Surviving Christmas
We were all wearing winter coats and despite California weather, didn’t completely fry in the sun. For once, it was cool enough to wear gloves, ear muffs, and super-heavy coats.
It stars Ben Affleck and Christina Applegate. And James Gandolfini and I can’t remember the lady’s name, but she played Winona Ryder’s mom in Beetlejuice.
Anyhow, that shoot was mainly what I now affectionately call Background Pinball. The scene is outside between Ben and Christina and us extras are Christmas shopping/bustling in Chicago. So, there are stores we can walk into and stuff, well, what happens at these kinds of shoots is that you walk over to one side, they send you over to another and then from there, you go to a store perhaps and then back out to where you came from and keep trying to not get in the way or look like the same person bouncing from one side of the screen to the other.
In the scene with Ben, Christina, James, and the lady whose name escapes me, I walked so close to Ben and James that they nearly ran me over–talk about a heart attack for a background player. Getting in the way of principle actors is very, very bad, but the director didn’t get all pissed off and myself and the guy I walked with did the same move exactly the same each time so I guess it looked okay.
We were just following orders from the 2nd AD (assistant director) and we managed to get ourselves right there in front. I’m wearing a tacky patchwork leather coat that they gave me. It must have cost a fortune because the tag said Saks Fifth Avenue. I just thought it looked kinda silly, but oh well… I’ll probably go see this movie when it comes out. Or at least rent it.
I rented it and good golly, the movie is awful… But the screen captures I got of myself aren’t half bad.
Notice how my scarf is normal in the first one, then falling off in the second. I was secretly mortified as it was falling off and hoping that the camera hadn’t seen it…and hoping that it wouldn’t be in the finished product, but, well…there I am. Thankfully, it didn’t blow all the way off and wrap around Ben’s head!
This was also the bit where I had to dodge Ben. On the rehearsal, he didn’t gesture and he didn’t go as far up. But on the first take, he swung his arm out to gesture at something and nearly clothes-lined me. Luckily, either he saw me or I ducked or both and there was no collision. Whew!
Also, another silly thing about this shoot. Notice in the pic above my scarf falling off that the guy following me is carrying a red gas can? We had no idea why props gave him a gas can except that perhaps it was red and shaped like a shopping bag. However, it inspired us. Notice the keys in my hand? We pretended that I’d gone shopping and ran out of gas and he was a good samaritan helping me out. I was showing him where I’d parked and we joked that once my car was gassed up, I was just gonna leave him standing there.
Ah well. We had to keep ourselves entertained somehow between takes!
After the movie released, I heard that it bombed pretty hard. I suppose it doesn’t help that it was released in time for Halloween rather than Christmas, but hey, what do I know about this stuff?
RSS Feed
