Finally!  A film that I can actually be seen in!  I'm sure there's a few more out there, but I haven't seen them yet.  I didn't bother with this film in the theater, so my wife and I just waited for DVD, and when we finally rented the thing and popped it into the machine, VOILA.. there I was, standing in line to get airline tickets before the opening credits even rolled.

When you're an extra on these things, they very seldom tell you what the scene is about or where it's going to be in the movie.  I just reported to Long Beach Airport one wintry late afternoon for an all night film shoot that Central Casting had booked me on, and I was ready to do whatever they wanted me to.  The Casting Director who booked me told me that I was an airline passenger and to dress casually and bring a "carry on bag".  I was told that the shoot would go until about four in the morning, so when I arrived at the designated rendezvous point about a half hour before the six pm call time, I had gotten plenty of sleep that day and was feeling very energized.  This was one of those calls where we couldn't park near the shooting location for one reason or another, so they had vans running back and forth between the parking area and the set, which turned out to be a terminal at Long Beach Airport.

Right in front of the terminal was a parking lot that was obviously in use for regular passengers and airline business, since it was a functional terminal and was still open when we arrived.  A parking lot on just the other side of that one had all of the film company set up.. trailers, big white tents, equipment, etc.  That's where the van dropped me off with about five other extras who'd arrived at the parking lot when I did, along with a handful of crew members for the shoot.  First thing I did was locate the catering truck, get a big heaping plate full of something very nice to eat, then go sit down in the extra's tent and eat it.  As I was having my dinner, the vans kept coming in a steady stream and about a hundred other extras eventually filled up the tent.

After awhile, a young lady came into the tent, quieted everyone down, and introduced herself as the second A.D. on the film.  She gave a nice little speech, welcoming everyone and describing basically what the film was about and what part we would be playing this evening.  She handed out our vouchers and then told us where the wardrobe trailer was and said that after we'd been cleared by wardrobe, to just hang out in this same tent and relax until called to set.  She warned us that the crew hadn't even started setting up in the terminal yet, so it would be a LONG time until then.  Somewhere in her description of the film, she mentioned that Jonathan Frakes ("Will Riker" on Star Trek: The Next Generation) was the Director, which I didn't know until that point.  I'm a pretty big Star Trek fan, so I was really looking forward to seeing him when I finally got on set.. turned out I didn't have to wait that long.  About an hour after getting checked by wardrobe, I was sitting at a table reading a book when I heard a VERY familiar laugh a few feet away.  Some of the crew members were taking a break from setting up and had grabbed some food and brought it in.  They were at a table across from mine and Jonathan Frakes had come in and was sitting with them, laughing and joking about something or other.  If I closed my eyes, I felt like I was listening to one of those poker games on board the Enterprise, that's how familiar his voice and laughter was to me!  Of course, I pulled out my cell phone and gave my wife a call.. I just HAD to tell her that Jonathan Frakes was sitting ten feet away.



Jonathan Frakes (Commander "Will Riker") with actor
LeVar Burton ("Geordi LaForge") in a scene from the
Paramount motion picture "Star Trek: First Contact"

Eventually the second A.D. came in to get us, and she told us to grab all of our stuff.. we would be moving into the terminal now that it was closed and wouldn't be back to the white tent except for "lunch" at about midnight that night.  When we arrived at the terminal they had us go upstairs where there's a coffee shop and we all found places to sit.  The coffee shop, like the terminal, gift shop and everything else, was now closed and it was all ours.  I grabbed a table next to a window with about four other people and we sat and talked, read our books and magazines, drank coffee and just waited to be called to set.  That call came about an hour later, when they came in and picked about half of us to go downstairs and be in the first scene.

On the first floor under the coffee shop is an airline ticket counter and that's where I was told to stand in line with a bunch of other extras.  The ones who didn't get placed in our line were all given something else to do.. sitting in a chair reading a paper, walking through the door toward the restroom, etc.  After about a half hour of setting up with all of us standing around in place, they were ready to shoot it and that's when I first saw French Stewart.  He was wearing a goofy looking fake beard but I still recognized him from the sitcom "Third Rock from the Sun".  In this scene he pushes his way to the front of the line, cutting in front of everyone, has some dialogue with the girl behind the counter and then runs off into the terminal.  That's all.  It didn't take long at all to shoot, about five takes and then we were sent back upstairs for another hour or so.

Jesse Bradford and Paula Garces watch a
very slow moving Bee in "Clockstoppers".

During the shooting of the airline counter scene, the crew was adjusting a lighting set up and they were going to go in "tight" (get a close up shot) of French Stewart and the girl at the counter.  It took about ten minutes to make the adjustment and while they were doing so, Jonathan Frakes just walked up to me and said "You look like you're going to Bermuda!"  I mumbled something incoherent and he just smiled and turned his attention back to the lighting crew.  We were told that in this scene, the flight French Stewart is trying to catch is going to Bermuda and so we were all dressed like tourists.  I guess that's what he was commenting about.  I can't help but feel like he had something more in mind, like giving me a few lines to say in the film thus bumping me up to "dayplayer" status (every extra's dream!) and I had totally blown it.  Guess I'll never know.  By the way, this is the scene that I mentioned earlier where I actually got a *little* bit of camera time.  In the very beginning of the film, before credits and everything else, the camera starts by looking at several clocks on the wall that are showing different time zones.  Then it pans down, showing a group of airline passengers standing in line to get tickets, and then it lands on French Stewart wearing his goofy fake beard.  In the line, I'm the guy wearing a backpack.  I didn't show up anywhere else in the film, even in the scenes I'm going to talk about next.  So it turns out that I drove all the way to Long Beach from Hollywood, spent the whole night on this shoot and froze my butt off out on a tarmac (I'll talk about that in a minute) to get three seconds of screen time.  You have got to be absolutely INSANE to be an extra in film and television!!

The next scene we were called in for was in the adjacent terminal where we'd all be sitting around waiting for the flight to start boarding.  If you've seen the film (or plan on seeing it), it's where French Stewart buys the airline ticket off of the tourist guy so that he can board the plane and escape the bad guys that are after him.  (The ticket counter girl wouldn't sell him a ticket because the flight was full, or he didn't have a passport, or something..)  I was seated in a chair by myself and I had my "carry on" luggage with me, which was the aforementioned back pack.  In this back pack I had a recently  published book that had been authored by a very close friend of mine, Lorie Lewis Ham.  I had told Lorie that I had wanted to read her first novel when it got published so she gave me a copy and I had brought it to read during the down time between scenes.  But I figured that since I was a guy waiting to be boarding a plane, that I might as well be reading a book while I waited.  I was hoping like anything that I would get on camera and be seen reading Lorie's book in the background, so that when she and her kids saw the movie, the kids would see "Uncle Dave" reading Mommy's book.  Well, not only did the camera avoid me when they shot the scene, but the second A.D. had brought over another guy and sat him next to me before they shot it, telling us "I want you two guys to be having a conversation".  So much for reading Lorie's book on camera.