Herbie: Fully Loaded

In this Tale, I’ll combine last week and the week before…Yep, Disney’s dusting off the Love Bug. I don’t know much about the plot other than that Linsey Lohan is the ‘good guy’ and Matt Dillon is the ‘bad guy’ and they go from town to town, race to race.

I took part in two different towns. The first of which, I didn’t catch the name. The second, I think was Riverside, but I’m not positive. In both cases, there was a car show followed by racing, but the racing was fake. I’ll explain a little bit later.

The first town: It was a 2 day shoot during their second week of production so essentially, they were still getting into the groove of things. There were about 200 extras, some with cars, some without. Many with cars had never been extras before and didn’t know what to do or how to do it. This plus the crew’s newness to the project made for somewhat strange and interesting events.

The casting director had specified that our cars needed to be in tip top shiny condition…but then getting to the set, there was a mile long dusty/dirt road. Thanks.

Anyhow, in my ’68 Mustang Fastback, I was in the domestic muscle car group. The AD told us to go stand by our cars because they were setting up the shots. It was around 6AM.

They took one car from our group and then promptly forgot about us…for the rest of the day. We waited around for over twelve hours, but they never took another car from our group.

The following day, they didn’t want our cars at all so we ended up with the rest of the extras. We cheered for Matt Dillon, who after a bazillion takes finally started losing his lines…the last take before lunch. Poor guy. We were all feelin’ for him, but at the same time starving!

After lunch came the worst of it. Mind you, it was in the high 90s temperature-wise. We were in full sun, sitting on metal bleachers from about 1PM until about 6:30PM. My ass hasn’t been that sore in a very long time.

We were supposed to be watching a race between Herbie and Matt Dillon, but instead, there was a poor PA holding up a big stick with a yellow X on it.

When the director called “Action,” the PA ran as fast as he could and we cheered along with the announcer. Eventually, the PA got worn out and they used a van. Then a golf cart.

I have no idea why they switched vehicles, but I think we all felt pretty silly cheering the yellow X no matter what it happened to be on.

That’s the extent of that week for me.

The next week was different. A lot different, but same idea.

Once again, first day, I didn’t work at all. I just hung out by my car (my 2000 Prowler, this time) for thirteen hours. The average in time was 5:30AM, average out time was 7:30PM.

And I missed the milli-second that Matt Dillon admired my car and asked who’s it was. Darn my need for breakfast!!!! The guy parked next to me said Matt liked my car and walked around it, admiring it, wondering who owned it. Ah well. I guess it just wasn’t my moment to talk to him.

Second day, they finally pulled my car from the deep and put it near the car show.

I had to be a watchdog because extras were leaning on people’s cars, sitting in them…It’s just not cool to do that without the owner’s consent. Some people’s cars got scratched up pretty good. A tent fell on another one.

I was in my Prowler for this shoot and really worried that someone was going to sit on a fender and crack it. They aren’t cheap.

Luckily, the ADs understood and let me work near or within sight of my car. I didn’t have to police too much, but there were a few people who didn’t understand that at car shows, you just don’t mess with the cars.

Lots and lots of walking around the car show ensued. What they wanted was movement. Lots and lots of movement. Once again, it was in the 90s…and wardrobe wanted me to wear a black t-shirt. Thanks. At least there were a few shade trees this time.

I always stayed in deep background so I never heard what the scene was about. Essentially, Herbie pulls up to the show, smoking and running terribly.

I won’t give away what happened after that, but let’s just say that I did get to see Herbie having a mind of his own and it was really, really cool to see some of that Hollywood magic in action.

Oh! I almost forgot the most exciting bit… During the afternoon, we were all doing our usual walking around, looking at cars and all of a sudden [while the camera was rolling], a guy comes running at me with an AD, a PA and another guy chasing after him saying “Call security!” I thought I was going to get trampled and I had no idea why.

The guy got into an SUV and drove off like a bat out of hell. The instant rumor was that the guy was trying to steal a car.

Ten minutes later, I talked to one of the guys who gave chase. Apparently, the runner was a paparazzi posing as an extra and snapping pictures of the scene during filming.

I was thinking that in either case, I should’ve tripped him. He held up production for a good half hour with that stunt. I wonder if it was worth it. I did find out that he wasn’t the only one.

He was actually one of two guys that day and a third on the day before. I never thought Herbie would attract paparazzi, but I guess because it’s been so long since the last movie, there’s lots of buzz.

I don’t know. I had fun, though! The hours were just way too long and way too hot.

UPDATE:I thought I saw myself in the deep background a couple times, but it was really hard to tell. I couldn’t remember for sure where I was during filming, so I can’t be positive enough that the little blur in the deep background really was me. There were a few people wearing black shirts.

This following capture wasn’t shot on the same day as the rest of that scene. They called in a few of us car people a couple months later and had us strategically standing in order to match the rest of the scene. I was blocked by the person in the big hat, but my Prowler is seen. Funny how both times, it’s through the foggy window of Herbie. Ah well.

Comments are closed.