OK, so this story will be printed in Matt's paper in the next few days, but the readers of LynneandMattBlog will get a sneak preview (thereby skirting any copyright violations as well).The background: It was recently announced that Public Enemies, starring Johnny Depp, Christian Bale and Marion Cotillard will be filming for a day or two in Aurora. (Read all about it here.)
Then, a few days later, they announced they were looking for extras (read about that here).
Since being an extra has long been a dream of Matt's, he jumped at the chance. And, well, you can read the rest of the story below...
I got dumped by Johnny Depp
By Matt
Staff Writer
Somewhere on my list of Life Goals - sandwiched between visiting every Major League Baseball stadium and learning to snorkel - is a simple wish: appear as an extra in a movie.
I don’t want a line. I don’t want to act.
All I ask is to have a chance at being the slightly obscured man standing on the edge of the frame in a major motion picture in a scene that may or may not be cut. A dream come true.
So, like a lot of other people, when I heard they needed extras for “Public Enemies”, the Johnny-Depp-as-John-Dillinger movie that’s filming in Aurora next week, I was ready.
If I have any talent, it’s blending in. You can barely be find me in my high school yearbook. In Little League pictures, I’m just a bit player jersey, barely more than a glorified blur.
So I called Joan Philo Casting, left my information but I never expected to a call back, for two reasons:
First, I’m a reporter which tends to make people unreasonably nervous. Even my family feels compelled to inform me Christmas dinner is “off the record.” I figured if the casting agency knew, they’d assume I was going to harass Depp about his opinion on Darfur and what was he wearing and how does he pick his roles and…so on.
Second, I have no acting experience. The closest I got was working on the crew for a church production of “Brigadoon.” I forgot to put the hill out, which was a problem because the song was called “The Heather on the Hill”. Awkwardly, I slid the hill on stage mid-song. Now, I had to pray no one from “Public Enemies” casting was at St. Hubert’s 1997 show.
To my surprise, I got a call Wednesday afternoon. They wanted me to come in the next day with my measurements, a pen and recent picture.
“Just so I’m clear,” I asked. “Does this mean I’ll be an extra, or are there still more steps?”
“If you show up tomorrow you have a really good chance.”
Really good chance? That’s better odds than I have most days, so I let myself get a little excited. That night, I found myself quietly practicing “peas and carrots”, a phrase that someone somewhere once told me is what extras say to simulate background conversation.
I had to remind myself: Don’t get your hopes up. They may not pick you. You might be the wrong size. They might already have all the people they need.
Thursday morning, with my boss’s permission, I drove to a bland building on West Randolph in Chicago. Around 10:30 a.m. I walked into their makeshift office pretending I was relaxed. But I was geeked out. A sign said “Quiet, screening taking place.” Wow. There were pictures of the stars next to the 1930s gangsters they would be portraying. Wow. Everything was fascinating.
A tall, blond woman directed me to a table and told me to fill out a card with some biographical information. I knew I was in trouble when I saw the first question: Can you ballroom dance? If ‘yes,’ which styles?
If you answered ‘no’, they wanted to know: Do you think you could learn quickly?
I had some options here, and they all involved lying. I can’t dance if my shoes were on fire, but I assumed admitting that lessened my chances. Still…something told me lying would be worse. I pictured showing up for waltz lessons and there would be Captain Jack Sparrow, shaking his head in disgust.
“Did this kid read the card? That waltz is rubbish.”
OK, so that was unlikely. But why take the chance? Best to admit I had two left feet.
The card didn’t let up. Next, they wanted to know if I had any talents, and the card suggested knitting and juggling as possible answers. I don’t know all of John Dillinger’s story by heart, but I don’t recall a juggling FBI agent catching him a big, crocheted net. I wrote “standing” as a joke, since it seemed to be a highly applicable talent in the extra business.
While I worked my way through the card, across the table, an Aurora woman was already finished. After taking her picture, the tall blond casting company employee immediately started signing the woman for different shooting dates - and could she get fitted today?
A few minutes later, the tall blond was telling an older, balding non-actor guy sitting to my right that he would be playing a jailer. Jailer? That sounded awesome. I realized: I might get picked.
I couldn’t help but imagine a year down the road, buying the “Public Enemies” DVD, bringing it home and freezing my quarter second.
“See that, right there,” I would say. “That’s where I was eating cardboard popcorn.”
“Amazing,” a star-struck bystander would say. “What was your motivation?”
“Well, I always believed in method acting, like Brando, Dean. Mainly, I drew off my own life experiences - what does popcorn mean? Is it just an exploded kernel, or is it really a metaphor for something larger?”
Enough - back to the story. Finally, the tall blond came back and I could hardly wait. Could “Man With Dog” be in my future?
“Can you grow your hair?” she asked me.
“Um, I guess,” I stammered, a bit confused.
“Great, well, we’ll try to call you in June,” she said. “Don’t cut your hair until then.”
“You don’t have anything for the Aurora shoot?” I asked.
“Sorry - we have really strict hair length requirements. If you grow out your hair out until June, maybe we can give you a call then. I‘ll mark ‘growing‘ on your card.”
I sat there, stunned. While the tall blond was extremely polite I’m pretty sure she was shoveling some heavy manure. The balding guy got to be a jailer, this wasn’t a hair length issue. And while I wasn’t alive then, it doesn’t seem that the 1940s were filled with shaggy hippies.
As I drove back to the office - trying to come up with a better story than “They turned me down” - I was reviewing my don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you day. Had I made a mistake? Should I have bluffed on the dancing or the talent questions?
A quick glance, and they made up their mind. My family has always told me I have a misshapen head - extra storage in the back. A girl in college once told me a horse face. (That might have been an asset for “Seabiscuit“.)
When I got back to the office, everyone wanted to know how it went, so I re-told the story of the tall blond and the balding jailer and the ballroom dancing. I think everyone felt a little sorry for me. Then, one of my brilliant co-workers offered a theory.
“Maybe you’re so good looking that they didn’t want to distract the viewers from Johnny Depp.”
Of course! They’re paying Depp a boatload of money and it doesn’t do the studio much good if everyone’s looking at Man With Dog instead. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Probably saved the guy a lot of humiliation. I can live with that.
But just in case someone cancels, my misshapen horse-face head will be ready.
Peas and carrots. Peas and carrots. Peas and carrots.
