[quote="mjmaherjr" post=397444][quote="newsman13" post=397396][quote="mjmaherjr" post=397395][quote="newsman13" post=397391]I’ve done dozens of shoots as a background actor/extra. I don’t want to bore anyone with them all..so here are a few highlights:
PUZZLE…My first shoot was at a church in Yonkers. Kelly MacDonald, who was in No Country for Old Men, was the star…Marc Turtletaub (Little Miss Sunshine) directed. I ended up on the cutting room floor.
THE POST…Spielberg directed. I got to work with Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks among others. They fooled around a lot…kept things light. This was supposed to be in Washington, but was filmed at the New York Post facility in the Bronx.
BOTTOM OF THE NINTH…I was in a scene with Sophie Vergara and her husband Joe Manganiello. Vergara was very friendly and sat down with us for lunch. I didn’t know her husband could really act. In one scene, he had to burst into tears. He did it perfectly in all 16 or so takes.
THE SINNER…I spent more than a dozen hours in a Yonkers bar with Jessica Biel and others. That’s another that landed me on the cutting room floor…but they paid well.
THE PATH…I hadn’t seen Breaking Bad…so I had no idea who Aaron Paul was. Same with Michelle Monaghan (Gone Baby Gone). These things are wasted on me. I played a Parisian ice cream vendor. There was a huge green screen behind me. We were on the Hudson River…but if you watch the show (and no one I know did, including me) you’ll see me in a Paris street scene.
THE IRISHMAN…I did three scenes, two with Al Pacino. This guy can really act. He also jokes around to keep it light. Ray Romano is a favorite. He hung with everyone, joking and trading stories. Pacino plays Jimmy Hoffa. He gets out of prison in Pennsylvania…but the shoot is at an armory in Brooklyn. It’s supposed to be spring, so that’s how we dressed. Unfortunately, we were freezing. We went through a scene with stand-ins more than a dozen times. Then it was Pacino and Romano’s turn. They did one. Then a second. Before the third, Pacino says to Martin Scorsese, “Hey Marty, this is the last one”…and it was.
LAW AND ORDER…I did four of them. In one, I was in a lineup with Hal Linden. I told him several police officer friends of mine said Barney Miller was the most realistic of all the cop shows. He said he heard the same. In this scene, this elderly woman with Alzheimer’s claims she was raped. They brought us out numerous times…and she kept saying, “They’re so OLD”. Not good for my ego. Mariska Hargitay was very friendly. I’ll say she threw out a fair share of “F” bombs in her general conversation.
RUSSIAN DOLLS…You may remember Elizabeth Ashley as this super beautiful actress from the 60s. Now she’s pushing 80. I played her late husband in the first episode. OK, not really played. We did a photo shoot together which turned out to be a double head shot of us on her mantle. I can say I’ve been groped by Elizabeth Ashley. Our picture is one of four on the mantle. The others were of her three late husbands. Mine is on the right behind an urn where my ashes are resting. That’s one way to get written out of the show.
ESCAPE AT DANNAMORA. Patricia Arquette was super friendly. I was taken aback by her bad teeth. I didn’t know at first it was a prosthetic device. The scene took place in upstate New York…but we shot in the south Bronx. Here we go again with the weather. It was supposed to be summer. I changed into shorts and flip flops at holding…then had to walk a couple of blocks to a bodega which was supposed to be an upstate mini-mart. It was snowing in the Bronx…the streets were slushy…and I looked worse than any homeless person walking past the locals. The bodega was also cold. Director Ben Stiller said the heater was making too much noise. I spent much of the day next to him…freezing while he was wearing a winter coat and earmuffs.
WHEN THEY SEE US…Ava Duvernay directed. I didn’t have much contact with her. I drove my car around Harlem…to the cutting room floor.
JOHN WICK 3. This was a rain scene downtown outside Delmonico’s…which was changed for the set. I worked with Ian McShane and Lance Reddick. Above us was a giant fan/propeller that covered both sides of the street. When the shoot started, it rotated, bringing down a deluge. I was thinking about Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain while I was getting soaked.
NEW AMSTERDAM…Worth mentioning because I played an ICU patient. That meant, I would lay in bed all day. At one point, I fell asleep and the director told one of the PA’s to wake me because I was supposedly snoring.
THE LOUDEST VOICE…I worked with Seth McFarlane and Sienna Miller. Nothing interesting there…except it was about FOX and Roger Ailes…a combination I knew all too well.
UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT…This had Jane Krakowski, Elle Kemper and Carol Kane in a scene where I was a stand-in.
THE HUNTERS…The first episode was in Coney Island. Nathans sent over unlimited hot dogs. I haven’t eaten one since. Logan Lerman and Kate Mulvaney were in the scene. I was a stand-in for Josh Mostel in another episode… I got to hang out with him, Saul Rubinek and Carol Kane for much of the day. They were all very nice. I should say stand-ins are treated like regular cast members.
THE DEUCE…James Franco. This was filmed at a topless bar in Sunnyside. My wife was pretty cool about it.
KING OF STATEN ISLAND…Judd Apatow was there directing…Steve Buscemi and Pete Davidson were on the set. This apartment house fire was filmed in Yonkers…not Staten Island as was the rest of the movie.
HIGH FIDELITY…I was put in a hospital gown by the costumers…then went to set on Roosevelt Island. When I got there, the director said this was supposed to be a maternity ward scene. I had to change and act as if I was a visitor. Back to the cutting room floor. Zoe Kravitz was the main star. I couldn’t get over her random junky tattoos.
THE WEEK OF…Adam Sandler is probably the most focused…least BS actor I worked with. The scene I shot was in a diner on Long Island. Somehow, casting found two identical looking men whose legs were amputated from the hips down. Sandler had to carry one of them from a car outside into the diner. Fortunately for him, there was a prop that looked exactly like the men. That’s what he mostly carried through many, many takes.
SNEAKY PETE… Giovanni Ribisi was the star…but he directed my episode.
LOVE LIFE…I spent a few hours with Anna Kendrick. Nothing to say one way or another.
I know this is (too) long. I still haven’t gone into my non-political newsman days.[/quote] Great stuff. I just showed Nathalie this and she said Mariska was one of the nicest people on the law and orders when she used to do background in them. You just reminded me of a funny story. Long time ago she did some movie with Jon Voight and her scene was an outdoor scene outside of I think City Hall in New York and it was shit in like near zero degree weather. Jon Voight was in that scene. She’s texting me complaining how cold it is and Ibtell her she’s an actress act like it’s warm I don’t want to hear the whining. Fast forward a couple years later. We just land in Venice on a Sunday morning and our luggage wasn’t put in the plane from Rome so we have to wait for the next flight. The airport is empty. All the sudden she says “ there is Jon Voight “ he was waiting around fir luggage too. Nathalie says “ hi I worked on ..... he looks and says “ which scene “ she says the city hall or courthouse outside scene and he literally shivers and says “ it as so fucking cold that day “ that cracked me up. He was very nice. He was flying in to see Angelina Jolie who was in town with Brad Pitt one of them or both was filming a movie in Venice[/quote]
Nathalie is a real actress...not a background actor like me. I'm sure she has great stories to tell. BTW, Mariska knew everybody in the crew by their first names. Zero ego.[/quote] I’ll give one more from her. She was shooting some sort print catalogue shoot and she’s leaving and Tony Bourdain ( my idol ) was walking out. This was years ago. We were literally going to Paris a week later. She says hi and tells him we are going to Paris the following week and he was polite and then she tells him she worked at windows on the works somehow in the convo and his eyes light up because he knew the chefs she was friends with and literally stood dead in his tracks and talks to her for over an hour and when he found out she speaks fluent French he gave her bunch of restaurants to go to and told us how we could get into one of his favorite places without reservations which he featured on one his episodes. It might have been like 90 minutes talking. His restaurants pics were awesome and we ended up getting into Frenchie without reservations and met their owner chef who cracked up when we told him Tony told us how to get in and showed him the pic [attachment=1595]80EB7F50-BC4F-4776-95D4-057ABF57349C.jpeg[/attachment][/quote]
I can verify this story. When I was in Paris 2 years ago I texted mjm for some restaurant recommendations and he gave me a couple that Bourdain suggested to him. We went to this very old restaurant that cooked all the meat on an open hearth in the dining room. We were seated in the basement where there were ancient arched ceilings and a small bar. The waiter suggested, then showed us how to remove the snails from escargot cooked in a garlic broth using a special device to hold them. I mentioned Bourdain since Bourdain shot an episode in that restaurant several years before. The waiter didn't know who Anthony bourdain was. Maybe I should have asked if he knew who Mjmaher is, and gotten a better response.
Thanks MJM. it was a memorable place to eat in a great trip to Ireland and Paris. We didn't make it to Lenoir Valley as you also suggested but I bet most pub owners in ireland know you.
