One Good Deed

I booked another day on “Dr. Vegas”. It was a Friday. Usually television shows shoot Monday through Friday, unless they are really behind. Starting times begin the week very early, around 6-6:30am. As the week progresses, depending on how fast they are shooting, the start times become later and later in the day. Therefore, Fridays are usually the latest days to work. Our call time for the show was 3:30 pm, so I knew that I would be there until the early hours of the next morning. Being an extra, you expect an average of 12-hour days. Being a non-union extra, you want those long days to make a decent paycheck. So, I wasn’t really too worried about shooting late.

I had my three friends there with me to hang out with. Most of the day was uneventful. The most frustrating time came during lunch. A lot of times, extras do not get fed a hot meal. They are given a “walk away” lunch, so you can leave the set and get some food. This Friday, they were going to provide lunch for us around 9pm at night. There were about 200 of us, so the line to get food was very long and people started lining up way before it was ready to be served. I was coming back from the set when they called lunch, and the stampede was on. People were sprinting for the line and by the time I got there, it was a mile long. So my three friends and I were at the back of the line. I walked up and took a look at what they were serving. I noticed that people were taking their sweet time getting food. Girls were building the “perfect salad” piece by piece. Guys were loading up 2-3 containers apiece then setting each plate down at each station to fill up more space. I saw one girl taking her sweet time putting on salad dressing. “A dribble here, a dabble there, maybe more, no I don’t need the calories, well I have been working hard, sure a little more won’t hurt a bit, a little more here, make sure to cover the tomatoes” JUST MAKE THE DAMN SALAD!!! I went back to the end of the line and told my friends that it would be a while. Then the Assistant Director came up and said that we could go into the crew area and eat there. REJOICE!!! We went in there and got in line. We got better food and a nice quiet place to eat, all for being last. As I was in line, one of the girls that had already been through the first line came in and started picking through the other stuff in the crew line. She butted right in and started picking up little pieces of extra food. By the time that she left, she had a whole other meal. I quietly prayed for her to drop her tray, but they went unanswered.

As the night went on, people began to bitch their heads off. Even after the A.D. told us we would be there until at least 3 a.m. I was talking to one of my friends and an older gentleman came up to me and stared at me and exclaimed “It’s 12 in the morning”. I didn’t know what he was getting at so I just said, “OK”. He shrugged and walked off to the bathroom. What puzzled me was the phrase he used. 12 in the morning? That and the fact that he came up to complete strangers and tried to rally us to his cause of disbelief.

We finally released around 4 a.m. Everyone wanted to leave quickly and there was a stampede to get his or her voucher signed. People were tearing out of there like their life depended on it. As my friends and I were getting ready to leave we took a look around the place. It was disaster area! Caps, bottles of water, plates, chip bags and napkins were everywhere. We pitched in and helped clean up the holding area. It only took about 5 minutes with the four of us working together. I could understand if a few people didn’t see napkins on the floor or left an empty bottle or two, but this was ridiculous. We found a full plate of food left on the floor. It contained a whole bagel and an apple that was cut up. They hadn’t served bagels since we first go there so I knew it had been sitting around for about 12 hours. We found a pair of men’s underwear and a pile of chicken bones lying in the middle of a table. Leaving the bones was just lazy, but forgetting you left your underwear? If you show up with underwear, and leave without it, I think you should know it. We finished cleaning up and started to leave when the A.D. came up to us and asked us to give him our names. After he wrote them down, he said to us “You guys can work here whenever you want, that was really cool to do.

So I left that night feeling like people here do notice when you are trying to help. That and sucking up a little bit works.