Evan's Movie Extra Experience!

Olivier. Pacino. Ford. Some of the silver screen's greatest actors all got their starts making cameos as movie extras. But I'm pretty sure none of their experiences included an all-night, freeze fest at a grunged up gas station out in the middle of nowhere Crisp County, Georgia (population two and a half men--none of the Charlie Sheen variety, much to the dismay of many a lavish lass).

Oh, yes. You could have called the 240 of us who volunteered for the experience quite crazy. But the fact is... we needed to be just that. For, the film in which we were all making our debut (at least 80% of us) was none other than Breck Eisner's modernized version of the 70's cult horror classic The Crazies.

Originally a George Romero "gore bore' as one critic so rhymingly called it way back when, the 2009 version stars Timothy Olyphant of Live Free or Die Hard and Hitman lore, Radha Mitchel of Resident Evil fortune and fame, and youngster Danielle Panabaker most recently seen in another updated horror hit, Friday the 13th (ch ch ch... ah ah ah).

The plot centers around the residents of a small mid-western town who go a little berserk after something, dare I say, crazy gets into the water supply. Oh yes, I can taste the Oscar (or perhaps that's just excessive levels of lead).

The scene that I was a part of from 6 p.m. until 8:00 a.m. (the vintage 14-hour, one-break, can't change your clothes when it gets colder 'cause you'll screw with continuity experience) featured a handful of the townies--not yet crazified--running amok amidst a militarized quarantine zone. Complete with souped up army vehicles and choppers, large tankers, cop mobiles and the uncomfortably wondrous "cattle cruiser" as we came to call it, the scene looked about as scarily official as you could make it.

My task, along with about 20 other lucky, hand-picked extras, was to ride with the main actors in the large "cattle cruiser" (a semi with a caged-in back where cows and hay would be stored) and make a disoriented exit once we pulled into the quarantine zone. One of the director's assistants coached us on where to look/move/stand and said we could run in front of, behind and even into the main actors as long as we didn't interfere with their dialogue. Not many of the extras took that advice. Did I? In the words of Cosmo Kramer, "you better believe it!"

After a myriad of magicless takes due to 1) Olyphant forgetting his lines and cues, 2) a few of the extras accidentally bumping into the camera people and 3) the director re-envisioning his picture, we finally got the "Cut!" and "That's a Wrap" cues we'd been waiting for (it only took close to 5 hours). I'd like to think I played a valuable role in that decision due to my Academy-worthy portroyal of "Guy in the Green Shirt," one of the finest extra acting moments since Damon Wayans sold Axel Foley bananas in Beverly Hills Cop ("Your fruit is free!").

Myself and a fellow theatre friend managed to follow Olyphant's entourage from the moment they jumped out of the "cattle cruiser." Amidst our dazed and disoriented ambling, we ended up right next to the money-makers as they did their dialogue, looking just away from the camera (i.e. off in the distance) with expressions of sheer terror and befuddlement. In fact, one of the camera operators dollied right up to our faces for a close-up after the actors stopped talking.

"Nice face time you got there," she shouted once the scene had wrapped.

"All in a day's work," I retorted with a smile before passing out in the extras tent due to starvation and exhaustion (and a glorious sense of fulfillment).

Will me make the final-cut (the movie gets released in theatres this September)? Or at least the DVD extras (expect those sometime in March of 2010)? That remains to be scene, but the experience was quite unforgettable. From the moment I registered in at the sign-up tent (6:08 p.m.) to the moment I shook the director's hand and said "good luck" with the rest of filming (7:49 a.m.), I had tons of fun running around, talking movies, learning about Hollywood film-making, meeting new friends and most importantly, being a bit crazy.

But then again, as one fellow extra told me during filming, "You've got to be crazy working with Ben Jones all the time."

I'll forecast that blog later on ;-).