Long Days in the Life of a
Film Extra in Prague
Peter Falk: [sketching a female extra,
who is waiting on the set]
"What a dear face! Interesting.
What a nostril. A dramatic nostril. These people are extras. Extra
people. Extras are so patient. They just sit. Extras. These humans
are extras. Extra humans."
"Wings of Desire
(1987)"
I sat in a fake pub with a glass full
of fake wine staring into a plate full of cold food: Schnitzel with
mashed potatoes. The television studio set was a near perfect
replica of every single Czech pub in this country: wall-to-wall wood,
heavy wooden tables with brewery brand linens, and tan walls with
antique photos yellowed with the patina of an endless smoke cloud.
As I sat there staring at my prop plate with the food on it, I
wondered if they expected us to eat this cold slop. When the man
said AKCE! I picked up the lemon and squeezed it over the schnitzel
in a vigorous circular motion. On the next take, the PA* came to our
table and made a sour face while miming a sour man waving a sour
lemon over his food. Then he said 'neh.' My inner De Niro replied
'Are you talking to me?' but my limited Czech language informed me
that we would in fact have to chop that cold shit up and shovel it
in. Action!
One of the greatest parts of being a
freelancer is that I can set my own hours. When there is a slow
season for my photography work, I can keep my idle hands from doing
the Devil's work in many ways; writing travel pieces and blogging is
one way, being a film and tv extra is another. Prague is a film
production paradise: it wasn't bombed to shit in the two world wars,
so its architecture has survived the ages. This makes Prague a prime
location for shooting period pieces, war epics and basically any film
or tv show in need of buildings and streets dripping with history.
And there have been some major and minor epics shot here: Amadeus,
Mission Impossible, Kafka, Blade 2, Triple X (Vin Diesel), not to
mention hundreds of films shot in Prague—but set somewhere else.
The Allure of Doing
Nothing All Day
Most of being an extra on a film set involves sitting around for a 12 hour day staring at the coffee and snacks tent. Your small stipend for sitting around (about 30-40 bucks per day in Prague) means that this is not the job for movers and/or shakers. It also means that you don't have to work very hard for your money. Extras are basically breathing props. They producers always have more extras than they need, they never use most of them, and when they do use you in a scene—it could easily wind up on the cutting room floor. Extras are pawns on the board and directors move them about freely.
"I did absolutely nothing and it was everything I thought it could be."
- Peter Gibbons, 'Office Space'
I've done a dozen extra gigs for
advertisements, tv and film. Some of them were more memorable than
others. One long night was spent in an ice hockey rink as a crowd
extra. We all donned our goofy hats and scarves and did The Wave on
command while scenes changed bizarrely from hockey hi-jinx to graceful
figure skating. For some crowd scenes, a camera on a drone flew
overhead to shoot the crowd. The sound of the whirring blades was
too close for comfort, especially when the director shouted: "If
something goes wrong with the drone, keep your head and your hands
down, or they will be chopped off!" Cold comfort, really. How
many extras do they plow through per year with that aerial death
machine?
The gigs that stand out the most are
the productions that fed, watered and caffeinated the extra humans
for the entire 12 hours. If they had a tent on the set devoted to a
buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner—with endless coffee, juice and
water breaks—those were the gigs. The rest of the productions, the
cheap-ass, boiled-hot-dog-Czech-breakfast-gruel-lunch-bread-dinner
mother fuckers can eat a dick. If I'm only getting paid beer money
for a long day, y'all better feed my wide ass.
I have other memories from film sets
not entirely related to food. I once spoke with the Maytag repairman,
the Big Guy from WKRP, the late Gordon Jump. It was a week long shoot
set in a field in the Czech countryside. This epic Maytag commercial
unleashed a product that could cook 2 meals at the same time, pizza
for the kids and casserole for the parents. It was a mock-up of an
epic battle scene from Braveheart. A hillside full of screaming
children assaulted an over-the-hillside of parental units.
The
Maytag man stopped the battle and dropped the appliance bomb. Off
camera, I spoke to the Big Guy about the food. I was a vegetarian at
the time and I couldn't stand the boiled hot dog breakfast the
Czechstras were getting. He gave me carte blanche, the pass to the
crew chow, the knowing wink, the secret handshake, and the keys to
the kingdom. The crew gets all the good shit. I lied. That memory
was entirely related to food. But no moment in my checkered past as
an extra human was more memorable than being yelled at by a famous
director.
