The Extra

THE EXTRA

I figure, since you don't know me or anything I might as well be honest. My name is Kevin Jona and I am a movie extra and this is a true story. If we started up a conversation in an elevator, though, I'd probably tell you that I was involved in the entertainment industry and if you really pressed me and I was going to a high floor I might add that I was in the movie Taps and pray that the elevator doors would slide open and I'd check my watch and beat it. If you were a pretty actress I'd probably say I was a producer. Just kidding.

Robert Busser is of course a movie star and I worked with him once. We were in a movie called Temporary Insanity and he was the star and I was an extra. I got to shake his hand in a crowd scene. Just pushed my hand right through a bunch of arms and grabbed his hand and shook it, not only to shake it, but for the bump. You get an extra ten bucks if you do a piece of business in the scene, so just picture about a hundred extras with donut powder on their mouths, all trying to shake Robert Busser's hand for a lousy ten dollar bump. He knew all about the ten bucks but wasn't bending over backwards to shake anybody's hand or anything. Some stars do. They know all the bumps and in the big scenes they shake hands like crazy. They might as well just hand out ten dollar bills. A star with an easy handshake can make a guy like me an extra hundred bucks on a shoot. I've seen it happen.

On this particular day, since Robert Busser wasn't glad handing anybody, but making us actually pull his hands out of his pockets and shake them, nobody was talking to him much between takes. He was sitting on the steps of this phony city hall, running his hand over the pretend granite. The steps were really wooden, painted speckly grey to look like stone. He was feeling the speckles and a makeup person would buzz up and powder his nose while we whispered arguments on who would get to pull his hand out of the pocket and who would actually shake his hand.

He was much smaller than we thought. We all said so. He was standing on an apple box during most every shot of this movie and every time they'd bring out the box, he'd laugh about it, punch somebody in the arm a little too hard and give a person chosen at random a hard stare that would melt glass. Everything else about him was as big as you can imagine, though. He drove a black truck with that kind of paint that looks like somebody emptied a lacquer truck onto it and talked in a loud voice so his jokes could be heard by everybody. Most of the people on the set avoided eye contact with him, so they wouldn't have to work up a phony laugh for him every ten seconds, but he had a secretary, I think, and other people that had to pay attention. That helped matters.

He seemed really amazed at how real the fake stone steps looked and he tried to tell somebody about it, but all that was around was extras, so the comment died right there on his tongue. To be honest about it, even we were pretty sick of smiling and nodding at him, in those times that he was desperate to be recognized and slummed with us for a while. He looked off into the dusty hills of the San Fernando Valley and licked his lips, putting his hands in his pockets, looking for his keys here, or his money there, but coming up empty. It's happened to me. You get in the middle of a nice, misty daydream and those big, empty costume pockets bring you right back to your life. The life he gets brought back to has a lot more money and a few more keys than mine, though.

"Hey, Jimmy, could I get one of those candy bars?" He asked one of the prop men, loud as usual. An assistant camera guy held a yellow tape measure to Robert Busser's nose. It breezed back and forth in the thirty feet back to the glossy lens and another camera guy made marks on a piece of tape on the side of the lens as the prop man stalled, pretending he didn't hear the star.

"Hey, Jimmy," Busser said.

The prop man put down a broken pair of sunglasses and looked up.

"Yeah, Bob," he said.

"Got any of those candy bars around?"

The prop man walked out from behind his rolling cabinet, its drawers full of glue and spray paint and prop man junk.

"Uh...what kind, Bobby?" he asked.

"Milky Way," Robert Busser said, loud and clear.

The prop man yelled back at an assistant, over miles of cable and millions of dollars worth of baseball capped union men, each of whom would have liked to give Robert Busser a Milky Way bar, probably not through the mouth. "Hey, Tommy, we got any more Milky ways?"

"Nope!" the assistant answered. If he'd seen it was for Robert Busser, he probably would've looked around for one for a couple of minutes, even if he knew there weren't any more, but he didn't.

"Sorry, Bobby. Can I get you any other kind of candy?" Jimmy asked.

