A Sweet Science That Isn’t All an Act

So, did you see my movie?

The one about me and this something-or-other boxer?

It’s huge. It’s everywhere. The biggest Christmas Day opening in history.

People everywhere are falling in love with that mottled face screaming those two probing questions at a vital news conference in the movie’s first dramatic moments.

My 15 minutes of fame.

OK, my two minutes of fame.

“Your 10 seconds of fame,” whispered my wife.

“You were good, Daddy, but can we leave now?” whispered my 6-year-old. “The previews gave me a tummy ache.”

So, have you seen it?

The movie’s original title was “Plaschke.”

But the marketing geeks apparently worried that was too many letters.

They fretted about fitting it on T-shirts, mugs, Oscar statuettes, that sort of thing.

So they shortened it, to “Ali.”

Like many other famous stars, I was discovered in the mailroom.

To be more precise, the mailbox.

I was riffling through my junk letters one morning last January when I came upon a much-mimeographed memo saying that the “Ali” folks were looking for people to play reporters.

“That would be a stretch,” said a buddy.

I must confess here, I’m not a Hollywood guy. I love a good movie, but only in the manner that I love a good piece of sausage.

I can better appreciate the taste without knowing who made it, or how.

I never drop names, because I don’t know any names.

I’m the nerd sitting next to you at the Laker game who’s actually watching the game.

Of course, that was before.

Before I discovered that the last scheduled “Ali” tryout coincided with my only day off that week.

Before I realized that my children thought it was a lot cooler to be reading for a movie than writing about a game.

Before the early-evening phone call that changed my life.

“Michael Mann has seen your tape, and he would like you to be part of his movie,” a woman said.

“Michael who?” I said.

My first day of stardom on the San Fernando sound stage set, the security guard energetically waved at me.

“Only the talent can park in here,” he said. “You have to park in a lot down the road.”

So my film career officially began while waiting for a shuttle bus, in the freezing rain, at dawn, with dozens of other, um, stars.

These people, I later learned, are called, “extras.” They are hired by filmmakers to stand or sit or walk around in the background. They are struggling actors and housewives and off-duty security guards.

They are Hollywood’s last true believers, it seems, buying into the notion that one big-screen appearance can change a life. They show up each morning with darting eyes, high hopes and paperbacks titled, “Hollywood Here I Come” and “Monologues They Haven’t Heard.”

They are, I learned, the wonderful soul of the business.

For which they are paid $200 a day and treated like cattle.

“Quiet down and get in line!” an assistant director shouted at us that first day as we exited the bus and stood in another line, in another downpour, preparing to enter the sound stage.

“Makeup over here! Quickly people!” shouted another.

“Move! Move!” shouted a third.

The unheated stage was freezing. The Porta Pottis outside were leaking. It wasn’t yet 7 a.m., and I had already been screamed at five times.

I called my wife, apologized for being a wimp, and told her my movie career was over.

As I prepared for my long, wet walk back to the car, an assistant director named Spoon recognized me from the newspaper.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “You’re in the wrong place.”

Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in a makeup trailer with somebody handing me a razor and telling me to shave my 15-year-old beard.

Now I knew I was really in the wrong place.

“I love my beard,” I said.

“You are playing a reporter in Miami in the early 1960s, you have to shave it,” they said.

I had seen no script. I apparently had no lines. I was strictly background. This wasn’t worth losing my best friend for.

Next thing I knew, I was meeting ringside with Michael Mann.

By then, I had studied enough to know that he was one of the toughest, most exacting directors in the business.

I had no idea he could be such a good sport.

“I can’t shave my beard for a job I know nothing about,” I told him.

He stared at me, shrugged and smiled.

“Shave the beard, and I’ll give you some lines,” he said.

“Hooray for Hollywood,” I said.

Two lines. Two weeks. Fifteen hours a day.

Actors work harder on one film than many athletes work in an entire season.

Jon Voight, the kind man who played Howard Cosell in the movie, showed up for makeup every day at 3:30 a.m.

Will Smith, who could win an Academy Award for his portrayal of Muhammad Ali, remained in character the entire 15 hours every day, never losing the voice or the bravado.

Mann would shoot each scene about 50 times, it seemed, from every possible angle, with every imaginable kind of lighting.

The scene with my two lines? The shooting lasted 11 hours and required 45 takes, all of them spent standing on a concrete floor with Times co-worker Steve Springer, NBC’s Jim Gray and dozens of extras. Everything I now know about movies, I learned from those extras.

“Find out which camera is hot, and go for it,” said my extra buddy Walter. “Try to stand next to somebody who has a speaking part, and maybe they’ll throw you a line.”

Those scenes in “Ali” showing reporters fighting to get close to him? It had nothing to do with acting. The extras were just trying to get into the shot.

The fight scenes with people leaping up and down in the stands? Again, extras hoping somebody notices.

When I said my lines, I had one extra hanging from my back, two others grabbing my coat, and another stepping on my feet.

“Anything to get on the screen,” said one.

They are a lovable lot, deserving of much better than the continual public scoldings from the director’s low-rung lieutenants.

One extra was fired for trying to be too chummy with Will Smith between takes. Another extra had a bottle of water snatched from his hand because it was reserved for one of the stars.

Of course, with so many extras required for the fight scenes, there was bound to be trouble.

During one scene, an extra sat behind me chanting, “I am not going back to the mental institution.” He was later dismissed.

Another extra sat across the ring doing bird imitations before being removed.

My favorite was the fellow who fell asleep at the top of the stands during one fight scene and tumbled down the steps.

But then a ringside cell phone would blare, and it would be Muhammad Ali, himself, asking to speak to Will Smith.

Or, Smith would interrupt the shooting on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to read from one of the great man’s speeches.

Or, a punch would be delivered by Smith to Michael Bentt that sounded just like something Ali would have thrown at Sonny Liston.

And all this stuff about movie magic, you start to understand, and maybe even feel, and it’s a lot like the Lakers, only with more no-look passes.

And then, nearly 12 months later, the theater darkens, the five-story screen brightens, and there it is, bigger than life ...

A face made for boxing.

“You really should have kept your beard,” wrote one of my e-mailing reviewers.

“Hollywood is all about the deal,” I smugly replied.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.