I grew up in a pretty small town that nonetheless had a local TV station (WJAC, “serving millions from atop the Alleghenies”), so one actually had to work at it to not eventually get some air time.
I was on the local version of Romper Room sometime in the '60s, along with the rest of my Cub Scout pack. My parents later critiqued that I didn’t smile enough.
Around '72 or so, The local station did some filming in my high school art class for reasons I can’t remember. The on-air guy made a point of keeping me off-camera by giving me a light to hold. Guess I still didn’t look happy enough for TV.
My last moment in the spotlight was the day in the late '70s when the doorbell rang at my parent’s place and I opened it to find candidate for the state Legislature, along with a field reporter and cameraman for the local station. I asked a couple of inane questions while attempting to restrain myself from hitting on the reporter (she was quite the babe, and I actually knew her slightly as a classmate in a university course I was taking).
Since then, there has been no filmed record that I actually exist.
My high school history teacher won some “Teacher of the Year” award and a local news show came to our class to shoot some footage of him teaching. You could see my left arm and the back of my head in the shot.
We were watching the news a few weeks later and we saw the same footage again. I guess they filed it under “stock footage of teachers” and trotted it out when they had a teacher-related story.
On a local kiddie show with the rest of my class when I was in elementary school. The program, hosted by a guy in a clown getup, was called Cartoon Carnival. Kids were just props for the guy.
I was almost in a PBS coverage of the Iditarod in 1999. It was a cold year for the start, so I was wearing my cross-fox hat and a parka and looking very much like a Sourdough. I was also working as a volunteer on the street where the race started. Someone from the crew approached me and asked if they could film me. They wanted me to holler at people to get out of the way and that a team was approaching. I fluffed the line, and the bit ended up on the editing room floor.
Like many others I was on a kiddie show around 1970 or so (anyone remember Hobo Kelly?) I don’t recall much, just that we all got to go on stage and get a prize or something.
At around age 18 or so I was on a local kids talk show called Teen Talk. The topic was fashion and I had on some odd getup - as I was wont to do in those days- and I remember saying something about how I wouldn’t wear something just because it was in style; specifically “… I mean, I’m not going to go around wearing limburger green or anything”. Limburger green being my term for chartreuse. The girl standing next to me had on a bright chartreuse sweater :eek: :smack:
The fabric wholesaler I worked for in the early 90s made a commercial for local cable tv in which I got to star as a bride to be looking at bridal fabric samples. Needless to say I was not “discovered” as a result.
I about 2007 0r 2008 I was the expert bow builder assigned to build a giant bow for a catapult on a Discovery Channel series called “Doing Da Vinci”. I got quite a bit of air time and speaking on camera. I did about 4 shows and I think two of them have aired so far. Reruns of the show come on fairly often.
[ul]
[li]I was on an episode of a local TV show in the 80s called Teen Talk as part of a panel of kids and adults discussing the benefits of the Big Brothers / Big Sisters program.[/li][li]I’ve been interviewed by local TV news at least twice related to being a Dodger fan.[/li][li]I was interviewed by a local news station while attending the memorial for Chick Hearn at Staples Center.[/li][/ul]
Oh, and I’ve been told that when my mother was on Bowling For Dollars, not all of my crying as an infant was edited out of the TV broadcast, so I’m not sure if that counts.
In the 60s, I was a kid on WGN’s Bozo show. I blew the ball toss.
In the 90s, on a man in the street interview in Nashville. I criticized the Legislature for going after knee-jerk causes when there is so much corruption in TN.
I was one of the players when Derren Brown did his chess special.
The other players were focused on playing well, but I wanted camera time.
So:
when Derren asked for a volunteer, my hand shot up. He asked me to hold a sealed envelope -and he then did a perfect ‘switch’ on me (even though I was looking for it)
afterwards we were all asked for brief comments. The others just said they’d enjoyed being asked to take part and that Derren had done well (and he did do the whole 2 hours in a single take!) However I stuck in comments like “I’m going to lie awake tonight wondering how Derren did it” and “when he revealed the contents of the envelope, I nearly fell off my chair!”. These two remarks were repeatedly used in the trailers for a week before the show aired.
