I heard you accidentally hit what you were shooting at, so they edited you out.
I was a zombie extra in the truly terrible “Zombie Bloodbath”. I got to shamble down the street under an overpass, and pretend to eat a guy, but I never made it on screen.
I was also in the stadium crowd scenes of “Major League”but you can’t make me out at all.
Which movie/scene?
It’s a joke. This was a common pick up line from the early 80’s. Hey baby, did you see me in the movies? I was a stormtrooper in Star Wars! If she bought the line you knew you had a certain type of girl.
When I was in college, I worked as a photographic technician at the college planetarium. The planetarium director was a major collector of meteorites, most of which he discovered himself. He made a 16mm film about meteorite hunting, and I got the part of the intrepid meteorite hunter. Somewhere, there is a movie of me digging a hole in a hill behind the college stadium, and pulling out a football-sized meteorite. I only saw the film once, shortly after it was made. A few years ago, I did a Google search to see if it turned up on YouTube or such, without success. I did learn that my old boss, the planetarium director had recently passed away, so I contacted the person who posted a memorial page (a close associate of his in the astronomy field) to see if the meteorite movie had been discovered in his effects. He was quite interested, but said he had no knowledge of any films made by my old boss. So, I guess my only film appearance is lost to history. Pity; I was a good looking bloke back in the day.
Many years ago, a film called Sticky Fingers was shooting exteriors in NYC. The director was a friend of a friend. One night, said friend, another friend, and I went down to the Financial District to watch a shoot. The director asked us if we wanted to be in a scene, and we said yes.
The scene involved the protagonist being shoved into the back of a police car. The three of us stood on the far side of the car, jeering at the protagonist. (I don’t know why; that’s what the director told us to do.)
In the finished film, you can clearly see the friend on my right and the friend on my left. In between them, though, I am completely hidden behind the light bar on the top of the cop car.
A couple of years later I moved to LA, and one day that same director called to ask if my then-wife and I wanted to be extras in an episode of a new, as-yet-unaired TV show she was working on called Class of Beverly Hills. (Before it premiered, the name was changed to Beverly Hills 90210.) I was seated at a table in a restaurant (The Peach Pit? I have no idea) and, as near as I can tell, did not appear in a single shot.
My then-wife, however, was seen very clearly for a fair amount of time as she walked across the room. Oh well. She was far prettier than I anyway
My cousin has an IMDB page. I hadn’t thought about him in quite some time. I thought he was cut from a movie called “Chains of Gold”, but he has it listed on there.
He may have been cut from one or more “Miami Vice” episodes, but I can’t swear to it.
I just remembered, my daughter and I were on a beach in San Diego in 1993 when a film crew showed up to shoot “Accidental Meeting”, a TV movie. They shooed everyone else away but let me and my then 4 year old keep playing on the beach, building a sandcastle, for background.
No idea if we appeared in it or not. I should really try to get/stream a copy, and watch it with my daughter.
We used to volunteer for the Iditarod race. One year, PBS was filming a documentary for it, and we were doing our bit in Anchorage at the ceremonial start, basically clearing people off the streets when the mushers were bringing their teams up to the starting line. I was wearing my winter coat and had on a cross-fox fur hat, which I guess made me look the part, as the director approached me and asked me to look down the street and yell “Clear the street! Dog team coming!” I guess I wasn’t convincing, as it didn’t make the cut.
A couple of friends of mine had some of their scenes cut. They’ve both passed away now, and I guess the footage is lost, though I would dearly love to see it.
My cousin makes a hobby of being an extra in shows. She’s been in everything from softcore porn to mainstream motion pictures to TV movies. Whatever was filming nearby. Most of her stuff gets cut, and when it isn’t, she usually shows up for about half a second.
I’ve played the title role in so many productions of Waiting for Godot that I’ve lost count. My scenes get cut every freakin’ time!
I know they never saved them years ago (thus in Wizard of Oz we lost both the Jitterbug scene and Dorothy’s Over the Rainbow coda in the witch’s castle), but nowadays doesn’t somebody save all of that?
I was in a Japanese commercial once in 1980, for a language school. A bunch of exchange students like me were recruited and got 10,000 yen (then close to $200, or $650 today) for a few hours’ work. I looked the oldest, so they gave me the role of instructor in a language lab. I ended up with just the barest glance of the side of my face from 3/4 rear, and my hand moving a switch. I saw it a couple of times on TV, and if I hadn’t known I wouldn’t have been able to tell it was me. I wasn’t surprised, I have a face for radio.
Does the whole movie being cut count?
In 1988 I was a crowd extra for a “Karate Kid goes to college” sort of movie with the working title A Touch of Wing. It had a Taiwanese director with an American crew and the part I was involved with was shot in the old gym at San Jose State for the Big Tournament where the bad guys get their comuppance. I was part of the audience watching the tournament.
This was before the web existed and over the years I’ve looked in the IMDb every way I could think to find it to no avail.
I believe the Jitterbug footage has been found; I saw it on TV years ago. Unfortunately, the sound track was lost. The clip they showed was silent.
Here I am in the TV show “The Boys”. I’m a little hard to see because I’m behind some reflective glass.
I was an extra in Wag the Dog about 25 years ago. Standing alongside a road during Woody Harrelson’s fake funeral. Didn’t make the final cut. But I won the SAG lottery got paid the full SAG rate which was like $150 while my friends, who I went there with, only got like $30.
Not me but my grandfather…long boring story alert:
There’s a 1942 movie called Captains of the Clouds, directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Alan Hale, Sr. and Jimmy Cagney (in his first colour movie, I think). It’s a weird mashup: the first half is a corny love triangle among bush pilots in northern Ontario, then it pivots on a dime to being a propaganda film about the RCAF, and both the leads sign up for the war effort. There’s even a scene in which Billy Bishop (WWI flying ace) plays himself, handing out medals to some pilots.
ANYWAY, chunks of the film were shot at various Canadian air bases, and my grandfather was in the service at the time. They filmed at his base (possibly Uplands AFB?) and for one scene, he and another serviceman were asked to walk past the actors in the background, with my grandfather carrying a parachute.
It’s not a super famous film, but I guess it did air on TV back in the sixties. My mother remembers the family watching it, and they spotted my grandfather onscreen, to much excitement.
So in 1996 or so, I happen to stumble across a VHS copy of it, which I bought and gave to my grandfather for Christmas when he came to Ottawa for a holiday visit. He hadn’t seen the movie in thirty-plus years, so he was really happy with it. That night we popped in the tape and sat through this wartime oddity…and there was no sign of him carrying a parachute behind Jimmy Cagney in any scene. The family swears up and down they’d seen it in the past, so maybe bits and pieces have been trimmed over time? Kinda disappointing, but still an interesting brush with fame for the family back in the day.
It’s available on YouTube. Not a great copy but watchable.
Thanks for letting me know that. Maybe we’ll check it out this weekend.