Whatever You Can Do I Can Do Better
Hi. I have a mate who was recently cast as an extra (I supposed “cast” is the wrong word, he just basically turned up to the shoot) in an up and coming Aussie flick about a Caucasian girl engaging in a forbidden relationship with a Lebanese bloke. Or something like that, it was very Romeo and Juliet for the 21st century. I probably should know the movie in detail (or at least its title), because my mate went on about it for weeks. He kept telling everyone which particular scene he was in, the pampering he received from the make up and wardrobe girls (because although he was just a blur in the background, he needed to be a sexy blur), the jokes he shared with one of the main-ish actresses, and the free lunches and benefits he got on set. Fair enough he was excited about it, I would be too if I wasn’t too ugly to be a mooovy star. But he took things to a new level, and his head began to expand by the proportion of the exaggeration in his stories. At first he was there to hopefully get his face on camera and pick up a few bucks. Then he was called back for the second day because the director liked the way he walked (did I mention that he was extremely talented in his walkability, a fact which has drawn praise from far and wide even prior to this big blockbuster role?). Next he was telling us the make up girl told him his face was a beautiful canvass to work on. Then they upgraded the food from ham sandwiches to caviar sushi. Next, various female extras were hitting on him, offering to “read scripts” with him out the back. The clincher was that, apparently, the director told him the shape of his nose was perfect for the role of the sneering villain in another up and coming film. But he was two inches too short. It all sounded very much like a scene out of Entourage, but I let him indulge his fantasy and didn’t pull him up on it. Why did I write this? Because I read this article in the papers, and I wanted to let him know that it doesn’t take a super hero to be an extra. If I wanted to sit around all day wasting my life on a movie set waiting for my two seconds of supposedly glory, then I can too. Get over yourself you pompous prick (and no I don’t want your autograph).
