Extra! Extra!

It’s bad enough that movie extras “are treated by everyone in the industry as sub-humans,” complained Gene Poe, a board member of the 5,800-person Screen Extras Guild. But to make a movie about a life-long movie extra and use only nonunion extras “is like kicking a dog when it’s down.”

The movie is “Memories of Me,” a just-wrapped 1988 MGM release with Billy Crystal as the surgeon son of “The King of the Extras,” played by Alan King. An otherwise all-union film, it has lots of crowd scenes, Poe said, with nonunion extras getting $35 a day. (The two-tier SEG pay scale, Poe said, is now $90 and $40 per day, depending on when you joined.)

Exec producer Gabe Sumner said of Poe’s lament: “The irony escapes me. The movie is about extras, not union extras. King plays ‘The King of the Extras’ but the movie is about a father and son rebuilding a lost relationship. The Hollywood setting is background.”

Sumner guessed that there were about 25 to 40 extras hired for “Memories.” He wouldn’t comment on money matters other than to note that a $7-million budget figure reported recently in Daily Variety was “erroneous and inaccurate. It was considerably under $7 million.”

The extras’ struggle for respect is an old story, Poe said: “The movie industry has made mucho bucks but abuses union and non-union extras. We’ve been here for 40 years and we’re still fighting for the same things we were in 1933--a livable wage, better working conditions and respect as professionals.”