In the fall of 1994, I was taking a train trip and had a 7-hour layover in Chicago. I walked from Union Station over to the Michigan Ave Bridge, and saw a big crowd and a bunch a equipment on the bridge, so I went to see what was going on. Turned out they were filming a scene for “Stuart Smalley Saves His Family” with Al Franken.
I milled about and chatted on the bridge with a bunch of extras for about an hour when someone (it must have been an assistant director – I would have recognized director Harold Ramis) came up and corralled about a dozen of us. He divided us into groups of two or three and told us to walk north along the bridge, and Al Franken would come running south. He told us to act surprised and annoyed as Al came running through this group of pedestrians. After about another 45 minutes, he yelled “Action” and we began to stroll along the bridge, and sure enough, here came Al Franken running at us with a videocassette in his hand. They did about three takes and told us to break for lunch. I was the only one who didn’t have a SAG card. The girl I was walking with told her friend, “he’s not even part of the group, and I bet he gets more screen time than we do!” I left and walked back to the train station.
When the film came out on video, I rented it and must have watched that stupid scene five or six times. It was less than ten seconds long, and I never saw myself. I DID learn how much time gets wasted while making a movie!
In the abovementioned Russian movie, there were a couple of scenes in a bar where I had to deliver maybe a half-dozen lines. It took all bloody night to film them, with me sitting around doing nothing most of the time.
My friend was an extra for the movie “Dude, Where’s my Car?”. He filmed a scene with one speaking line, but a relative of a producer showed up and wanted to be in the movie. So they reshot the scene with the relative and his version was cut.
I think I saw that. It was shot from behind and you could see the openings in the apple trees and the guys making them sway. There is IIRC an audio recording of a Jitterbug rehearsal (just a piano accompanying). Perhaps some enterprising soul could join them together/
My aunt is a hobbit in the Prancing Pony in Return of the King. She is only visible for a couple of seconds but was filmed for hours.
A friend’s uncle actually was a stormtrooper in Star Wars. The same uncle had in his portfolio that he has nice hands. He used to get hired to do commercials and ad photo shoots featuring hands etc. He was once hired to come along to shoot a scene where the hero (might have been James Bond?) has to push some very important button (evil base self destruct button or something). But the actor playing the hero was quite an old guy by that time so had liver spotted hands so they hired my friend’s uncle just for the closeup, showing the hand pushing the button. He waited around all day to film his bit. Then at the last second, the continuity girl pointed out that the hero was wearing gloves in that scene. Still they’d hired the guy for the day - so it’s still his hand that was filmed. But it could have been anyone.
Not sure if “Extras” count. I was in the very large New Years Eve scene of “Strange Days”. thousands of extras in downtown Los Angeles. Didn’t really expect to see myself in the movie.
But, i did get pulled aside for the finale fight scene with Angela Basset. Much smaller group of extras. But nope, cant see me at all. I was right on the perimeter of the fight too.
This is a great documentary about the movie extra life. I saw it a while ago and as I recall, all but one of them did it for a living and were always scrambling around trying to find work. A lot of them originally wanted to make it as a regular actor. One guy was retired and well off and did it as a hobby.
