One movie i really want to see is the GODFATHER OF GREEN BAY...i don't have to worry about the reviews...my buddy Mark Borchardt is in it and that's good enough for me...i bet you didn't know this but i was once in a movie too...oh yeah...you might have seen it...MR. 3000...it wasn't a real BIG part...in fact...you could refer to me as "EXTRA"...as in EXTRA WONDERFUL PAID EXTRA...that's right...no ordinary extra BUT a PAID...ok ok i'll cut the crap...
I spent about 3 weeks at Miller Park working on this movie from 6 at night til 6 the next morning...i can tell you at the very beginning of the shoot i was crazy enough to think i would actualy somehow be discovered..."sure i'm a little plump and of well, average looks, but by GOD someone on that set is going to discover i can't act AND they are gonna make me a STAR"!!! The only problem is EVERYONE on that set the very first day had EXACTLY the same thought...(and there were 60 of us that day - later the numbers swelled to 800 people)
Then, by about the third day i realized that there was ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that anyone would ever see me in this movie which freed me to think about much more important things like; "what's for supper"? (which on the movie set was served anytime from 11 pm to 2 in the morning...and usually involved some incarnation of boneless, skinless chicken)
So as i sat in Miller Park night after night watching the sun go down and then coming back up 12 hours later and thinking about how i was never going to be famous and wondering if it was going to be chicken again for supper (it was, night after night after night)...i made NEW friends just like me with names like Hollie and Zimdog and that chick from Midwest Airlines who had been laid off...and better yet...they taught me how to play a mean game of bullsh**!
(yes, there is a card game called bullsh** and it's a fun game and cool people play it...ok?...although if you must know we didn't shout bullsh** when we played it...we would say bullcrap...ok...i'm just kidding...we said bullsh**)
So, what did we do 12 hours at night sitting in the bleachers at Miller Park...you know, when we weren't eating chicken and playing bullsh**?
Well, some nights it took them hours just to set up a shot and it seemed like sometime between 2 am and 3 am they would trot out Bernie and then they would film a scene...other nights they would trot us up and down the seats of Miller Park...shoot a scene...move us to another section of the ballpark...shoot the same scene again at another angle...and then again at...(you get the gist)...and we would cheer (but don't make any noise...(the sound effect guys would add that later)...look to the right...look to the left...jump up and cheer...(please people...NO NOISE!)..."ok...we have the shot"...now back to the card game again...
My being a "paid extra" is one of those things i'll always be glad i did even if it did ruin the glamour of movie making...in fact, for me it ruined movies and tv shows altogether because now i'm busy looking at the people in the background and i miss what the MAIN actors and actresses are dion...(look at the young guy in the background holding a glass of wine pretending to talk to that middle age woman in the pink dress...he's faking it!)
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