didn’t make any sense. There seemed to be very little to burn anyway, and besides - in case of fire I wasn't going to be blocking the hall, I was going to be sprinting for the nearest exit.

Anyway, after a wait of about twenty minutes, we were ushered into a what looked like a small theatre. Chairs and tables were scattered where the audience would be, and we found our seats.

There seemed to be about 30 people in the room all together. As is usual with things involving the theater, women seemed to outnumber men two to one. A couple of actressy-looking girls had "head shots," or professional publicity photos, they wanted to give the casting director, but most of the people there looked like ordinary folks.

As soon as we were seated, a very fast-talking woman from Los Angeles introduced herself as the person in charge of casting extras, and she explained that it was her job to talk us out of taking the job. She mentioned at least half a dozen times that the scenes were being filmed OUTSIDE in FEBRUARY and the filming might go from 6 PM to 6 AM. Not to mention that we'd all have to be in period costumes that might be uncomfortable and scratchy.

To tell the truth, it did sound like something of a trial, but I was willing to put up with it if Lily was. I've never been in a movie, and it might be fun. Besides, with my interest in history I'd enjoy helping to recreate the world of 1899.

In spite of these rather severe warnings, I noticed that nobody else left either.

We filled out some forms and got our pictures taken, in groups of threes. Then we were hustled out the door. That's it! It wasn't hard to remember that another name for these casting calls was "cattle calls."

Well, as of the writing of this entry, a week later, Lily and I still have not heard from the casting people. I'm not really surprised - I think we have several strikes against us. For one, Lily is a little exotic looking for 1899. For my part, they were looking for men with their own facial hair and I don’t have any. For those of you who don’t know, around the turn of the last century, all men wore facial hair, especially extravagant moustaches. Not too long ago I was doing some research on that period and in every picture that I ran across, every man had at least a moustache.

However, probably the biggest black mark against us was that neither one of us can ice skate! It was mentioned in the form we filled out, and it seemed to be important. Oh well.

So it was an interesting little experience. It was kind of amusing how many people showed up to apply for a temporary job with hellish hours, uncomfortable working conditions and rather low pay. I was constantly reminded of an old joke I heard years ago.

One day while attending the circus, a man spotted an old high school classmate standing by the animal cages with a shovel in his hand. It turns out that the classmate's job was cleaning out the animal cages for the circus. Every day, day in and day out, he had to shovel piles of smelly animal manure. He complained about how awful the job was, and how everything seemed to smell like shit to him now.

After several minutes of complaining, the circus visitor asked his friend: "If it's so awful, why don’t you quit?"

The friend gave him a surprised look and said: "What?? And leave show business?"