Have i got an expose story for you.
My therapist has told me to pen this all down to help with the voices in my head. So it's not at all meant to be anything but simply a form of medicine for me. Perhaps finding ones own medicine might help with your voices, im just saying.
An eating props insight into life on a South African movie set. An expose of the movie industry as i experienced it.
As a veteran of over 70 adverts, film shoots as a movie extra, and having the claim of being the highest paid extra for a day in august 2002, i feel i have some industry street cred to speak of.
For only the second time in my life, can i understand the concept of a pecking order, a feudal system, and dictatorial communist North Korean governments.
You see, on most shoots as a movie extra, you are nothing more than an eating prop, a necessary nuisance - must be seen and not heard. You are basically a living meat prop. You have absolutely no rights. Your basic human rights and dignity is simply left at the set door. You accept and understand this reality upfront.
The very immediate pecking order consists of a 21 yr old wrangler who has walked past a super expensive branded clothing vending cannon. Each item of hugely expensive clothing flung or rather shot onto their bodies at great speed. Creating a very desired effect of an expensive bush dragged backwards. when this no clear skin without a tattoo person tells you to jump, you simply jump. It doesn't matter that you're old, married, and have 2 kids.
Doesnt help that your dressed in wardrobe that makes you look like a Donald Trumps straggly toupee hairpiece.
I found the very big shoots the worst sets to be on. over 2000 movie extras bussed on set from far and wide. All excitedly meeting at 2am in the morning to be whisked away on one of 36 busses to a secret squirrel location. The battery chicken hocks we passed on our long trip to the set looked very interesting, almost inviting. We would spend up to 14 hours on set - cooking in the sun, asking the same holy grail question - "when we going to wrap?” does anyone know when we are wrapping?
An interesting anonomoly was when one of your extra buddies, a comrade in the trenches, gets promoted to being a featured extra. They can cross over to the dark side instantly. Some people can go from humble, normal movie extra to snooty fruity high and mighty featured extra at the drop of the following sentence. “hay! you there , come stand next to Heinz Wrinkly ----- NOW !!!"
And whilst they are languishing in palm frond bottled water heaven, you are left feeling like Cinderella waiting for your glass slipper to be found. Unfortunately, I was never a featured movie extra, although my big toe , pinky finger and left ear are splashed across TV screens from time to time. My kids bask in my featured appendage glory, and my pinky finger signs autographs at pick n pay. The little git actually feels like a celeb.
Being a movie extra with absolutely no rights was a very humbling experience – which I hope never to ever repeat as long as I live.
The bigger movie sets with over 2000 extras left one debating whether using the green rank building site loo's was worse than actually waiting till your colon burst to rather go at home. (possibly in 2 weeks)
Cattle and communist Russia surprisingly spring to mind at these very emotional debate moments.
Meeting new people is always exciting in life, and the sets are a melting pot of every sort of person, creed, and appendage.
I did enjoy sitting for hours chatting to whoever had the misfortune of sitting next to me. I met some fascinating, strange , interesting, genuine, lovely people. And, of course, the notorious liar guy. his modis operandi was to fabricate tragedies of Shakespearean proportions. spinning an intricate web of marriage, soap opera betrayal , divorce , crashing cars , spy thriller intrigue, some more marriage and loads more betrayal, all chucked gratuitously in the mix. I loved it, it was Barbara Cartland and it was the juice.
It's strange that I didn't click at the time, but I went to school with the notorius liar guy, NLG, for short. The various villainous characters in his stories remarkably resembled a certain English / drama teacher. the beautiful maiden was the sweetest girl in the school who possibly rejected him in the tucshop line.
Anyway, the NLGs game was up when on one set several of us over invested victims of his stories compared notes. we were actually arguing about the contradictory tragedies. We vehemently bickered about who's tragedy was more correct .(As you know, whatever version of anything you hear first is absolutely true) At one point, we all looked at the NLG to verify which Jackie Collins novel was the correct one that we where gossiping about.
One fellow detective extra after hearing NLG going on about the absolute beauty of his betrayed betrothed. Asked him an obvious question, which none of us thought to ask. The previous wife was described by NLG just short of a victoria secret model status. Bearing in mind, NLG was not at all Brad Clooney or even Loony Brad looking. Also, he had absolutely no money, he afterall was an extra like us all, so it wasn't riches or looks it seemed that combined the hapless NLG and Victoria.
The question was, why did she marry you? At which we all looked away and pretended to watch the director shouting at some other hapless extra. We never did get the answer.
it was very tragic for everyone there to suddenly realize that the NLG was just a normal bloke from the burbs, who had never ever even been married, eish, did we feel like suckers on top of being the lowest ranked element on set.
