That’s tough. There were great moments and wonderful half-days (and some wonderful weekends with . . . well, I don’t talk about THOSE times. Not since my marriage, anyway.)
But the one that stands out has to be the third day on the set of “The Patriot.” I was an extra, dressed in the uniform of the Continental Army, and our start time was 5 a.m., which in South Carolina in November was still bloody cold. We were housed in a circus tent, and after we checked in and went through the dressing and make-up procedure, we hung around and ate scrambled eggs and hash browns and drank coffee and waited for the trucks to take us to the battlefield.
This was the day we filmed the climactic battle at the end of the movie. The field where it was filmed had a high hill in the center with the ruins of a building. It was completely fake, and what’s amazing was that, even close up, you couldn’t tell. The first floor was real stone, but everything above that was some form of styrofoam, and you had to touch it to realize that you could push it over with a pole.
Anyway, they filmed the battle with the British charging us, forcing us back up the hill. Then we broke for lunch before filming them chasing us over and down the other side. At that point, the Brits run into the entire Continential Army, get blasted, retreat, then we charged. Mel Gibson was a few yards ahead of us, chasing down his enemy and giving him a hatchet bath.
We ran behind him.
Uphill.
Four times. Screaming.
On the second take, I had to avoid falling on top of him.
After three times, I was breathless. My lungs hurting. I was ready to throw up.
To fill out the line at one point, the director ordered four of the stunt men to join us. Remember, we were extras. Day workers. Only a few of us were actual pros at moviemaking. These guys were the pros. They didn’t give a shit what anyone thought. They abused the director. They gossiped about the stars. They cursed each other. They cursed every other word. They were the lords of creation, the best at what they did.
For one take, they challenged each other to fire as often as possible. We were using black-powder rifles with cartridges. The guns were loaded at the start of the scene, and after that, we had to go through the drill (rip packet open with teeth, dump powder down, fake the tamping, set the firing pin, aim, turn head, fire).
The scene was only a minute or two long. We usually got off two rounds. The stunt men easily made three, and one got off a fourth. They shot like regulars.
Near the end of the day, the sun was going down and the director and his assistants were hustling us into line to get as many shots done as possible. There was one in which two dozen of us were counted off, taken to the top of a ridge, and ordered to run to the edge and fire down. To get the shot he wanted, we had to run through this five or six times in rapid succession, and it was panic central with the ADs ordering us back in line, the gofers passing out the cartridges, the orders over the bull horn to prepare for shooting. God knows what it looked like on film, but from where I was running it seemed like a clusterfarge times ten.
By the end of the day, I was dragging my sorry butt back to the trailer, my molars grinding on the grains of black powder, but I don’t think I ever had as much fun. Some of the professional extras were talking about getting together a hotel room in Savannah the week after (where “Bagger Vance” was filming). Another was bragging he was in on a Spielburg shoot called “Battleline,” better known as “Saving Private Ryan.”
If I wasn’t married with children, I would have gone with them, an old man’s version of running away to join the circus.