A topographical map of jaw bone rose under Busser's chin as he clenched his teeth.

"What have you got?" he asked, his voice a little thinner.

"Uh, let me see here," the prop man said, fumbling through drawers and bags, violently trying to find an acceptable piece of candy before it became a very major deal.

"Who ate the Milky Ways?" Busser asked.

"Bobby, we've got a character eating them, so they've been going for the shots."

"You don't have one more?" he asked, standing up on the steps and beginning to pace slowly. Every third pace, he would give the glass melting glare to inanimate objects, its focus not yet ready for a random crew member. It was about this time that many people searched for large pieces of set to hide behind.

"We've got some gum here, Bobby, how bout that?" the prop man said.

A walking nerve center of walkie talkies and clipboards, Steve something, the assistant director, watched Robert Busser simmer on the steps of city hall and at the first hint of pacing, began a chorus of clicks and static on the walkie talkies of every production assistant on the set.

[click]. "Hey, does anybody have a Milky Way bar?" [click].

[click]. "What?" [click].

[click]. "A Milky Way bar. Bobby wants one." [click].

[click]. "I'll see." [click].

"Bobby?"

One man's opinion, but I wouldn't have talked to Robert Busser just then, since he was ready to focus his glass melt stare on the first person to make eye contact. He sizzled his eyes into Steve's head.

"We've got a Milky Way on the way," Steve said, "It'll be here in a minute."

I think he was lying. A big, expensive shot was coming up and the camera men were beginning to gather around the camera and putter with the dials. We were getting close. A trailer door opened in an aluminum squeak and Geoffrey Sennick, the down vested, sunglassed, freshly lip balmed director walked in healthy strides toward his set.

"Allright people, it's magic time!" he said, stepping over cables and empty styrofoam cups dripping trails of Cremora beige. It was almost funny the way his face fell when he locked eyes with Robert Busser. In a flash of laser focus, the director's afternoon went from enjoyment to emergency salvage.

"Bobby, Hey, ready to rock?" he attempted.

Robert Busser's jaw clenched a few times and he brushed at some paint speckles with his toe.

The director mumbled something to Steve, his assistant, and Steve mumbled something back, checking carefully that the star wasn't watching before rolling his eyes and shaking his head.

"O.K. Bobby, we're going to get this shot the first take, I know it," the director said from behind the camera, "let me take a look at this."

He sat on the rolling camera dolly and looked through the lens, moving the camera all around to look at the hundred extras, the city hall, the supporting actors and the simmering star, now looking out at the mountains again.

Nobody really heard him when he said it, but I was close enough to hear him whisper, "Can't even get a lousy Milky Way bar on this B movie. Hacks. You stupid hacks." I was sitting on the steps maybe ten feet from the guy, but when he started the mumbling I started sliding my butt to the right, getting the hell away from him.

Steve turned his back to all of us, but you could hear him through every radio on the set.

[click]. "What's happening with the Milky Way?" [click].

[click]. "Looking for it. Hang on." [click].

[click]. "Go buy one if you have to. Fast." [click].

[click]. "Understood." [click].

Steve clicked twice and turned back around.

The director came out from behind the knot of camera equipment and jogged up the stairs through a slalom of silver poles that lofted lamps of incredible wattage into the chunky, San Fernando Valley air. Flaming kettle drums of synthetic sunlight bursting through diffusers and shades, all focused on one man's taut face, now scanning the horizon.

"Bobby," the director said, from two steps away. Busser was so concentrated on the horizon that the director looked at it, expecting to see something. Nothing was there, but the actor kept looking, not saying a word.

"Bobby, everything's going great. I saw the dailies and everything looks fantastic."

A few visible jaw clenches from Busser.

"This big shot is going to be over with in a minute and then we'll take a long break, O.K.?" Geoffrey said. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see his assistant stomping around, talking on his radio. I heard it. It was a lot of clicks and yelling about candy.

Robert Busser didn't look into his eyes, or even close, but he did turn in his direction and say, "I don't know what the big deal is about a Milky Way bar."