About 20 yrs ago, some friends and I were about to stand in line at the movies when a reporter and camera crew came our way. My friends evaporated, and I found myself alone in front of the reporter chick. She asked me something about gun control, and I ripped a completely brilliant reply off the top of my head. She said, “OK, let’s use that.”
The camera light came on, shining directly in my face, and I completely forgot what I had said. When she asked me the question again, I just babbled like a moron. The next day a friend called me up and told me she saw me on the 11:00 news. I said “Oh my god, they used it, did I look like a complete idiot?” She said she didn’t really hear what I said. She just happened to hear my voice on TV and saw me talking.
I was a talking head on a History Channel special -actual history rather than cryptozoology and nothing to do with Hitler. They flew me out to Beverly (Hills that is) and interviewed me for about three hours. They used about five minutes on the special, which all in all was okay…I was concerned I wouldn’t make it at all.
They were warm, friendly, appreciative, and generally delightful. They were also almost unbelievably disorganized, from not calling me when they were supposed to to calling the wrong number, from changing the date of the shoot about ten times in three days to forgetting to actually pay for the plane ticket (they did reimburse me later). Quite the experience.
That’s the performance before which my parents got stuck on a traffic jam on the autobahn. So many people headed to Berlin that they clogged the highway!!!
My folks had no idea there was a concert, but took video of the stopped cars, with tons of young people milling about.
In third grade, my Cub Scout troupe went to our local UHF station’s “Kids Playhouse” kind of things (It was called “Magic Circus”). The host was a ringmaster, and between cartoon and magic tricks he would stop by and briefly interview each kid. We were given hot dogs and chocolate milk (bleh), and when the camera was coming my way I hid my food under my seat because Mom always told me it was rude to eat in front of someone else, and I didn’t want the kids at home to see me eating and be jealous.
Also in third grade (or maybe fourth), a local news station came by my school for some reason or another, and they visited my classroom.
I’ve been to ~25 Major League Baseball games and 2 National Football League games, so I’ve undoubtedly been in some crowd scenes.
I can’t compete with Shodan*, but in my days as a radio reporter I used to wind up on TV news fairly often during coverage of politicians, mayhem and such - sometimes even in reaction shots for no obvious reason.
Makes no sense - it’s not like I have two heads or something.
*shooting your neighbor to death just to get on TV news? I mean, c’mon.
A few months ago I was featured in a local Indonesian TV show which, weirdly enough, is in English. I did not know this, and when they buttonholed me for an interview when they came to film the music group at my house, and they asked questions in Indonesian, I naturally responded in Indonesian as well. I’ve posted the video on line to drum up (no pun intended) players for the group.
A few days ago on an Indonesian message board, out of the blue one of the members excoriated me for my lousy Indonesian speaking skills based on that video. Man, that HURT. I’d like to say that the interview caught me off guard (it did; I was not expecting it) and also it was only at most a minute or so, so how dare she judge me – but honesty compels me to say that, if a native speaker thought i was that dreadful, I probably really am that crappy. Oh well
Since a vanishingly small number of Dopers are likely to be pass negative judgment on me for my linguistic inadequacies, you can see the video if you like (all in English except for me!). I’m the drum player, and am shown speaking at around 1:30.
And man, I so don’t want to hear it if you think I’m a lousy speaker.
Bob Hope was making one of his show tours of SE Asia and my dad ( a US Army Major at the time ) and I got to greet him on the tarmac in Bangkok. Mr. Hope shook hands with us as the cameras were rolling.
TV, movies, radio, newspapers. I do Living History and my wife and I are amusement park freaks (ACE/CZ/DAFE) so I’m often the regular fall-back guy for quotes. And I have a thriving side-line as what I call walking scenery – being an extra. Look for me in several of the “George Washington The Early Years” type Discovery/History shows.
