Monday, August 2

I didn’t do much the rest of last week after my one day of extra work. I was calling the extras casting hotline and nothing much fit my description. So, I decided to go and register at another agency. What a lot of people do is register with a number of agencies and then employ a “calling service” that does all of the calling for you. The service then books you on jobs and you don’t have to sit and make phone calls all day. So the first step was to go and register with another agency. I went to an open registration at Bill Dance Casting. I was expecting a lot of people to be there but there were only 3 other guys in the office when I arrived. One of the guys was talking to another one and was telling him the ins and outs of being an extra. He seemed to know a lot about it, so I nicknamed him Johnny Extra. The owner came in and started to give us his spiel about how they work as an agency and what to do to work for them. He then excused himself to go to a dentist appointment and very nice lady took over and continued from where he left off.

When I am new to something, I usually keep my mouth shut and just listen. I knew that these people give this talk everyday to new people and they were probably tired of going over the whole thing, so the quicker they got through the bulk of the info, the better. So I just listened and smiled when it seemed necessary and nodded my head when they were looking directly at me. Johnny Extra must have wanted it known that he was an old hand at doing this because he would throw his two cents in whenever he thought it was necessary. At one point the woman was explaining how their agency would be fined by SAG if they ever sent a union extra to do non-union work. One of the other guys had a question about it, but before the woman could answer Johnny Extra spoke up.

“It means that when you go, if you go there, then they…..wait what is it again?”

The woman just looked at him and answered the guy’s question. Way to go Johnny Extra!

Then the woman was explaining that they recently worked on “Spanglish” which is an Adam Sandler movie. Without missing a beat Johnny Extra piped up.

“I worked with Adam Sandler on “The Waterboy”, Adam is such a cool guy”.

I immediately wanted to kill him.

Towards the end of the information, the woman was speaking about how what they do is important because casting the right extras makes it a movie not a play. Here comes Johnny.

“Makes it a movie, not a play. That is a really good analogy.” He really must have thought so because he let loose with a laugh that can only be described as a cross between a Hyena and a psychopath.

First of all it is not an analogy. And second of all, I knew that I was going to meet a lot more Johnny’s than I wanted to.

I registered, went home and then called a hotline to see if I could get work. There was a posting for “Gilmore Girls” that fit my description. I received the notice at 2:30 and started to call the number for the job. Busy. I called again a couple of minutes later. Busy again. So I put in “The Godfather” and watched while calling every couple of minutes and it was always busy. I guess I feel asleep because I woke up at the part right after James Caan is killed and the phone is on the floor. I pick it up and decide to call one last time. I got through and the only thing they had left was to be a high school student in a new television show called “Jack and Bobby”. A thirty-year-old high school student? They didn’t seem to mind. So I booked it and got my high school outfits together.

I prayed that Johnny Extra would not be there.