In Orange, Movie Extras Hanker for a Bit of the Spotlight

It was strictly ‘60s in Helen Caldwell’s house Monday night as she poufed and teased her hair for her first day as an extra in a new Tom Hanks movie.

“It’s been a long time since I slept in sponge curlers,” said Caldwell, 57, who had earlier been given a diagram of how to do her hair. “I’ve slept better.”

But she and scores of local amateur actors gamely appeared at 4:30 Tuesday morning for their debut as extras in the 1964-era movie, “That Thing You Do.”

And they weren’t alone in going retro.

The Old Towne section of Orange looked close enough to Erie, Pa., where the film is set, for exterior shots. And the inside of Watson’s Soda Fountain and Lunch Counter was so perfect for the period that the casting director signed on the waitresses as extras.

Watson’s itself was sealed off from hundreds of prying eyes by huge black screens and scrims and only extras got more than a glimpse of Hanks, who wrote the movie about a rock band and is also directing and acting in it.

Parts of East Chapman Avenue and North Glassell Street are quickly transforming into Erie. The letters on the wall of Wells Fargo Bank have made way for the Erie Public Library logo, and old Buicks, Chevys and Fords were parked on a street complete with 1960s parking meters. The antique shops are well hidden behind new 1960s facades with Art Deco lettering.

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Workers even tore the old brown leaves off trees and hand-wired fake green ones in their place.

Enough merchants complained about the chaos and potential loss of business to give Lori Corbett, the city’s liaison with the movie studio, nightmares for weeks.

Movies and commercials have been filmed in Orange in the past, but only last year did the city break a five-year industry “blackball” because of the business community’s lack of cooperation with production crews, Corbett said.

City authorities are keeping traffic disruption to a minimum and allowing nearly all the shops to remain open for the duration of filming. A few merchants refused to cooperate this time, but most allowed sets to be built around their stores. One antique-store owner even put up a “Tom Hanks for President in 1996” poster in his window.

Extras and others involved in the filming said the excitement has made the disruptions bearable.

“You get pampered for an hour and they do your hair and wardrobe and then you get to meet Tom Hanks,” said 18-year-old Amanda Beamish of La Habra, in her costume of a corduroy shirt, pedal pushers and a headband over her flipped red hair. She and three other extras rehashed the morning’s shoot in which they had to repeatedly mimic having a conversation without saying anything loud enough to drown out the lead actors.

“It’s exciting because we’re the four people chosen out of thousands to be sitting at that table in Watson’s,” Beamish said.

Nicolina Gallagher, a 19-year-old Diamond Bar resident, smoked Lark after Lark cigarette for the morning scene, which just contributed to her nerves. “I had about eight cups of coffee before we started,” she said.

Onlookers were largely disappointed the first day because Hanks was inside, but film coordinators said exterior shooting will begin later this week, with the last day of shooting scheduled for Dec. 12.

Other watchers, who usually spend their mornings sipping coffee at Watson’s, were dismayed by the inconvenience. “I have to drive three miles to eat breakfast now,” said Pat Maher, an 87-year-old local.

But most were as excited as Ronnie Habiger, a health practitioner in Orange. “I was born and raised here, so it’s a big deal,” she said of the filming. “I’ll hang around until I see Tom Hanks.”