Editorials > More Things I've Learned as a Movie Extra

I did some extra work for a Dominican baseball movie called Sugar last week. As I shared some stuff I learned on the set of The Kingdom about a year ago, I figured it might be worth sharing some tidbits I learned this time around.

1. Do not trust anyone wearing a hat with the word “DIRECTOR” on it

Because they aren’t the director. They’re the guy who is hired to keep the extras in line, and he’s wearing a “DIRECTOR” cap so people will be unusually nice and understanding to him in a quasi-pathetic effort to get a larger part. The façade wears away after shooting starts and you realize that the real director is about a hundred yards away, doing other things, but for the three or four hours you stand around before shooting starts, it’s hard not to be unnaturally kind to the person you think controls your cinematic fate.

2. Production assistants are legally obligated to have porn star names

Seriously, could you ever meet a person named “Jamie Rush” and not assume they went down on people for a living? No offense to her, obviously, as she was very nice and professional, but that is one hell of a name to walk around with in your everyday life. If you’re named “Jamie Rush,” you should either be a porn star or a private detective.

Or both.

3. People who are hired to control extras are happy and chipper to the point of inducing murderous rage in all those around them

The same guy who wore the aforementioned “DIRECTOR” hat was pleasant, helpful, and always eager to please.

After six hours, everyone on set wanted to murder him. He never lost enthusiasm, he was always excited to be around, and he would confidently exclaim little non sequiturs he ostensibly stole from children, such as, “He lived…he died…he got ketchup on the side.”

If you know what the hell that quote means, please tell me. I’ve been trying to decipher its goddamn purpose ever since he said it a week ago.

4. Production companies can get away with paying thirty dollars for twelve hours of work, so long as they do so with cash

Is that even legal? None of the extras really raised a stink about it.

5. Parents with nothing meaningful to do will drag their children to extra work and then get angry at them when they complain about the heat

Yay for parenting! Not to mention, at least three of the (conservative estimate) twelve kids on the set were mentally handicapped in some way. I’m not exactly sure what the parents were thinking – whether they figured that getting their child recognized in a film might improve his self-esteem, or whether they wanted to be personally involved with a movie so badly that they were willing to take their unfortunate child along – but the ratio of handicapped children to non-handicapped ones was unusually high.

6. Stuffing your bra, teasing out your hair, and loudly asking the production assistants if you can be filmed singing the national anthem during the scene will not result in it actually happening

Thankfully. Otherwise, we all would have had to stay for another two hours whilst Large, Sassy Black Chick sang her heart out for no goddamned reason.

7. Regardless of conditions,  pay, or the amount of respect they get from the cast and crew, extras will still consider their jobs “a privilege”

Guys, I know it’s really fun to be on a movie set and see the way films are made, but that doesn’t mean that you have to take shit from literally every person on the crew just because you’re worried you’ll get fired. I saw a lot more of this on The Kingdom than on Sugar, but the same attitude was prevalent in both films: movies are incredible, therefore working on them is incredible no matter what the conditions are. Prop guys giving you shit? It’s not like you really needed all that pesky self-respect. Getting paid less than minimum wage? It was worth it just for a chance to be seen on camera. Passed out due to heat exhaustion on a production where three other people have already died? Hey, there’s no business like showbusiness!

8. The crew will forget about you

It’s been eleven hours since we got to the set. The crew is setting up a very detailed shot – a shot so detailed, in fact, that it takes 45 minutes to set up despite the fact that it calls for no camera movement whatsoever.

After they finish, Jamie Rush looks around, realizes there are still roughly 200 extras waiting around to do something, and only then decides to tell us, “Oh – we don’t need you guys anymore. You can go home.”

As everyone gets up to leave, she speaks an addendum:

“…After we finish recording the audio.”

Everyone sits back down.

9. Everyone, from the assistant director all the way down, has “multiple projects in various stages of production”

The extra wrangler has a zombie movie, a romantic comedy, and a flick called “The Texas Killer Frog Massacre” which he’s evidently filming in his own house. The caterers are all scriptwriters. The production assistants are in negotiation with Fox for a potential television show.

Or so everyone says, anyway.

10. Anyone who has worked as an extra on at least one other film will consider themselves completely knowledgeable in every single aspect of the filmmaking process

As Arizona has just recently become a cost-effective place to shoot films due to newly-instated tax breaks, everyone with nothing to do in the Phoenix and Tempe areas went out to do extra work for The Kingdom, some Topher Grace 80’s movie, and, most recently, Sugar.

Despite never having left the state and having absolutely no knowledge of the film ‘biz outside of an Film Studios 201 class, every extra I talked to acted as if they were a veteran in the business of show. “Oh, yeah, he’s acting just like Jamie Foxx was on the set of the Kingdom.” “You know, the directors these days have something of an inferior grasp on shot composition.” Guys, I know it’s exciting that you’re peripherally involved in the making of a film, but you have to wait until you’re famous before you start acting like pretentious assholes – especially considering the fact that if any of the crew heard you saying this stuff and threatened to fire you, you'd immediately apologize and take it all back.