A HALF DOZEN DEAD HORSES AND I: Two Days As An Extra
By Rick Alverson

There is a certain emotional ambivalence that accompanies being relegated to that particular role of movie personality called an “extra”. After twenty seven hours service over the course of two days, meticulously dressed from three-pointed-hat to knee socks as a revolutionary militiaman for the HBO miniseries “John Adams”, I walked away well after midnight with a light pocket and a grave sense of worthlessness. After all, not being an “aspiring actor” but a carpenter by trade and musician by accident, I was not so blinded by the glory of mingling in the presence of stars so as to forgo my right to be a disgruntled employee at the very bottom of a multi-million dollar food chain. Indeed, my years of employment as a dishwasher well suited me to that cast of character, though the food chain was of a somewhat more humble value.

After the strange joy of having one’s teeth and hands caked with cosmetic dirt, and being scrutinized by friendly eyes for signs of an errant thread, I made my way with the other unsuspecting sentry and a group of twenty or so Delegates of the Continental Congress through twin metal doors into a cavernous soundstage. They were filming and it was subsequently very quiet as we passed a row of taxidermed horses, stiff with rigor mortis. All around us there were the skeletal exteriors of 18th century interior rooms, complete with ducts to exhaust their functioning fireplaces. The place was huge and imposing and littered with distant working bodies doing so many myriad tasks, so quietly, that I felt an uneasy sense of trespass. It was not long, however, till the grim reality had set in, as my back began to ache and the sweat condensate under my wool long-coat, sitting impatiently in my plastic chair for six to eight hours. I quickly realized the severity and helplessness of the profession as the indefinite waiting began to take its toll. Beside me one of the Delegates, his wig on his lap, had propped his two swollen feet, out of their buckled boots, upon his cooler, on them two leaky bags of water that had once held ice. He, as was the case with the majority of his fellows, wavered in and out of sleep. One man mumbled to him self and paced anxiously, and though I naturally attributed this to insanity, I later found out he was reciting monologues. “It’s always good to have 20 or 30 monologues ready to go,” he said, though I couldn’t imagine the director bursting from the bright set into our dark corner shouting “I need a monologue!” Another Delegate expounded in detail regarding the universal importance of window dressings. I quickly realized over the next half dozen hours that I had found myself in the wrong place. Between the echoed calls of “rolling” and “cut” there was the diseased complicity of these devoted gentleman, providing the guts, the background, in essence the human environment of the film (though I knew they were just wallpapering the pockets and careers of a select few), all the while remarkably loyal to the possibility of their role.

It was strange, over my two days work, how certainly the hierarchical reality of the place set in. There was a bizarre moment when I realized the social segregation between extras and cast and actors of notoriety somehow analogously divided upon the lines of one’s costume. I fraternized, with my foul mouth and childish humor, with the one other soldier on the set, a mechanic with equally few ambitions in the acting world. The bespectacled Delegates fraternized with one another, waving their chiseled canes to emphasize some worldly point or other, a dainty, elite hand lightly on another’s shoulder, immersed in what seemed to them pivotal conversations about their place in the revolution or in a barely humble contest of accomplishments. A dark mess of chairs with lolling bodies huddled here and there around them, an 18th century Representative for the state of Maryland on a cell phone, pacing beside an ice cooler, that could just as easily have been a bonfire. And the celebrities of the production that day, Paul Giamotti & Tom Wilkenson - for whose acumen both I have the greatest respect, they too found their ilk and darted furiously outside between takes, their faces still contorted with the grimaces of Adams and Franklin, respectively, and clustered closely, sucking down cigarettes like water. Then they disappeared amid the ordered, white RVs that neatly littered the back end of the compound. I had looked each in the eye on a dozen occasions, as one looks another in the eye when they are passing or in repetitive close proximity, but received not even a nod, that, come to think of it, if I did give a damn about Hollywood, and was a struggling actor impeccably dressed as an indentured peasant soldier, I sure could have used.

My scene finally arrived. The next six hours were spent endeavoring, on film, to quietly close six windows, as the result, apparently, of a mosquito infestation or the imminent decent of enemy troops (I was never quite sure which). The crew would nervously, placatedly take their places beside or behind someone of more expertise, and the take would begin: “Background!” And I would march in with my poor approximation of a soldier’s march, and descend on the windows with a tailored indifference I felt my particular sentry would have, navigating the room full of agitated Forefathers. The takes would accumulate, each time the camera relocating, usually, as it was, in the established design of my path. I plunged through chairs and once even collided with a monologue immersed actor, all in effort to traverse that troublesome dark room of tables, and canes and bodies in wigs. On several occasions I simply left a window open after struggling violently with it till I felt my part was becoming more prominent than my salary justified and so I would, with a conflicted sense of failure and resentment, just move on. I’ll get that damn thing next time, I thought, with an entirely different expletive. And there would be a next time, and another after, and another after that, till the gravity of the performances matched, in pitch, the intensity of my absolute boredom and fatigue. ‘Till the shot, in its pertinence, equaled the clarity of my particular, pitiable form of servitude. ‘Till the lightening illuminated the room just as John Adams impassionedly and quietly intoned the phrase “…A Free country,” and I glanced around that antiquated, artificial space, hating that stubborn window, and myself.

All the men retired to the dressing tent and disrobed. The stench of their shed clothes filled the space till I thought I was going to retch. The next day, I returned, against my better judgment, but somewhat refreshed. After a few hours though, I inquired If we, the sentries, were going to be used that day. “What difference does it make?” the man replied. “Well, If we’re not I think I’ll go home.” “You’re not going anywhere. You get free food.” I laughed, and that was that. I stayed. I liked the absurdity of his reasoning. My part that day was infinitely more insignificant than the day before. There was not the glory of battle with an obstinate window. No confusion of purpose crossing a sea of foul-smelling men. Just nine hours facing a wall and closing a door on the other side of which a room bustled with the indecipherable voices of men who spoke of important things.