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A Windy Night in LA
Hollywood Milieu ©2003
By Denny Dormody
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| First light is two hours away. Most of the actors on
the bus are snoring. We're on our way to Hollywood. So to speak. The
only light is the reflection of the passing trucks and an actress
in the back reading Cosmo with a Little Bitty Light. We're going on
location to a one-horse town named Fillmore. A quaint train station
there is doubling as Chicago. This is Seabiscuit. Tobey McGuire. Jeff
Bridges. William H. Macy. Chris Cooper. Me. |
| I'm an extra. That's LA speak for an actor with no speaking
lines. This is going to be a cast of thousands, as I'm in bus number
one and there's maybe twelve buses churning through the hills and
bringing up the rear. This is what I do to stay alive while the glacier-like
Studio moguls consider buying one of my comedy screenplays. |
| The only ambience on this wayward bus is LA's on-air
boom box; K-Earth radio as piped through the bass-driven bus speaker
system. Like always, it's pumping out nostalgia 24/7. A quick "From
the entertainment capitol of the world" station ID and then back to
Smokey Robinson's Being with You; America's Ventura Highway and Brook
Benton's A Rainy Night in Georgia. |
| The gears shift as we pass a truck stop and an all-night
diner as an assistant director claws his way through the bus, checking
names against his casting roster. It feels like we're on a military
mission and we're about to hit the beach at Normandy. Maybe we are.
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| Ahead of us is make-up, a one-hour period wardrobe fitting
with costume nips and tucks and maybe 16 hours of standing at a train
station in Chicago cheering Seabiscuit on his whistle-stop tour to
victory. |
| I hope those cameras are anchored down as the Santa
Ana winds have been whipsawing across the City of Actors all night.
Fillmore slowly starts to appear in the shadows. Some orange trees.
Some railroad tracks. A small movie theatre. A hardware store. We're
here. |
| As the florescent bus lights sputter to life, a 2nd,
second assistant director boards the bus and apologies that the circus
tent for the extras has been blown over during the night. We do what
most non-classically trained actors all do. We all go back to sleep.
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| An hour passes. The metamorphoses begins. We trade our
Gap jeans for 1930's racetrack period duds. The ladies look lovely.
The guys look like gangsters. The Seabiscuit wardrobe people won the
Best-Costume Oscar for Titanic. It shows. We look great. |
| This is another extra gig and I've followed my golden
rules of acting. You won't find them in any Stanislavsky textbook.
First, pick up your pay voucher. Second, go to the craft service catering
table. Carb up. Third, Act. |
| Now we're acting. It's Chicago's train station. Seabiscuit
is on his way. Seabiscuit's owner, played by Jeff Bridges, is leading
the cheers. Rolling camera. Sound Speed. Atmosphere (that's our cue
to act.) And Action. Mr. Bridges gives his lines. We react. The wind
is still blowing. Cut. Reset. The make-up and wardrobe people fan
through the crowd and fine-tune the look of the shot. They are also
offering eye-drops as those Santa Ana winds are still blowing big
time. Take 2. Take 9. Cut. Print. New deal. |
| Suddenly the movie fates arrive as those Santa Ana winds
take their revenge as a Baltimore train set-up, scheduled for the
next shot, collapses like a dry-kindling house of cards. |
| That's a wrap. Back to wardrobe. An assistant director
signs out my pay voucher. As we score a bagel to sustain us for the
bus ride home, a set-buddy dials Central Casting and scores a gig
as a TV-show detective for tomorrow. At home, I check my answering
machine. No calls. Maybe those movie producers didn't have time to
read my comedy scripts today. Maybe they were busy. Busy with those
winds blowing across LA. |
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