The Joy of Verbal Abuse
From Roman Polanski
Cut to: 2004 and a five minute chunk of
my 15 minutes of fame on the film set of Roman Polanski's 'Oliver
Twist.' I was given a simple task by the director himself. The
scene: a bustling Dickensian London street, full of filth, hay,
horseshit, grime and grit—all constructed on a hill on the backlot
of Barrandov Studios in Prague.
Roman Polanski: You! Can you speak
English?
Me: Yes sir!
Roman Polanski: Good. I need you to
stand by the bookstore, reading a book. The kid runs by, you drop
your book, run after him and yell 'STOP, THIEF!'
Me: No problem!
Polanski: You need to wait until the
kid hits that mark by the sewer grate in the street. Do you see the
mark by the grate?
Me: SIR YESSIR!
Polanski: ACTION!!!
Dozens of extras milling about the
'street.' Horses trotting, extras walking, extras shopping. A team
of horses attached to a carriage narrowly misses grinding me under
hoof and wheel. I yell 'STOP, THIEF!' I am too early. The kid had
not yet arrived.
Polanski: CUT!!! STOP!!! WHAT THE
FUCK!?!
(running up to me, yelling in my face):
HOW FUCKING HARD IS IT TO SEE THE FUCKING MARK AND FUCKING RUN UP TO
IT? WHAT IS THE FUCKING PROBLEM? GO STAND OVER BY THE FUCKING CHEESE
SHOP!!!
Damn, that Pollock can speak the
French! No wonder he lived in France.
And with that, I was exiled off camera,
another pawn sacrificed, moved off the board, relegated to the cheese
bins of film history. Damn. This pawn could have taken the queen.
We'll never know. I took a nap inside the store with the wooden
wheels of 'cheese' and dreamed of the
smažený sýr I would have after
this epic finally wrapped.
I didn't have the stones to tell him
why I couldn't see the mark. Just before The Auteur yelled ACTION! A
well meaning but clueless PA* snatched the glasses off my face. They
were my glasses. I need them to see 5 feet in front of me. Without
them I am nearly blind. But they didn't match the costume. So they
had to go. So I did what any extra human would do: I tried to do the
scene while blind. I endured the screams and verbal abuse of the
director with all the star-struck confusion of a 6 foot 5 guard dog
being yip-yapped at by a 5 foot pedigree chihuahua. Yes, the man is
short. Yes the man is famous. He also survived the Holocaust and
the murder of his wife and unborn baby by Charles Manson. He gets a
pass.
Method Extras
On the set of
Genius, an
upcoming TV series about the life of Albert Einstein, I was a
quaking, spastic live prop in a loony bin. I was sitting and rocking
on a bench at the end of a long hallway, third twitching loony on the
left. We started the long day at 5:45 in the ay em. I had to be at
Barrandov Studios for costuming and makeup, which meant that I woke
up at oh dark hundred, scant hours after I had just started the REM
sleep. A phone alarm tune, a bowl of coffee to the face, and one
tram ride later—I'm on set. In the costume building I waited
around in my underwear for the casting chicks to find clothing that
would fit over my wide body.
It's a good thing they finally found
something to strap onto my elephantine frame. You would not want to
see me on the big screen in my shorts. It's frightening, I tell you.
I wore a threadbare 1920s suit covered with a tattered bathrobe and
natty slippers. I really looked the part. Then over to the makeup
wing, where the stylist rushed me through the process in record time.
I closed my eyes and felt a wet brush assault my face like a rodent
in heat. I opened my eyes and saw a caterpillar mustache glued to
upper lip. A quick rustle of hands in my hair, 'Done!' she said.
Either she was the fastest stylist in history or I already look loony
enough at 6 am to pass muster.
In the van the way to the
location, an abandoned 19th century building in
Prague-Strašnice, a
large bald man with freaky eyes was laughing like a lunatic. It was
a 40 minute drive to the location. He did not let up. He was the
first extra in history to stay 'in character' for the whole day. A
method extra. His crossed eyes, maniacal laugh,wet lips and leering
grin had me wondering if this was really an aspiring actor or an
actual loony. It was that realistic. The whole day was set in one
hallway made up to look like one of those old style sanitariums where
they used to throw tards and twitchers before the advent of modern
medicine and the Special Olympics. A smoke machine hissed clouds of
white mist at the end of the hall while the AD* shouted "Tell
them to ease up on the smoke! It's like a barn fire in here!"
This particular AD was a fount of wisdom and advice all day. After
several takes of the same scene, the AD simply announced "I
could do this all day long, but I would rather not!"
