Threat Matrix

The following is from an email I’d sent to Jen:

So, yeah, last night aside from getting more good stuff to put into books, I did an amazing job and they loved all my 80s stuff…especially my 80s hair. You know how I used to do it with the one side flipped up, etc. I just did that again and they LOVED it. They said I had the best hair of the whole show.

As for stuff we need to add into books… We got to the first location with our cars and they initially had me park mine and then I was gonna be a pedestrian, but they last second changed their mind and wanted me to drive through. So, there I go trotting across the street and just as I get behind my car, my feet come completely out from underneath me. I did manage to hurt my wrist and elbow, but the fall was so comic, I just couldn’t mention it.

They’re all askin’ if I’m okay, and I’m laughin’ and giggling, saying I’m fine and I get in the car and do the stuff. And honestly, at the time, I was fine. It wasn’t for about 6 hours later that I started feelin’ it. Ah well. It was just such a Blaina moment. She’s eager to drive on set, so I think it’d be hilarious. We should put something like that in Driven To Distraction.

Okay, now for standing in… Well, sitting in and the scene after that I stood in. And you’re never gonna believe who for… First let me say that she’s about 4 inches taller than me and had long, poofy blonde hair. Yes, I looked NOTHING like her… Denise Crosby. Probably best known as Tasha Yar from Star Trek Next Generation. She’s way cool and she likes late 60s rock ‘n’ roll and rockabilly.

I was just having one of those incredibly ‘on’ kind of nights. The guy I was standing in with was asking me where to go and what to do and the ADs loved me to pieces because I was always trying to fill empty spots and wasn’t afraid to walk between the principals and the camera. I seriously think that of the 4 or 5 different scenes where I walked in front of the camera, one of them has got to be saved from the cutting room floor. This episode takes place in 1983. Two American agents are tailing a Russian agent. This was 2nd unit, so that’s about all the information I have on the episode.

Sleepover

I think the movie was called Sleepover, but I’m not positive. I remember it being a high school kids movie. This was my second time being a stand-in.

The regular stand-in didn’t show up that night for some reason, so the 2nd Assistant Director gathered up all of the female extras, I believe there were only about four or five of us. We stood there, waiting to find out which of us would be the stand-in.

It came down to me and another girl. The AD got on her radio saying something like, “Well, neither of them look like her at all. Do you want someone the right size, but an inch shorter and with the wrong hair color or someone who’s the right height, but wrong size and also wrong hair color?” Then the radio broke up and the AD had to just make a quick decision.

The following is an excerpt from an email I wrote to Jen the day after the shoot:

Let me get the two dirty jokes from the set out of the way… ‘What did Cinderella do when she got to the ball? …She choked…’ and you know the saying: ‘I’m all over it, like white on rice.’ Well, new and improved: ‘I’m all over it, like a grip on an extra.’

Now for story time… The female stand-in didn’t show up, so they lined up all the girls and picked one–me! And I look nothing like the actress, but I’m the same size as she is. So, they put this incredibly ill-fitting blonde wig on me. Remember Julia Roberts in the beginning of Pretty Woman? That’s kinda the style of this blonde wig. I looked horrible.

They gave me a pink shirt to put on, too and there I go to be a stand-in. It’s cold and raining off and on, but at least as a stand-in, I can sit in the nice director’s chairs by the heaters. Anyhow, I was kinda feeling like Blaina must feel when she’s trussed up to look like Meleta. I mean, guys didn’t know what to make of my fake hair. Some were afraid to ask! It was pretty funny. I wish I’d had a camera.

Meet Blaina and Meleta in Driver to Distraction.