All this crowd scene work boosts my acting credentials. No other extra can sit on a seat as well as I can. I get a call back from The Fan to be bumped up from 'man in the stands' to a 'member of the San Francisco Giants baseball team that Wesley Snipes plays on.' My sitting on a seat during the crowd scene with 1000 other extras obviously impresses the hell out of the director. Truth be told it is that my red hair is the same colour as the previous actor in this role who has suddenly taken ill. They need my hair for continuity. Bet all those teasing arseholes in the kindergarten playground are wishing they were riding my ginger hair coattails now.
Every day for a week I am required on set at Anaheim Stadium at 6am for 18 hours or more of shooting. In one scene I am filmed moving up the dugout hallway. In another I stand by my locker. On one occasion I walk through the shower room in a towel. The director, Tony Scott of Top Gun fame, for reasons unknown to me never truly utilizes my talents doing much sitting. I am terribly underutilized regarding where my acting pedigree is from. We put these people on pedestals and yet they probably were beaten up by zoo animals when they were kids along with the rest of us.
During the shower scene, Tony wants as much realism as he can draw from the location. The extras are asked who is willing to appear naked with their backside to the camera. There is a commensurate increase in pay for the technical difficulties involved with being in this scene that is known in the biz as, 'the nude bump.' The extra five dollars of pay on offer has the other extras scrambling to be chosen. With that bonus in their next paycheck, three lucky actors are looking at being able to afford to rent a new release DVD for a night. I am willing to show my arse for nothing, but that is the consummate acting professional that I am.
On the last day required for the job all the extras sit in the stadium locker room waiting for our call to set. There is nothing for us to do so we just kill time. Work in the entertainment industry is tightly controlled by unions. Even though there is 15 fit and readily capable men to assist with setting up the scene, we are forbidden to touch anything. If I help move a floodlight I will be in hot water with the lighting guild. If I pick up a glass used as a prop I will incense the members of the stage hand's union. If I tie up my own bootlaces, then the costume designer's local 839 will be all over my arse. The life of an actor is similar to the life of a fireman or a marine. Long periods of boredom punctuated by brief moments of action.
I talk with another extra who, in response to a comment that I recently moved from Texas, tells me that his brother lives in San Antonio. Nothing earth shattering about that. Except the roommate from there had mentioned that he has a brother who was doing some acting in L.A. There are hundreds of film and TV shoots going on in L.A. daily. But, within a month of leaving San Antonio I have implausibly run into him. It isn't simply anyone of the random 20 million people here, it is the brother of the bastard that never paid me for my screen door. In a city the size of four Slovakias I have stumbled across a needle in a haystack that owes me $175.
Word suddenly passes down through a Production Assistant that all the extras need to change from their baseball uniforms into street clothes. After changing, the news comes in that Tony Scott wants us all back in uniforms. Ten minutes later it is street clothes again. Another ten minutes after that back to baseball uniforms. Despite Mr. Scott directing one of my all-time favourite movies, his lack of directorial focus starts to piss me off. I can only imagine what a shitshow it must have been on the Top Gun set.
TONY SCOTT: 'Tom, Val I want you stripped down to your jeans for this scene.'
TOM CRUISE: 'Mr. Scott, we are filming the climatic air battle in our fighter jets?'
TONY SCOTT: 'You think flight suits are better?'
TOM CRUISE: 'That is what the pilots would normally be wearing.'
TONY SCOTT: 'Okay but keep your jeans handy just in case I want to go in a different direction.'
The other extras change back into their playing uniforms while I stray from the herd and stay in my street clothes. How dare I cross the director? This will get me blacklisted in Hollywood. The costume designers local 839 is still looking for me. The call comes down to immediately have all the extras outside to the front of the stadium for the scene. We sprint through the hallways to the front gate. Wesley Snipes is already there, which means filming is about to start. The talent doesn't hang around to do anything other than be in the scene then they go back to their trailer. For this scene, Wesley's character is to leave the stadium in a huff under a barrage of questions from the press. His character has another poor game performance during a batting slump. I don't expect to do anything so am just standing around. Filming is suddenly called up and there is a cry of 'action.' Wesley storms past the press towards his Hummer. Tony wants background movement for realism. A Production Assistant grabs me, as I am the only extra not in a baseball uniform, then pushes me into the scene to act as if I am walking towards my imaginary car to hit the frog and toad (road) to depart.
Just because someone is an expert at one thing doesn't mean they are not a jackass at many others. Americans are not adept at driving stick shifts and neither are their acting stars. Wesley leans heavily on the accelerator and releases the clutch too quickly. The Hummer bursts forward straight at me. I leap out of the way to prevent becoming road kill. The Hummer drives over my shoe that falls off as I cartwheel to safety. For fuck's sake Wesley, can't you drive a manual? What is wrong with him? Tony is happy but not satisfied. He wants the scene done again. On the second take I beeline towards my imaginary car and stay well out of Wesley's way. My scene stealing effort makes the final cut of the movie, only not the part where I am nearly run over. When Mr. Snipes got in trouble with the IRS over non-payment of taxes I wasn't too upset. I was more than willing to be called in to testify what a shitty driver he is.
