My Own Biggest Fan

What could be enticing enough to get me up at 9 am on a Saturday? Being in a movie! Today I had my first experience as an extra.

My friend Trevor posted a message on Friendster, telling all of his friends that Gord Skilling will be filming a movie at the Night Gallery and they need extras to stand around and make it look realistic. Gord is best known for his role as Farrel Mitchner in Fubar. Any relation Eric?

So I show up and the movie is being shot, lights set up blah blah blah, and Gord comes walking towards me. I say “Hi, Trevor told me that you needed people as extras for the movie.” Gord says, “Sure umm… I guess you can sit over here. ” I look around and I quickly figure out that I am the only extra here. Very odd. I was hoping that Trevor would be here so I would have some sort of an “in”. Other crew members, lightning and sound guys mainly are being the other extras during the shoots. I felt kind of weird being the only person there who didn’t have a job other than to sit and not make noise, but it was too fun to watch for it to seem uncomfortable. There was just a modest crew there, and from what I heard, many of them are doing it for free. Still, the production values are high, and the crew are very professional.

The next two and a half hours were spent shooting a one minute exchange between two guys, then leading up to a couple having a shot at the bar and them kissing. I heard the same lines over and over and over… but since I didn’t have a job I could just take everything in and see everyone’s duties around the set. People that work in movies are some of the luckiest people alive I have decided. (when they get paid for it I guess) I am definitely going back tomorrow, they are shooting a fight scene,

All in all, the only excitement in all of this is really just in my head. Just hanging out near movie sets is fun for me, whenever I run into them on the street and such, so actually being on the set is reward in itself. If you have the chance to be an extra I recommend taking it.

Last night I had the weirdest dream, and I rarely remember my dreams, so it must be infused with wisdom… or just really messed up.

So I am in a motel room, and no, there is no hooker with me, in fact this is one of the least titillating dreams I have ever had, so don’t even go there. Ok, motel room, two beds, there is a table and two of those motel / reception area chairs. I am in one of them and my friend Shane is in the other, we are watching Raging Bull.(1) What I find very intriguing about this moment is that about three minutes of “dream time” passed while we watched this movie, enough time to watch a conversation and a scene change.

Anyways, Jeremy enters the motel room and asks, “What are you watching?” I tell him, then he asks if it has been on that long and I say “No, about five minutes. ” Jeremy sits on the far bed and starts to watch with us.

At that moment I become aware that my cat, Buick is with us in the room. The is curled up to the pillow on the bed next to my chair and he is snoring very loudly. I think this is odd, so I go over and pick him up.

It is at this moment where, upon reflection on this dream, I question my sanity.

I pick up Buick, and he is still asleep and snoring loudly. These are not normal snores, my cat is imitating Archie and Edith Bunker from All In The Family. Breathe out: “Archie, Archie Archie, Archie” Breathe in: “Eeeeeedith Eeeeeedith Eeeeeedith” These imitations are almost flawless.(2) I am sure you can just imagine what this sounds like.

Ok, so what I just told you is strange enough. Well! At that moment I was really stunned by what was going on and I don’t know if somehow my mind needed to figure out some reason for this odd behavior or what, but somehow I was given the explanation (in my dream, not after I woke up, silly) that there are cats that are trained to do this sort of thing (imitate celebrities) and that before Buick was picked up by the SPCA, he was stuck in a cage with a TV playing All In The Family non stop for days.(3)

Any comments are welcome, but remember, I already know I am not well.

Reasons for some of the things I had dreamed.

1 – On Saturday I had played a movie trivia game with Shane, Raging Bull was an answer to the first question and I had gotten it correct.
2 – I don’t normally watch TV, I don’t even own one but I watched All In The Family for the first time in ages and I really enjoyed it. (more than I thought at the time I guess)
3 – I went to PetSmart on Thursday and I saw a big parrot there, I thought that it would be funny to get one and then put some of my favorite movie quotes on a loop to teach it to speak those, rather than “Pretty Bird”