the_marq

So this past Sunday June 19th, my wife and I went down to McMahon Stadium (in Calgary) to be extras a move being shot by Bruce McCullough.

The movie's working title is Comeback Season and stars Ray Liotta. It's a football movie, or at least has a few scenes that relate to a football stadium as that is what I was involved in yesterday. E and I were part of the crowd cheering on the players as they come on the field at the start of the game. We stood up and cheered like maniacs as the 'players' ran out of the inflated tunnel... about 100 times. It got to be pretty tedious by the end of the day. It's a good thing it was a nice day and they gave away a ton of prizes to the extras (of which I got none), some folks took home DVD players and a big screen TV.

I hope you can see me when the move comes out... look for the bald guy in the red shirt.

Has anyone else been an extra, would we have seen you?

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#3 in a series

hambone

That is awesome. I want to be in a movie

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keyshawn

I actually never have; but my grandparents [RIP] were in the deer hunter. They actually can be seen at the end of the wedding reception scene, sitting down, IIRC. It was filmed at Lemko [sp?] Hall, which was right across the street from where they lived. They actually got the chance to meet De Niro and the crew too, who invited them to dinner.

BTW, this was filmed in Cleveland, the Tremont neighborhood. Now, the Hall has been renovated for condo's and an art gallery . The yuppies are a big influence of the neighborhood now with many residents.

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Grasshopper Green

My grandfather was in Jeremiah Johnson (with Robert Redford) and can be seen in a couple of the opening scenes; he is an older man with white hair and a white beard, riding a horse, and if I recall correctly, has a pipe in his mouth. He was in a lot more of the movie, but most of his other scenes ended up being cut from the movie.

I've never been in a movie. I don't know that I'd want to be an extra.

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"They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings; steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king"

Formerly Medusa

Booray

Our parents let a friend and myself miss the last day of school (4th grade for me; 3rd for my friend) back in June '84 to go down to the old defunct Atlanta train station to be extras in a Michael J. Fox made for TV movie called Poison Ivy (not to be confused with the Drew Barrymore movie made much later) about kids going to summer camp. It co-starred Nancy McKeon (Jo from The Facts of Life). I got to meet Michael J. Fox who was actually not much taller than me at the time if I remember correctly. The train station portion of the movie was when all the kids were leaving for camp and only lasted about 10 minutes in the movie. In the finished movie, I think we ended up barely being able to see myself a couple of times (the back of my head wearing my orange Orioles baseball cap as Michael J. Fox's "camp counselor" rival had water balloons tossed down on his head by a guy on a ladder which was cut in the final movie to make it seem as if M.J. Fox had tossed the balloons down from the roof of the station; another quick shot of me dribbling a basketball past the camera in a group shot of a bunch of kids). It was a pretty fun day and I got a check for $47 bucks (funny how I remember the exact amount) for being an extra.

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chickentribs

I lived in Los Angeles for almost 2 years down on Venice Beach and they were always shooting commercials, TV shows, Movies, or whatever pretty much every day during the summer months. You can't imagine how many infomercials they make in this world, and they all have people on the boardwalk literally grabbing at the tourists and pleading to get them to go sit still for 4 hours and clap so that they can be on TV.

I held out for a long time - but then I got a call from my buddy that I couldn't refuse. The first Spiderman movie was in production and they were shooting the first big fight scene between Spiderman and Green Goblin at the Unity Day Festival! Can you say "sick day"??

You can see me by a table of champagne glasses that Spidey gets kicked through, and again quickly running out of bleachers near Spiderman while Goblin is throwing his grenades at him. That last part actually got Sam Raimi the director over to yell at me personally. It was getting late in the day, And I was determined to get seen in the movie. Because of the explosives they were setting off, the "extras director" (punk) told us about 20 times that nobody was to leave the bleachers for any reason and just run back and fourth like idiots. Around the fifth time they shouted it at us I figured they were asking for it.

I played it straight for the first 2 or 3 takes, (they can't spend the money on more than a couple takes with the special effects) and when it looked like everybody was getting really serious for The Take, I positioned myself down front and took a little "artistic license" and hopped the railing, left the roughly 100 other extras in the bleachers and went running behind Spiderman like I was Spiderboy or something. Between working up the balls to actually do it, and the throbbibg vain on Raimi's head, that moment was near perfection for me!

But even with one of the best days an extra could ask for, I agree with Marq that it was mostly looooong and boring. 13 hours of sitting around for about 40 minutes of action of which 15 seconds show up on the screen. The first 6 hours, pretty cool - the last 7 hours, ugh. But, hands down my favorite story to tell!

The bastards kept my $50.

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Oft expectation fails...
and most oft there Where most it promises
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Johnny Pyro

Thats awsome. Bruce McCullough is funny. Kids in the Hall was one of the funniest shows.

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"From delusion lead me to truth, from darkness lead me to light, from death lead me to eternal life. - Sheriff John Wydell

Charlatan

They are always filming something in Toronto, I have walked through countless sets in the background while they were filming or been just off camera while they do the take... Never as an extra, just as someone trying to get on with his day.

The three most memorable:

1) Long Kiss Goodnight (Geena Davis/Samuel L Jackson film). I was trying to get to work and they were filming a scene in the alley way across the road. The shot had the street in the background. They had the street dressed for Christmas. They had extras walking back and forth but were letting regular people walk through as well so we could get where we were going... Don't think my take made it in the film the cool part was seeing Bloor Street all dressed up for Christmas and the mess they made in an otherwise clean alley.

2) Some nameless and surely forgptten straight to video film. They shot this right outside my office window (if there wasn't glass, I could have reached out and smacked the actors in the head). The scene they were filming involved the end of a car chase where the perps exit their car and get chased on foot by the cops, shoot a lot of guns and then duck into the adandoned warehouse. For the better part of the day I had front row seats to gun fight after gun fights (very loud). Try explaining to clients on the phone that no actually everything is OK and that I'm not pinned down by a crazed guntoting co-worker.

3) Resident Evil 2. There is a scene where they were racing across a bridge with the black cars in a convoy... take after take I had to wait while they shot and re-shot the scene... finally letting us across the bridge. Definately not in the shot but it was cool to watch (the first take at least... after that it was just a drag).

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barenakedladies

i was one of the illinois nazis in the blues brothers