A bunch of hoons
There are two things in life I honestly believed I would never possess the discipline to achieve. Run a marathon, and keep my mouth closed if someone had a go at me. Running a marathon is certainly the easier of the two to accomplish.
With summer and the 1996 California rugby 7's season approaching I thought that I would make a go of getting myself into the best shape I had ever been in. This didn't necessarily require substantial effort. Cut back pizza to five nights a week, exchange every fourth beer for a glass of water, take the occasional jog. Easy. The director of John Wick 2 didn't have much of a bar to jump over either.
I am living in an appalling, tiny 2-bedroom house on the edge of Santa Monica's blight. My roommate is a kiwi, a native New Zealander, who has been living in Los Angeles for three or four years before I arrive. We met at the Santa Monica Rugby Club and when I needed a new place to move to he had a space. His old roommate had nearly overdosed on heroin and so he was kicking her out. When I arrived to move in and saw the house, I can see how ODing on heroin might have been a legitimate option.
The stucco house is located almost on the corner of Delaware and 20th street. There is a dilapidated, childcare center next to it and around the bend on 20th are two large apartment buildings that house Section 8 tenants. This is people on government assistance that cannot afford to pay their own rent. People down on their luck, victims of society, lazy buggers. I can't say anything bad about them.
We never had any trouble from the neighbours. Often times at night I would open the window in the kitchen and listen to the sounds of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky emanating from the boomboxes of the teenage children who inhabited the buildings. These delightful compositions help to drown out the frenetic vibrations of the 10 freeway located a half block to the north.
The initial plan to reach my fitness supremacy is to twice a week run hill sprints until I am blue in the face. Hill sprints are the vasectomy of sports training. No one ever wants to get it done but they are forced by circumstance. There is not a single athlete in the world that enjoys it. Rather than banning anabolic steroids why doesn’t the IOC ban hill sprints as a training method? Do you think Usain Bolt wa
kes up on Wednesday, checks his training schedule for the day, then calls his coach? 'Hey Coach, I see I am down for start training today. Do you think I can run hill sprints instead? I have been on the track every day this week. Want to change it up a bit. Need to feel a good burn in my thighs. If we could find a sand dune to run up that would be optimal.' After doing hill sprints even Usain Bolt runs about as fast as a kid with cerebral palsy.
Hill sprints are a step up from my usual training regime of running a mile as fast as I can until I vomit. Takes me around six minutes, including stretching, to get it all done. Across the road from our training field for rugby, Clover Park, are a couple of dead ended streets that go up a steep incline. I run the two or three miles from my house down 20th street across Pico Blvd and Ocean Park Blvd to the field. Then do 10 or 12 hill sprints. Then I walk home on legs that are completely shot. It is an odd feeling walking on legs that feel they will give out at any moment. This is going to make me a better athlete, how? I have been doing hill sprints for rugby or cross-country training since I was 13. Some coach must have fooled me into the idea that if I kept on using this as a training regiment, one day I will suddenly bound up hills as if my legs are made of springs. What a crock of shit. Like so many other pearls of wisdom imparted on me as a teenager that are bald faced lies.
I should wait one hour after eating to go swimming.
Swallowing chewing gum will harm the digestive tract.
Eating carrots will improve my eyesight. But, don’t masturbate or I'll go blind. So, a diet rich in carrots should counteract the effects of sitting close to the TV and watching porn. Not even close to being true.
One afternoon during a particularly unforgiving round of hill sprints I decide that rather than keep this shit up, I will run down to Santa Monica Beach instead. The sand is 20 blocks away. I have no idea how long it will take but anything must be better than pointlessly sprinting up a hill, walking down, and sprinting up again. I start off jogging down Ocean Park Blvd. full of trepidation. I want to make sure I conserve enough vigor to get home. One of my long-held assumptions is that the human body only contains a finite level of energy. If a person is to use it all up they will have nothing left to power them. They won't be able to function. This was evidenced to me by the fact that whenever I ran a mile as hard as I could, when it was finished I was just done. That is all the proof I need. Crazy stupid I know, but so is Cher and she won an Oscar.
The extra blood coursing through my thighs from fighting gravity running up the hill means that, at best, I am plodding my way towards the ocean. My stride length is petite and anyone watching me might be mistaken for thinking that I am trying to hold in a massive bowel movement. The same way baseball players slowly run the 3rd baseline after they hit a game winning home run in the bottom of the 9th inning. Tight buttocks, faces draped in effort, dragging out every second. After much soul searching and personal spiritual growth I arrive at the last block to cross to reach the sandy carpet of Santa Monica State Beach. Freshly painted two story bungalows and a large condo development line this last 100 meters. Must cost an arm and a leg to live this close to the beach. As opposed to the three fingers I pay to live in a dump 20 blocks away.