"What, you want a Milky Way bar?" the director asked.

Through a bunch of really expensive dental work, Busser said, "I've asked for one like five times."

The director yelled to Steve, "Steve, let's get a Milky Way up here. Yesterday."

"Working on it," Steve said. The set exploded in clicks and radioed screams.

"Bobby," the director said, "as soon as we finish this master shot, we'll have a case of them for you." He retreated down the steps and behind his giant camera, looking through the lens again, more to buffer the stare of his star than to look at the composition of the shot. He looked at his assistant. "Are we ready to shoot this thing?"

Steve consulted the crowd around the camera. "Ready?" he asked. "Ready."

"O.K. everybody up. Let's go," a guy in charge of all us extras said. We all stood up slowly, putting magazines into inside pockets and stuffing the rest of bran muffins into our mouths.

[click]. "Background people ready?" Steve radioed.

[click]. "Background ready," our guy answered. They were maybe twenty feet apart.

"O.K. let's shoot this people!" Steve yelled. Styrofoam cups got put down and the whole place really buzzed to life. Microphones hanging on long poles floated over the city hall steps and people fussed with our clothes roughly, disappearing before we could even sense their presence.

At first we thought he was rehearsing his action for the shot, but in a series of loud, echoing stomps, Robert Busser slammed down the city hall steps. We knew he wasn't rehearsing when he began screaming "Stupid B movie hacks!" from his very core. Nobody said anything as a sea of bowed heads parted and he blazed past.

"Hack director can't even run a set!"

The veins on his neck were as colorful and thick as mountain climbing ropes.

The director took his eye from the camera's eyepiece and rested his head on the grey Panavision film canister balanced on top. He put his hands in the pockets of his down vest and for a minute it looked like he was taking a nap. As the metal door of Robert Busser's trailer slammed with a ping I've never heard one of those things make before, we all sat back down. [click]. "we're holding." [click]. Steve said into his radio, looking at the ground.

You could still hear muffled screams from inside the trailer. The same stuff about hacks and candy. And worse stuff too. It might sound stupid, but I sort of walked down the steps to get closer to the director and camera guys at this point. You never know what might happen and if they fired Robert Busser, you know, I might as well be just standing around. The guy in charge of the extras yelled at me to get back on the steps, but I didn't hear him.

I got about ten feet away from the camera before stopping to stand around and get used to being there. The people on the set were looking through me like I was gauze and that was O.K. with me, since they weren't kicking me out. After a minute of that I got this weird feeling like I was invisible. I thought I could do a tango, clucking like a chicken and nobody would even flinch. The director looked out at the same mountains that Robert Busser had and took off his sunglasses, revealing two red eyes, cradled in sagging folds of thin flesh.

"I'm tired. I'm really, really tired," he said to the mountains, quietly.

"Workin' hard, huh?" I said to him, immediately fizzing into everyone's consciousness and receiving lots of quizzical stares.

"Yeah," the director answered. He looked me in the eyes, trying to figure out who I was.

"Would you get back on the stairs, please?" Steve said.

As I walked up the stairs, I heard Steve apologize to Geoff for letting me get that close to him.

"That's a wrap, Steve. We're not gonna get it today," the director said. [click]. "That's a wrap." [click]. "That's a wrap, everybody," Steve shouted. The set erupted in the crumbling energy of leaving. Nobody even paid much attention to Robert Busser's rocking trailer as they walked toward the parking lot. We all just left.

As I pulled my '72 Cutlass up to the first red light outside the studio lot, I ended up next to a nail polish red Mercedes and looked in. Amidst leather padding and the glow of cellular phone buttons, Geoffrey Sennick leaned his head against the steering wheel. He slammed his fists onto the padded dashboard behind the tinted, soundproof glass, sitting in as close to a fetal position as you can get while still being able to drive. The light turned green and he just sat there with his face in the steering wheel. I thought, "Green means go, mister director, and including all the bumps I made eighty seven dollars today. Not bad. Not bad at all." Then I pulled away.