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Clackamas Review - January 26, 1996
ENTER A WORLD UNTO ITSELF - BECOME A TV EXTRA
The Review sent a reporter to wander around in the background on the set of “Nowhere Man.” This is his story…
By Michael Russell
If you’ve got the patience, there’s a back door into show business.
On this particular day, that back door leads to a “holding area” in the bowels of the Oregon Public Broadcasting building in Portland. Inside the holding area sit about 40 patient dreamers - regular folks of all ages who’ve put there day on hold to be extras on the TV show “Nowhere Man,” which is shooting in the adjacent studio.
The concrete-lined holding area is a testament to the almost-mystical grasp moving pictures have on people’s psyches. The extras within will sit dutifully - reading, playing cards, zombifying, chatting with (or at) their fellow man - for up to twelve hours that day, with scarcely a peep of complaint, all for the reward of as little as 30 minutes of work milling around in the background.
But then, there’s always the chance that they’ll get a lucky break. On a hectic set, a one- or two-line speaking part is occasionally tossed to an extra as a last resort - and boom, he or she can join the Screen Actors Guild.
The holding area’s group dynamic will evolve more than once that day, but the far-flung undercurrent of hope is constant. The myth of getting “discovered” at the soda fountain never really died - not even in Portland. I may spend the next 12 hours reading a book and eating apples, you can feel them all thinking, but if I unfold that chair in the background just so….
If nothing else, being an extra is probably the best education one can get on the inner workings of a film set. An extra is paid to sit around until needed - allowing for a great deal of fly-on-the-wall observation. And the bureaucracy that has developed around getting them to sit around until needed is almost as fascinating.
The 18-year-old extra kingpin
Currently, there are three companies in town devoted exclusively to cataloguing and herding “atmosphere” or “background” (industry parlance for “extras”). Central Extras Casting and Thumbs Up Extras Casting are two of them.
But Extras Only is the only one run by an 18-year-old.
Danny Stoltz looks 18. He decorates his closet-sized, photo-and-card-and-toy-strewn office like he’s 18. And he talks, thinks, and works like he’s 30.
“Since I was in the second grade, I wanted to be somebody, to do something in this business,” he says. A common sentiment, perhaps - but unlike most Hollywood daydreamers, Stoltz pursued it with the zeal of an Ellis Island immigrant.
The Clackamas County resident’s biggest break came at age 16, when he was doing craft services (i.e., feeding the cast and crew) on the set of Mr. Holland’s Opus. A sudden need for an on-set coordinator arose - someone to wrangle the extras - and Stoltz got the job, helping to organize 5,000 extras in four different periods of dress. It was terrifying - but it lit a fire under him.
So he did what any red-blooded minor wouldn’t - “I started my own extras company,” he says, with older partners Louis Lotorto and Monica Rodriguez. “At my age, no other company was going to hire me.”
Stoltz ditched his senior year of high school to follow his dream. Several 18-hour days later, he now finds himself a success in what he charitably calls an “up and down” business - Extras Only has worked on every major motion picture that’s come to town since its inception in 1994 (save Assassins), and it also casts for commercials, infomercials, “industrials” (i.e., in-house and how-to corporate videos), and, until March, the UPN television series “Nowhere Man.”
There are a few questions one shouldn’t ask Danny Stoltz. One of them is “Describe a typical day” - because he doesn’t have one. “Some days I can get stuff done in five hours,” he says, “Other days, it takes me 15.” He interviews the extras, files their snapshots and vital stats in tidy folders, and he and his staff start calling like crazy when people are needed on a set.
“The business controls me to some extent,” he says. “My pager starts going off at 5 in the morning every 15 minutes. I try to be off at 9 a.m. on a ‘normal’ day, but call times vary - 4 a.m., 5 a.m., 6 a.m.. And when you’re not there, you’re wrangling people. I wish my schedule could be like an extra’s schedule.” (Listen to him for awhile and you know he doesn’t really mean that.)
There are other stupid questions. Don’t ask him what the stars he’s worked with are like: “You don’t really have too much time in between to sit and chat.” Don’t ask him if you can make a steady living as an extra in Portland: “In L.A., yes. In Portland, no.”
It’s a living
There are generally two types of extras: atmosphere extras and featured extras. Atmosphere extras swirl around in the background like air - “You’re in a group of people,” says Stoltz. “Your face is seen and you’re not getting much camera time.” Featured extras have more fun. They’re the ones who get singled out for whatever reason - they check out your groceries, they get knocked down during the street chase, they’re driving the limousines.