At the termination of Ocean Blvd. there is a bike path intersecting the east-west running boulevards of Los Angeles city. This small transport corridor courses its way from the Malibu foreshore to the Palos Verdes headland. The afternoon is Crest Whitening Gel clean. The air is as fresh as the sky over an African savannah. No pollution haze, no low hanging clouds, not even a Good Year blimp in the sky. I can see 30 miles easily in either direction without my glasses. Wow. I live only 20 streets away from this? I wonder who else knows this in the Section 8 building beside my little house and wasn't sharing? This is what California living is supposed to be all about. Sun, sand, and surf. It has only taken me the better part of 6 months to discover it. However, I am soon about to discover something else about living in Los Angeles.
A bunch of hoons - part 2
Standing beside the ocean the energy level in my internal gas tank is suddenly returned to 3/4 full. Maybe I should run up the bike path a small way to absorb this moment in fully. Not likely that I will find myself running to the beach again any time soon. A bandana headed bicyclist of Mexican origin, riding a beach cruiser, knocks me down as he rolls past on the bike path. He has a cocker spaniel on a leash and the dog pulls him along. Take your feet off the handlebars and put them back on the pedals, you moron! Strewth! I was nearly involved in my first L.A. drive by. 'Gabacho,' he yells at me without even attempting to see if I am okay. I have no idea what he just said to me, turns out it is a very derogatory term for white males in Spanish meaning 'Frenchman.' Prick! There is nothing more demeaning in Anglo Saxon culture than to be associated with the French. I decide that even if he was attempting to apologize he should have at least stopped. I mean if I was to accidently drive my car through a crowd of people celebrating Cinco de Mayo in Ensenada I would at least have the courtesy to get out of the vehicle and see if I could administer some rudimentary first aid.
Now most people I am sure would let it go. Not me. How will that improve the world we live in? I want to have a quiet word in his ear. Along the lines of, 'Hey, dumb shit. Don't you have better things to do with your time than to run me down with your bike?' (Or something equally as polite) So, I run after him. Full disclosure. I don't have anything against people from Mexico. Some of my lowest moments have come from tequila. He could have been Canadian, Jewish, or Transgender. I am sworn to treat everyone who acts like a cocksucker equally.
This now becomes a race between a man who believes that at some point all the calories in the body available for energy production are exhausted, and a man who goes out for his daily exercise wearing a bandana, a white singlet, and jeans shorts that extend to his calves. I have always wondered why gangbangers choose to wear clothing that surely must impede their ability to run away from a crime scene. I am exhausted just watching a man walking around in culottes. Would never think to want to run in them. Wouldn't they be better off in spandex? Usain Bolt in jeans shorts would get beaten by Steven Hawking with his wheelchair battery power in the red.
The other thing about the gang look of thugs in Los Angeles that I can't understand is the horrible tan lines those outfits must give them. Southern California is bathed in perpetual sunlight. Spending an entire day hanging around outside the local liquor store surely must give these guys sunburns. Having red arms and shoulders while the belly is white is a look that, while ugly, at least suggestive of a hardworking farmer toiling in his fields. Having white legs down to the calves then a bright red band of skin then white feet must look dumb in the shower. But what would I know? I grew up in middle class Australian suburbia. There the phrase, 'having to fight on the streets just to survive,' referred to dodging magpies during nesting season while walking home from school.
Reminiscent of a slow speed freeway chase I chug after the Mexican bandit. Thank god he is too lazy to use his feet to power the bike. Instead he relies on a 30-pound dog to pull his 250-pound frame. We both inch along for half an hour. The bike path heading north initially stays close to the parking lots that provide beach access for those Los Angelinos that live more than a block away and choose to drive to get here. In front of the Pritikin Longevity Center the path meanders out into the middle of the beach. The Pritikin Longevity Center was founded by nutritionist and longevity researcher Nathan Pritikin. The Pritikin Diet was the first of the celebrity named diets thrust onto a world desperate to have catchy names given to eating healthy food. Within these walls Nathan counseled people on controlling their diet, lifestyle choices, and the benefits of exercise to lose weight. All at a very healthy mark up to cover the property tax on a 129-room beachfront property in Southern California. The guests would have done just as well to get out on the bike track and chase after two wheeled Mexican vigilantes for free.
Next door to Pritikin's overpriced eat-less/exercise-more educational empor
ium is the famous Shutters Hotel. Here guests can recline in opulent luxury with the same ocean view they can get next door without some white shirt attendant yelling, 'are you seriously going to eat that you lard arse,' every time they put their hand on a cookie. Located between the two properties, providing a welcoming breath of fresh air from the indignant looks of wealthy folk, is the Santa Monica Pico-Kenter storm water effluent outfall. Every cigarette butt, candy wrapper, and backyard radiator fluid flush from a ten-mile radius ends up here. Angelinos think it all magically disappears. But no. It all collects in a large stagnant pond on the sand. The water attracts birds and other sources of fecal bacteria which leads to algae growth. It is only when a larger than normal tide comes in and flushes all this good stuff out into the bay that there is a day or two of respite from the prevailing pungent odor. This sewage disposal masterpiece was superseded by the brilliant plan to channel effluent waste water from the Hyperion treatment plant a mile offshore in pipes before releasing it directly into the ocean. One mile! Thank god it is well off shore. At that distance it is as good as dumping it near Hawaii. If Americans can do one thing well, it is not to pollute the natural environment.
Wanderlost 2 Page 6
