Thursday, June 09, 2005
My Fabulous Career
Sure I’m a movie star. I can’t believe you never saw me in that scene they cut from The Buddy Holly Story.
I was in the seventh grade and I lived in the Valley, and in the right part of it, too, to get occasional exposure to the “industry,” as it self-importantly called itself. Our neighbor across the street was on television and in movies, and it was my babysitter’s dad who told The Graduate to check out “plastics.” And of course my best friend Simon’s dad was in the real industry, the industrial part- he worked on lighting systems and designs, for big star clients from NBC to NASA. He was even in the Academy, as in Awards.
And so it came to pass at some point in 1977 that Simon’s mom learned of an opportunity for two teenage boys to work as extras in a greaser movie. Greasers, of course, were tough guys from the ‘50s with DA hairstyles and denim trousers. Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley were both in prime time, and the phenomenon of short-term nostalgia was just getting off the ground with a 25-year look back with unwarranted fondness to an era of adolescent excess and reactionary repression. The ‘50s were suddenly interesting and, more importantly, commercially viable - or, as Fonzie taught us, coooool (with thumbs-up gesture). So it didn’t surprise me that a flick about that era was in production. I hadn’t heard of the guy they had for the lead but I was familiar with the guy it was supposed to be about, and it sounded like a great way to get out of a day of junior high and score a little scratch in the bargain.
I think the call, for some reason, was 6:30 am, in Pasadena. I tried to dress appropriately, in a white t-shirt and blue jeans. The way I remember it, I felt like a fool. Simon was dressed basically identically, but pulled it off a little better (or blew it less utterly). We spent almost the whole day standing around outside with Vaseline in our hair to make us look vintage, which really only made me look like a big shiny dork, which was, perhaps, exactly what they were looking for. At the craft service lunch I was introduced to green goddess salad dressing, and finally, late in the afternoon, they announced that they’d finished the “roller rink” portion of the filming and were ready for the “guys in the poolroom” scene. Simon and I were among the two dozen or so manly types they consequently rounded up into an uninspired little spot inside the old skateatorium where we’d gathered, a dark cramped space outfitted with two or three big heavy pool tables.
Simon and I were clearly the youngsters there; several of my new colleagues looked to be in their 20s or even 30s, with hard chins and heavy menacing muscles; their blue jeans looked right and they wore authentically scuffed boots instead of cheap sneakers from Kinneys. Simon and I quickly sized up our circumstances and went dark – we kept quiet, didn’t act up or draw attention to ourselves. It was fine to be the quickwitted word-jousters when we were in school. These guys gave the impression that a recreational knife fight was not out of the question. We weren’t just out of our league – this was a different game altogether.
Time crawled as lighting was arranged, booms were placed, some simple action was choreographed, and camera angles were lined up. People milled around and the place was crowded so, though the pool balls were out on the green felt, no one even tried to play a game. The cues were all up on the wall in a cool old rack. I plucked one down; it made a satisfying click as it released from the clamp, and of course, it felt good (and faintly dangerous) in my hand. I put it - click - away. I was bored. I took it out again. Click. I waved it around semi-discreetly. After twelve hours on the set I finally was enjoying myself a little, with my pool cue and my cue rack. It was enough to help me actually overlook, a little, all those threatening greasers surrounding me. And suddenly they were calling for places and lights and all those things they shout about just before they start filming. Everybody relocated themselves and I wound up next to the biggest loudest most dangerous-looking greaser of them all. He’d been rehearsing the heart of our little scene, a bit of fisticuffs over a theoretical game of pool. So, he needed a pool cue. And I just happened to be right next to the cue rack. My cue rack. So I did the obvious, selfish, generous thing – I plucked a cue - click - from the rack and handed it to him.
So there I stood, in a lame ‘70s version of ‘50s thugwear, skinny and pale and glistening with petroleum jelly, in a small dark room full of macho posing men. I stood with one arm extended, offering a birch dowel of masculinity to a potentially dangerous stranger. He looked at the cue, and then at me, as if I was the final exam in a class he never took and didn’t care about failing. “Will ya look at this?,” he exclaimed after a few moments of increasingly embarrassing silence. “I got me a little helper! Hey, helper boy, why don’t you get me a beer and some pussy while you’re at it! Just watch what you’re doing when you handle my cue!”
The other men in the room laughed the deep cruel laugh of manhood – laughter in which my participation was expressly uninvited. Simon had presciently slunk off to a safe corner; it was just me standing there as the butt of a joke, the lawn jockey of the poolroom, but less charismatic. I held the cue motionless till he eventually took it from me, derision blazing from his dark eyes in the dark room. Rid of my albatross of shame, I retreated to another corner and waited out the duration of the shoot. Neither the cue nor the rack were mine. I felt as if even I myself was not my own.
I earned $65 that day; I spent 14 hours on the set and another two rinsing most of the Vaseline out of my hair. The roller rink sequence made it to the final cut, though my poolroom part of it did not. No screen credit; no screen time; no brush with greatness or celebrity. But at least I experienced a humiliation that burns brightly lo these many years hence. And isn’t that what a film career is really all about, anyway?