Either one pays surprisingly well. On a TV series, each bit of background gets $40 for the first eight hours, then time-and-a-half. The smaller the potential audience and/or glamour of the medium, the smaller your paycheck. Feature films, for example, pay less - $4.25 per hour. Industrials and infomercials, on the other hand, can pay between $50 and $150 a day. And if you’re handed a coveted speaking part for whatever reason, the pay skyrockets.
A day on the set - or, my restful period
Which brings us back to the set of “Nowhere Man.” Stoltz kindly offered me one of 50 “atmospheric” jobs on the show’s Thursday, Dec. 18 shoot. Expertly evaluating my ability to stretch as an actor, we both agreed that I should play … a reporter.
I arrived five minutes early, harboring fearful visions of maxed-out, baggy-eyed crew members with voices like bullwhips. (It didn’t help when Stoltz handed me a list of “On-Set Procedures,” among them: “NEVER argue. Sometimes crew members can have short tempers or attitudes; just smile politely….”)
As it turned out, the crew of “Nowhere Man” was as accommodating as one could hope, given their breakneck production schedule. When I arrived, a Patagonia-clad on-site coordinator named Emily was graciously explaining the plot of this week’s episode - some flummery involving crooked candidates and mind-control - and our place within the story. Thanks to Emily, we would never have to ask What’s my motivation? at any point during the day.
A film set is not a democracy - and in the cinematic survival of the fittest, an extra is the one animal that every other animal gets to eat. The paraphrase Hitchcock: Extras are like cattle. But every potential abuse of the herd was avoided by the considerate “Nowhere Man” team. Chips and apples (red and green) were placed on the table. When it began to snow, the crew set up a small battalion of space heaters.
Soon, the 40 or so extras settled in and formed the sort of acquaintance relationships author Douglas Coupland termed “disposable friendships.” I fell in with some of the other “reporters”: Kevin, a network marketer; Tom, an advertising representative at The Rocket; and a pleasant young woman named Cheryl.
“Last time I did this, I learned everybody’s names and we played these stupid games,” said Kevin. “But I’ve never called any of them or asked them out for a beer or anything since.”
At first, everyone chattered and grouped up for dominoes and cards. But as the hours wore on, an interesting coping mechanism kicked in: We all turned into zombies. People began to nod off. Nobody talked. They took us all to a Chinese restaurant for an excellent catered lunch - and nobody knew the name of the place or really spoke to each other there. Most important - because, given the waiting, this was the true advantage of zoning out - time ceased to be real.
“I just kind of go within myself and don’t really look at the clock,” said retired salesman Larry Boone, who was snatched out of the crowd and given a two-line speaking part in Mr. Holland’s Opus, for which he was paid $550. “It’s easy to vanish into time. I look out the door and I’m surprised that it’s dark. It’s actually kind of a mystical thing.”
A person armed with a cellular phone, laptop, and modem could very easily run a second business out of the holding area - if they could stay alert and keep quiet when they were supposed to. I was there to observe, and even I succumbed - eventually giving up note-taking around hour six and disappearing into a book.
I was in the holding area for 11-and-a-half hours; I was ordered to the set twice, working for a total of less than thirty minutes. As near as I can tell, filming a shot consists of ten minutes of people with walkie-talkies telling everyone to be quite in a variety of ways; shooting for thirty seconds; and then people with walkie-talkies telling everyone to be quiet in a variety of ways.
Striving for crackling authenticity, I wore my actual press pass while “interviewing” the corrupt candidate in pantomime. As it turned out, my back was to the camera.
Even the actors were gracious. Cliff, the fellow playing the candidate, said “Hi” each time we were set up around him. When the cameras were rolling and he was supposed to be silently answering our questions, he kept impishly reciting a poem called “The Cremation of Sam McGee."” An extra’s hat flew off during one take and he cracked up. Then we were asked rather nicely to return to the holding area. End of stardom.
“It kind of spoils you,” said Larry afterward. “It takes some of the magic out of the movies, actually. You watch them and you’re looking at the extras and wondering what the set was like rather than watching the movie.”
But hey - that’s the risk of becoming part of the dream factory. Even if it’s a small part.
If you’re interested in being an extra, call the Extras Only hotline at (503-299-4776).
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