Being an Extra, Extra! Read All About Life as Living Backdrop

Scene I:

Exterior. A bustling street in “Los Angeles.” Midday.

All eyes follow actor John Travolta as he strides across Main Street in downtown Ventura. The character he plays is in the process of stealing $6 billion from the fictional Worldbanc.

For the star of such action thrillers as “Broken Arrow” and “Face/Off,” it’s just another day on the job.

Over Travolta’s shoulder and all around him, SWAT team members train their sights on him. Reporters angle for better position. Pedestrians gather to see what’s going on.

Days earlier, some of these cinematic characters were Ventura County residents minding their own business when a casting director decided they had the right look. And if all goes well, when the Warner Bros. film “Swordfish” hits movie theaters next June, no one will notice them.

People go to the movies to see big stars like Travolta or his co-star, Halle Berry, not “paramedic No. 2.” But movie extras--the people crossing the street, buying a magazine or cashing a check during a scene--make it all work.

Extras are the often-faceless people who provide a film’s living backdrop. You’re not really supposed to pay attention to them, but you’d notice if they weren’t there.

In any other profession, such people would be regarded as obsessive-compulsives. For the duration of a shoot, they wear the same clothes day after day. They do the same thing over and over. They report to work at sunup and then sit around for hours. But this is Hollywood, or at least Ventura’s version of it.

Most of these extras--the nonunion ones, that is--work for minimum wage and a catered lunch, plus the chance to say, “I worked with Travolta.” Not a bad way to earn $5.75 an hour.

Scene II:

Interior. Nicholby’s bar. All day.

Each of the 150 extras came to be a part of “Swordfish” through a different route. Some are professional actors, while others just fell into it.

“Half these people I hustled off the street,” casting director Lisette St. Claire said.

Depending on who you ask, extras are either “professional background artists” or “props that you have to feed.” Extras represent probably the lowest, most replaceable position on a movie’s acting totem pole, but most of them accept that this is just another step on the long road to stardom.

Through a bit of luck--and possibly desperation on the part of the casting folks--I was even selected for the movie as--here’s a stretch--a newspaper reporter.

On my first day, I arrived on the set at 9 a.m., ready to make a go of it as a thespian. I was going to work with the star of “Michael,” “The General’s Daughter” and “A Civil Action.” I was going to make some movie magic.

Actually, I was going to wait around with everyone else.

Most people imagine life on a movie set as nonstop fun and revelry. Behind the scenes, some think the cast and crew must be downing caviar and champagne while making witty bon mots.

The reality is much less glamorous. Extras spend hours at Nicholby’s, which sits at the heart of filming at Oak and Main streets. No alcohol or pool playing allowed. Some slept on the floor. Others played poker.

Rookie extras grew bored and impatient, but the veterans didn’t seem to mind. This is all part of the job. Ventura native Eileen Trulock seemed at ease.

“I was here when they opened this club,” said Trulock, who has worked other extra jobs, primarily for television. This movie shoot allowed her to come home for a visit.

“My folks live out here still,” she said. “It made it really easy for me to take this job.”

Dressed in a pink uniform as a waitress, Trulock paired up with first-timer Keli Bartlett, who normally spends her days loading and unloading container ships at the Port of Los Angeles.

James Schmitz taught sixth grade for five years in the Bay Area and moved to Ventura recently to write screenplays. Suddenly he found himself working with the fictional “KCGI” television news crew as a cameraman.

“It was completely fate,” Schmitz said. “Hollywood came to me. . . . I’m going to observe and see what I think at the end of the process.”

On the set, which is supposed to be in the Los Angeles business district, I am surrounded by other members of the cinematic media, folks who make their regular livings as track coaches, ATM servicers or massage therapists. It’s that same “anybody-can-do-it attitude” about extras that can leave background actors marked as less talented than those who have speaking roles.

“It’s a stigma,” said actor Laura Gray. “I’ve been ready to quit, but I need health insurance.”

New Jersey native Bobby Pappas plays one of a few dozen faceless members of the SWAT team. Sometimes background actors get stereotyped and have to fight the idea that “there’s no way this person could be intellectual enough to have a line,” Pappas said.

In the last two years, Pappas, 28, estimates he has played about 50 extra roles, including police officers, waiters and doctors. Some of his actor friends refuse to do background work. While they spend their days waiting tables, Pappas says, he is out in the sunshine, learning about acting and filmmaking.

Extra jobs range from the mundane to the bizarre. Pappas recently worked as the “foot double” for Brendan Fraser in the yet-to-be-released movie “Monkeybone.” For six hours, cameras rolled as Pappas shook his leg as though a cartoon rabbit were becoming amorous with it.

Actors in these incidental parts aspire to one day land a principal part, one in which they get to stand next to the star or even get a few lines. Most will never make it. But still they try, and in the meantime they enjoy dressing up to play cops and robbers or reporters and hostages.

Some extras say they struggle to answer when asked what they do for a living.

“Do you say ‘actor?’ ” Pappas asked a fellow extra.

“Just because I’m not famous . . . “ Pappas said, trailing off. “I am an actor.”

Scene III:

Exterior. Getting our props. Midday.

After hours of waiting around and making new friends, we broke for lunch, courtesy of the studio. If nothing else, extras eat well. The catered meal was pork chops more than an inch thick and slabs of meatloaf the size of small bricks. Everyone on the set gets all the salad, pasta and veggies they can eat during the 30-minute breaks. If extras have any perks, lunch is it.

This deluxe dining is meant to keep the actors on site, as well as to supplement their low wages. Extras who are members of the Screen Actors Guild earn about three times what nonunion actors make, plus benefits.

“Travolta’s getting $20 million; we’re getting $120 a day,” said Pappas, without any hint of bitterness.

Later, after even more waiting, groups of extras were moved from our staging area to the props department, where we received reporter tools, including actual cameras, boom microphones and tape recorders. As a real-life journalist, I improvised and used my own note pad. Most Oscar-caliber actors are willing to take such risks.

While we were being outfitted, extras playing FBI agents and police officers struggled to find the correct positions for their weapons and equipment belts. It’s all about the details: Later in the week, a retired police officer hired as a consultant had to remind an actor-officer not to point his gun at people in the crowd as he yelled at them to “get down.”

After visiting the props department, it was back to Nicholby’s for a few more hours of waiting. At 6 p.m., some nine hours after we had all arrived for work, the set was ready for us.

Travolta walked across the street and it was all over. We “wrapped” for the night. That’s nine hours of waiting for 30 seconds of filming.

Subsequent days on the set proved more productive, as the hostage scene was rerun time and again until everything was just right. Five cameras trained on the action as the SWAT team hustled a doomed victim almost to safety.

If this were the real world, the media and patrol officers would not be nearly as close to the action. But this was a make-believe world, so there we were, shouting questions and trying to get around the officers for a better look.

And then we did it again. And again, and again and again.