A day in the life of a 臨記/奇哩啡/extra on the set of Lewis Lapham's The American Public*

In a moment of undue boredom I answered a posting on Craig's List calling for extras in a "dramatic-documentary musical" with Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper's Magazine. A few days later I found meself on a Bean Town trolley "acting" as a tourist / space filler bod listening to Prof. Howard Zinn, of A People's History fame, giving a counter-standard version of the Independence War incidents that took place in Boston. The small crew of five tried to shoot with a mammoth 35mm film camera in the tiny aisle of the trolley, whilst the trolley zigzagged through crazy Bostonian traffic amidst the Big Dig mess downtown.

Though I'm not familiar with Zinn's works, the prof gave a captivating talk. If only my high school history teachers were all sweet grandpa Gandalf's or Dumbledores who have a cheeky twinkle in their eyes.

Later on, the trolley drove us to Randolf, MA to do a green screen shoot in a makeshift "studio". With Matrixy production scenes in my head, I thought the studio would be super high tech. Turns out the set was a trolley garage with huge rolls of green paper surrounding the trolley * Pft*.

The production peez claimed the shot would be 3 - 4 hrs. As time dragged on, it became obvious that the director and cameraman couldn't agree on the lighting & the speed of progress on filming. Both extras, cameraman, lighting crew and director got more stroppy and stressed out. In the end the shot lasted 7 1/2 hours. Now I know that on set time = 2x real time xp

* I can't even remember the title of the film...I only know that the last word starts with a P. Must be something like LL's The American Public or The American Power Struggle, or The American Power? So much for my amnesiac goldfish memory >.<

The director claims that they're aiming for Sundance in Jan '05. If I'm lucky, you might see my fat face on the silverscreen at an arthouse cinema near you sometime next year.