Outside Insiders

Roger Genereux was chosen because he knows his way around a TV studio.

Chris Dernovich was nabbed because he’s big and has a mean golf swing.

And Bob Lazarus had this going for him: He looks like a New Yorker.

The three men are among eight Orange County residents who landed small parts in “The Insider,” director Michael Mann’s fact-based movie about tobacco industry whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand, the former head of research and development for Brown & Williamson who told all on a controversial segment of “60 Minutes.”

Genereux and company have KOCE--TV in Huntington Beach to thank for their flings with Hollywood.

The KOCE studio where the Orange County news program “Real Orange” is broadcast was used as the setting for the key scene in which Christopher Plummer as CBS correspondent Mike Wallace interviews Russell Crowe as Wigand on the set of “60 Minutes.”

Genereux, KOCE’s studio supervisor, was one of five KOCE crew members recruited as “specialty extras” for the film.

“I’m the guy in the beard,” he said.

His fleeting claim to silver screen fame: As Al Pacino (playing the “60 Minutes” segment producer) watches the dramatic interview unfold, he looks over at Genereux behind the glass window of the director’s booth as if to ask, “Are you getting this?” Genereux turns to Pacino and nods yes.

Genereux, 50, actually appears briefly in four shots in the movie.

Mann and his crew shot at KOCE one weekend in July 1998 after spending the preceding week re-creating CBS’ New York studios. (They also filmed a scene with Pacino at John Wayne Airport.)

Genereux, who books studio time at KOCE, received the call from the film’s location scout saying the production company was interested in using the studio 10 months before cast and crew descended on the TV studio on the campus of Golden West College.

It was actually the second time KOCE did its part for Hollywood: Its control room was used for a newscast scene in the 1984 Arnold Schwarzenegger thriller “The Terminator.”

Genereux said the PBS station was chosen this time because it is one of the few TV studios in Southern California that has a directors’ booth with a glass window overlooking the studio.

The KOCE movie extras say all of the cast and crew members were friendly, but they give Pacino particularly high marks.

“Off-set, he’s very low key and is always cracking jokes,” Genereux said. “He isn’t like ‘Scarface.’ ”

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Said “Real Orange” director Greg Brenner, who played a cameraman in the film: “The one memorable thing Pacino told me--he was quoting Orson Welles--is that ‘We’re not paid to act; we’re paid to wait.’ Our waiting consisted of standing in the heat next to the camera; his consisted of waiting in an air-conditioned trailer.”

The KOCE crew members weren’t alone in being tapped for “The Insider.”

When the casting director said she needed a “big, intimidating guy” who really knows how to drive a golf ball, “Real Orange” producer Mike Taylor suggested his friend, Dernovich, a former golf pro.

That’s Dernovich as the mysterious man in the suit and tie hitting balls at the driving range where a paranoid Crowe goes late one night to unwind after defying the tobacco company.

“I think I fit more the ex-cop look; the ‘intimidating’ part was more [a matter of] lighting,” joked Dernovich, 31, a Dana Point graphic artist who spent 12 hours filming his scenes one night at a Los Angeles driving range with Crowe.

“He realized I wasn’t a Mr. Hollywood guy, so he made a point of being nice to me,” said Dernovich, whose menacing, nonspeaking role gave him a good minute or more on screen.

Dernovich may have had the most screen time, but Lazarus has one up on his fellow KOCE extras.

Lazarus, 45, in charge of the Media Center at Golden West College, was selected to play the “60 Minutes” stage manager because he looked more like a New Yorker than his fellow extras. (He’s actually a Long Island native). So in the establishing shot for the Wallace-Wigand “60 Minutes” interview, Lazarus is seen saying, “OK everybody, here we go; In five, four, three, two. . . .”

The nonspeaking extras earned $350 a day; Lazarus’ single line as a “day player” boosted his pay to about $600 a day.

The line also made the Anaheim Hills resident eligible to join the Screen Actors Guild, and it earned him a screen credit. But his work on “The Insider” had another payoff.

Two months later, he received a call from the casting director, who offered him a day’s work as a background extra in “Lost Souls,” a movie starring Wynona Ryder and Ben Chaplin.

“I think in her database they’ve got me listed as a New York-looking guy,” said Lazarus, who will appear in a scene as a party-goer in a literary agent’s Manhattan apartment that was shot at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.