Needless to say, I never saw the NLG again. At least now he has a real tragedy to add to his list.( The poor bastard betrayed us all - i felt very defrauded of my invested emotions). Anyway, on the most part, every other extra I met on set was a worthy acting comrade.
On every set, there should be an extras craft table with biscuits, food and coffee. on an awesome set, this table is not policed and filled to the brim with treats ,sweets , food, and cooldrink. (extra heaven) on a miserly set, this table is heavily guarded by Attila the Huns personality clone , or cost effectively , does not even exist. a very obvious sign that Poll Pots on the set running the show. One absolutely must hide at all costs.
On one set, we were driven out to Atlantis dunes, squeezed into a black 3mm full piece wetsuit and unceremoniously escorted to the middle of the white sand desert , All 40 extras at 40 degrees. What awaited us was something out of a Ryder Haggard novel. A director sitting in an air-conditioned glass cubicle barking instructions with a mega phone to the wranglers for us to all prance, march, dance, and star jump in the 40 degree hot sun. After 6 hours of this little spectacle and feeling like Henri Charriere afloat on the Caribbean Sea. I was about to start the first ever South African extra revolt.
The storming of the glass cubicle was being plotted and planned, i was caluding with a Julius lookalike, who could easily start an argument in an empty room. i was to run the storming flank. But because this involved toi toing in the extreme heat, I didn’t.
I do know South African’s are remarkably tolerant and obedient people. When all of a sardine we were accused of collectively master minding a wetsuit hood heist. Where we would put these hoods, in a skintight 3mm wetsuit I don’t know. The theft would have been a hobbit miracle under the watchful glass eye of Sarumaan the white in the cubicle, on the hill. Anyway, we were herded back to the busses where for 2 hours we had to individually go fetch our personal belongings off the bus and parade it in front of the newly formed wrangler, director and gaffer crew inquisition. Which consisted of the full bush backward brigade and the full blue tatted assistant director. I did hear a few snickers from the dead pan inquisition when my sons Batman undies had some how landed amongst my early morning stuff as I stampeded out the house at 2 in the morning. It was eventually found that the hoods never left the Cape Town studio and just before the triggers where pulled and the nooses tightened, we where prodded back on set with no apology given, non-expected , for more of the same.
incidentally, I can do a mean dry wetsuit star jump in 40 degree desert heat, thick sand, and lots of rolled eye director shouting.
Those were the days i think so fondly of. The funny thing is I don't ever use that international product I sweated for. When I see it lurking behind me on a super market shelf I literally break out in a cold sweat and I automatically check all my pockets in case a wetsuit hood has found its way there.
I suppose on most sets I enjoyed my experiences even the few power hungry set officials ranging from directors to wardrobe gestapo, to featured models and artists didn't overwhelm the genuine folk I worked with and for in this interesting field. My toes still curl when I walk past a craft table or set toilet watching some old, some new faces being herded from one small space to the next. I can’t help musing that South African extras are remarkably tolerant and obedient prey for the capitalist giants advertising machine. Cattle prod branding and communist Russia surprisingly spring to mind at this very emotional moment. The perfect fusion of communism in its raw dirty little capitalist form.
My crowning acting glory came when i was a dead body in a movie. Infact i was Brian Browns dead body, (cocktail) Peter Weller was also staring (robocop), and the guy who acted as the betraying king in braveheart Heavyweight hollywood.
My oscar worthy performance debut. Brian Browns dead body double. He had got shot dead in the movie, and they required my highly tuned acting skills as his dead body. I was actually given the clothes brian wore and headed to set for my major role as his shot up dead body. There is one small snag, brian is 6.6, and he has a shoe size of 13.
If you look at me with the lights off and at a 30-degree angle to the westerly setting sun. I look like him for 3 tenths of a second just before the gamma rays fry the batteries.
So the director says to me , "Who the hell are you?" I tell him im the dead body of brian browns character. He looked at me, disgusted, and realised the budget on his movie had just been cut.
He shoved me in an oil barrel with my legs sticking out. Where i acted my guts out for 4 solid hrs. I was the only actively farting dead body ever to make it on screen in an action movie with a braveheart celebrity. You can take my face off screen, but you can't take away my FREEDOM!
The director decided he was going to get his full fare of my superior acting. He made me a stuntman on set. I did 2 stunts on this movie, diving out the way of a speeding ambulance just before it crashed through a huge glass structure.
And i also drove a car into another, not as good as me, stuntman. After my 3rd take, the director said if i didn't get it right now, i would never work on another set in Cape Town again. I drove that dude plat. Still walks with a limp.
I will send a still of the movie, just before brian was shot dead. He was also exploded abit. The now famous oil barrel i was acting in is to the side of the shot.
The chap with the green dot is brian. He is 6.6. So you can just imagine how i had to act to fill those Size 13 shoes.