Extra Becomes Actor: Pawn
Star
Sometimes, just sometimes, a
casting director might notice your picture on the computer with all
the other human props and pawns and recommend you to the director
personally. This wasn't my hope or dream. I have other hopes and
dreams. This was just a lark. So when they called me in for an
actual casting, I went with it, thinking there was no way in hell I
was going to be chosen. The part was for a Russian General. There
was no chance that I was going to get a part as a Russian General in
a Czech television commercial. I barely speak Czech and I fear
Putin. Especially when he's shirtless on horseback. Fortunately for
me, there were no lines, just using angry facial muscles. I've already got
that characteristic, probably acquired from a long life of cynicism.
Plus I just turned fiddy.
After a callback(!) and an
actual offer for the part, I broke the barrier from extra human to
super human. Hired to be an actual actor I was. An
übermensch.
And it wasn't even a German production. The Czech gambling giant
Tipsport hired me to play a Russian General at a roulette table full
of exotic characters. I still had to get up at oh dark hundred. I
still had to dump a bucket of hot coffee on my face to wake up. But
this time they sent a car to pick me up at home. Both ways. Two
days. And the pay was 30 times higher.
I was dropped off on the
muddy back lot of the Art Nouveau Hotel Evropa on Vaclavske namesti in
the center of Prague. This landmark building seems to be under slow
and constant reconstruction, largely financed by renting the joint out
as a film set. The entire interior of the hotel had been
commandeered by the crew of the Tipsport shoot. The lavish interior
was strewn with cables, props, duct tape and extras. A long hallway
was completely boarded up from wall to wall and floor to ceiling.
Maybe it was to protect the historical walls from being whacked by
props slung haphazardly by grips, gaffers and gophers.* I didn't
ask.
 |
| www.mediaguru.cz/aktuality/tipsport-pripravuje-kampan-na-nove-online-casino/ |
Most of the waiting around
on this particular shoot was done off set, in plastic tents erected
in the muddy parking lot. In a moment of confusion I almost went to
the extras tent, but I was quickly ushered into the cast and crew
tent. What a difference. They had rows of warm buffet breakfast
foods, pastries, breads, juices, teas, fruits and espresso from one
of those fancy little machines. A large heater tube blew hot air
throughout the tent. Meanwhile, next door, the common extras had to
get their water from icicles and chew on cold hot dogs and stale
bread. Poor bastards. Just a few meters from them, we übermenschen
were living large in a caterer's cornucopia of never-ending food and
drink. The only ones treated better than the cast and crew were the
two main Czech actors. They shared a trailer off to the side of the
lot, with their own private space so they wouldn't have to mingle
with pawns or peons. Hell, they even had a private toilet so they
wouldn't have to get any extrament on them.
 |
A Man in Uniform Draws The Babes
(Photo by Gabriela Sarževská) |
Most of my 'acting' involved
sitting around a large roulette table with other actors. Between
takes, I could sit and watch the DP's* screen and watch he and the
director communicating. In the digital age, you can see exactly what
you will get in each shot on a big flat-screen. The light hit the
mist from the ubiquitous smoke machine just right and carried into
every shadow, creating that 'cinematic mood' that makes the on screen
image look so much better than real life. In one close up scene, the
camera was suspended above our heads for a tight shot of just our
hands on the table. Just off camera was a giant flat-screen monitor so
we could view and position our gambling hands on the table. We
needed to know where our hands would be when we were placing bets and
moving chips. I saw my hands on the screen and told the actor next
to me to look at the screen for some very important acting tips. My
left hand was full of chips, and my right hand, bored and idle,
slowly extended its middle finger.
I just hope the director
wasn't staring at the screen at that exact moment, especially if he
knows Polanski. If so, I'll probably never work in this town again.
--
UPDATE! THE FINISHED GAMBLING RUSSIAN GENERAL TV AD!
 |
| Russian Roulette (Photo by Gabriela Sarževská) |
PA – Production Assistant. Basically
a recent film school graduate with a cattle prod.
AD – Assistant Director. Does all the
shouting and heavy lifting that The Auteur (Artsy Fartsy Director)
won't deign to do (like speaking to extras).
DP – Director of Photography. The
eyes of the director. The one who makes the real image magic. Chooses
the angle, lighting and mood of the whole scene, then tells the
cameramen and lighting crew how to set it all up.
GRIPS, GAFFERS and GOPHERS – The blue
collar workers on the set; burly men and women who grip, gaff and
gopher cables, light stands, and coffee. They seem impervious to the
artistic pretensions of everyone around them. They do the thousands
of hours of manual labor required to keep the whole ship from
springing leaks and sinking. They wear Batmanesque utility belts of
tools and bandoleers of duct tape in many colors, sizes and shapes.
