Casting Call Seeks Age Before Beauty

Maurice Shamaly always wondered what it would be like to be an actor. On Wednesday, standing next to a swimming pool in south Orange County, the 78-year-old sort of found out.

With cameras rolling for a television pilot, Shamaly comically rolled up his pants, took off his shirt and washed his underarms with wet towels.

“I guess I carried it off,” said Shamaly, a retired dry cleaner from Michigan. “They keep asking me back to do more scenes. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I’m a big ham. Or maybe they’re trying to make a star out of me.”

Shamaly was one of about 200 Leisure World residents recruited Wednesday as age-appropriate extras for a proposed NBC sitcom called “Early Bird.” It’s about a fellow in his 20s who decides to retire very early and moves to a seniors community.

The show sounds like the antithesis of “The O.C.,” the popular Fox nighttime soap opera about the young and beautiful and sometimes sleazy life of teenagers in Orange County -- even though, for the most part, the show is not shot in Orange County.

“Early Bird,” on the other hand, is meant to depict a Florida retirement community, although it is being shot in Laguna Woods.

Retirees canceled tee times, postponed trips to Indian casinos and skipped naps to earn $8 an hour for their bit shot at TV fame. Others simply spent the day doing what they always do -- playing cards poolside in the bright sunshine.

“This isn’t much of a stretch for us,” said Morris Ossias, a longtime Leisure World resident who didn’t want to disclose his age. “We all play a lot of cards anyway.”

Ossias and four others, including Shamaly, also played chess and dominoes as a backdrop to the TV action. The only stipulation was that as they sat on the far side of the pool, they not talk while the cameras focused on the main characters in the foreground.

“This is hard work,” Shamaly said, wiping sweat from his forehead. “It’s hot out here.”

Rodney Rothman, whose book “Early Bird: A Memoir of Premature Retirement” is the basis of the show, said he chose the 18,000-resident Leisure World because it resembled the Boca Raton retirement village he probed while writing his book.

“If you take away the mountains in the background, this could pass for Florida,” said Rothman, a producer and writer for the sitcom. “We looked around the Los Angeles area for a community that looked like those massive retirement villages in south Florida, and we couldn’t find it.”

The story revolves around a former TV comedy writer who helps sell his late grandfather’s condo and moves into an upscale retirement community. He finds that life, surrounded by people a half-century older than he, is surprisingly delightful.

“A lot of people see retirement communities as these claustrophobic, depressing places where everybody sits around and waits to die,” said Rothman, a former writer for “Late Show With David Letterman.” “But we wanted to shoot a place where people experience a lot of activity.”

Brent Rickard, a retired airline pilot who’s 85, said Rothman came to the right place.

“For me, there’s golf in the morning, lawn bowling in the afternoon and swimming in the evening,” Rickard said. “There’s no end to the things you can do.”

Rickard was a natural for his role; directors wanted lawn bowlers in the background of one of the scenes and Rickard plays for the Leisure World lawn bowlers club.

He was mostly nonchalant about the commotion.

“I signed up to be an extra because I thought Leisure World and lawn bowling could use the publicity,” said Rickard, dressed in his tournament whites of bright white pants, a white long-sleeved shirt and white shoes. “I’ve had a pretty adventurous life. It wouldn’t matter one way or another if I got in a scene.”

Some of the extras simply had to lounge on folding chairs, reading magazines beneath broad-brimmed straw hats, while others traipsed across the pool deck carrying their totes. Off-camera, they whispered among themselves while sipping bottled water and orange juice.

Some of the extras, like poker-playing Max Keen, 81, got a little grumpy around lunchtime. “This is when I usually take a nap,” he groused, “especially since I was up at 5 this morning.”