Part Two of Hollywood an Insiders View

OK folks, If you didn't read part one, just go back ( or should I say down) to the last entry. Read that first!

Those of you who know me well can imagine how I was feeling and looking when the big day arrived and I reported to the set at 6 am. I didn’t have to talk to anyone though, and that was good. They had a huge coffee urn, and that was good too. I just got in line, gave my name, and was ushered off to the wardrobe tent where two girls helped me get strapped back into my costume. Then I was herded over to “hair” and had my long hair tied into a knot, pinned, sprayed, and hid under a bonnet (which I thought was rather odd because I got the part so they could do western-y/victorian style-ish-y things to my long hair. However, when the sand storm started I was so happy I had a bonnet on, I can’t even tell you…)

Then I was shuffled to “makeup” where they said “no one gets makeup because this is a realistic period piece and only saloon girls wore makeup back then”. I was shocked! Here I was, about to have a real part in a real movie and I find I am to be forever immortalized on the silver screen with no make-up! How will my friends even recognize me? I try to talk them into “just shoring up my weak eyebrows and giving me a bit of concealer and some lip gloss” but it’s a no-go.

After that I was asked to hang out in the breakfast tent, eat, and listen for someone to call my name. I ate, but just a little because the corset was so tight, and promptly tried to fall asleep with my head on the table, but found it impossible because I couldn’t sit down all the way with the bustle and corset on. All I could do was perch on the very edge of a chair, and then I had to extend my legs down and back under the chair so my torso wasn’t bent because it wouldn’t bend! I was like Herman Munster- my body was ridged, there was no bend anywhere! Good God all Mighty, this was gonna be a long day.

After an hour or so, I was loaded onto a bus (I had to stand as sitting was almost impossible) with a bunch of other extras and we headed for the “lot”. If you ever saw the movie Wild Wild West, with Will Smith, you have seen the town we were filming in. I guess they torched part of it in that movie, and this movie was able to use the rest of the set for its short in-town scenes.

Any-hoo, we were deposited on the back side of the lot and told to stay in or behind this big old barn, and if we needed anything at all, talk to our keepers, a couple of young ladies whose job was to keep track of us amateurs. I walked inside the barn. There were tables and chairs and all kinds of snack foods and drinks and sandwich fixings, and I was thinking the caterers were the busiest people on the set.

So here I was, in the barn with about fiftey other extras, all dressed up in period costumes with no place to go. We sat, and we sat, and we sat, and …someone was calling my name! This is it! They want me on the set! They are asking for me by name! I went outside to find a woman yelling my name at the top of her lungs, and all the other extras looking from one to another baffled, trying to figure out who I was and why they were calling my name. But no, it wasn’t my call to greatness, it was just a friend of mine, part of the special effects team, wanting to have a word with me. He knew I was on the set and among the extras, so he had our keeper yelling for me. We had a nice chat, then I went back to the barn. It was noon by then, six hours on the set and I had done nothing but get dressed and eat, and I had seen not a single camera.

Pretty soon the keepers came and rounded us all up, put us back on the bus and took us off the lot, back to the entrance, costume and make-up area, back to the big tent of food because it was lunchtime. Now I mean it when I say I thought the caterers were the busiest people on the set. The breakfast had been full out eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, French toast, muffins, cereal, juice, milk- an all you could eat, all you could want breakfast extravaganza. The snacks in the barn were numerous and tasty and now- now the lunch was just as amazing!

It was like dining on a cruse ship, way to much food, to many choices (all of them good) and a full array of interesting characters to slide up to the buffet with. By that time we extras had bonded and were on a first name basis. We had our histories and had gravitated into little cliques like people do when they are in a big group. Of course we were all “in character”, being the professional novices we were, and it was hard to tell who was who or what was what. I sat with a “frontier family’ of dad, mom and daughter, a cattle rustler, the sheriff’s dog handler and a cowpoke. The “family” were repeats, they actually worked as extras on a regular basis. The rest of us were first timers. Most everyone I met said the same thing- they just wanted to see what it was like, to work on a movie.

When the lunch hour was up they herded us back into the bus and took us back to the barn, where an entire new array of snacks had been set up and – gasp- someone had set out decks of cards. This, I thought, does not look good. It looks like we are not going to get to the front of this barn anytime soon. OH-did I mention that from the front windows of the barn we could peek out and see the set just down the street? Did I mention that occasionally something on the set would cause a stir in the barn? Like- horses pulling at a wagon driven by Tommy Lee Jones tearing by the barn, or a horse galloping by with Kate Blanchett astride, or a whole group of outlaw-y looking guys riding by with dust clouds following. We knew there was action on the set, we just were not a part of it.

By mid afternoon I was so tired of sitting (actually, standing because, like Herman, I couldn’t bend) around, I was ready for a nap. The problem was, I couldn’t really sit down and I’m not good at sleeping standing up. There really was no place that I could lay down and not get up without dust all over that beautiful Victorian dress. I couldn’t sit and bend foreword with my head on a table, because, like Herman Munster, I couldn’t bend. And I couldn’t just sit back in a chair and just let my head drop to my chest, because I had on a bustle that I couldn’t sit back on.

My mind was playing through all these assorted western life scenarios I had seen on TV and I was wondering- how did women do that dressed like this?- and I came to the conclusion that women didn’t do much of anything back then, not dressed like I was anyway. They must have had looser “ at home” clothes to do the cooking, cleaning and baby raising in, there is no way they could have milked a cow or pulled weeds or plowed with a big draft horse dressed the way I was, I mean, I couldn’t even grab 40 winks or a deep breath.

I finally settled for backing a chair up near the wall and jamming chairs tight on each side of it so it wouldn’t move around. I perched on the edge of the chair, tilted it back so I could stretch my legs out and just touch the ground with my toes, and my head, well it was balanced on the top ridge of the back of the chair. I was a perfect straight line, no bends, just like Herman Munster. You can understand why I jammed those chairs tight on each side so the chair I was balanced on would not move. The only part of me touching the chair was the back of my skull and the bottom edge of my butt. I was a sleeping high wire act, and sleep I did for about an hour. I awoke to the sound of the keepers yelling everyone gather ‘round, it’s time to go to work.

Part three- on the set- coming soon.