What's It Like: Being an extra in a Hollywood movie

You never know where life will take you, but “to a church gymnasium in Wilmington at 4:45 a.m..” seemed particularly unlikely. Yet there I was, looking for someone who wasn’t there.

Teen boys in tattered remnants of tuxedos shot hoops with a deflated ball at one end of the gym, while students in formal wear stood in a line that reached mid-court at the other. My daughter, however, was nowhere in sight.

I called and texted, despite knowing that her phone was long dead. Then I stood, confused, in the middle of the floor and let her come claim me before I did anything to embarrass her further.

Instead, the line grew short. The bleachers emptied. The game broke up. Soon, I was alone in the gym.

I hadn’t seen my daughter since the previous afternoon. If TV cop shows are accurate, and people must wait 24 hours before filing a missing person’s report, I was already more than halfway there.

I found a production assistant on the back porch, enjoying a well-earned cigarette in the pre-dawn gloom.

He took one look at my face, smiled reassuringly and said, “You must be a parent of one of the OTHER 75.”

He took a deep drag and continued. “They’re still on set.”

***

Two and a half weeks earlier, my daughter saw a story about a casting company looking for extras for a movie shooting in Wilmington. She had an extensive acting background consisting of middle school musicals, so she jumped at the chance, combing Instagram to find the perfect photos to send them. Then we both promptly forgot all about it.

Then, we received notification on Monday that she had been selected for the big prom scene, shooting on Friday afternoon. She needed to bring her own dress and was given a set of instructions on “prom hair” to help save effort from the hair and makeup crew on the day of the shooting.

On Friday afternoon, she put on a black dress and heels, did her prom hair and we were on the road to Wilmington.

They had us report to a church a few miles from set, which was being used as the prep and holding area for the extras. We stood in lines, DMV style, while the production assistant shouted instructions – consisting mainly of “Get in that line, then go to that one” – over and over again.

Then came the first surprise of the day: Crew members wheeled in rack after rack of formal wear, while other people assembled makeup tables, complete with the mirrors surrounded by light bulbs like you see in every starlet’s dressing room. Meanwhile, the catering crew began setting up the craft services table.

I’d been working under the assumption that this was going to be a bare-budget indy project, or some type of student film, but this was beginning to look like an actual, real movie.

I pulled up IMDB on my phone, entered the title and gasped. It was based on one of those sappy teen drama books, a la "The Fault in Our Stars," and I’d actually heard of the people in it! Andy Garcia, Molly Parker (Deadwood and House of Cards). And Walton Goggins! My daughter was going to be in a movie with Walton Goggins!

My daughter gave me a blank look. “Who?”

Walton Goggins has only been in the three best TV shows ever made. He was Shane on "The Shield," Venus in "Sons of Anarchy" and Boyd Freaking Crowder on "Justified." If I could be anyone else, and Derek Jeter was already taken, I’d pick Walton Goggins.

“Get a picture of him,” I instructed my daughter.

“Daaaad,” she said, as people in line started to look at us. “I can’t. No photos on set.”

“OK,” I said. “If there’s one of those canvas backed chairs next to the set that has GOGGINS printed on the back, get a shot of that.”

As waited, the makeup ladies walked the lines, eyeing the talent. Two of them approached my daughter – at separate times – and asked her if she had lipstick. They inspected the color to make sure it was dark enough, and told her, “Be sure to bring it to set.”

Worry crossed her face. Would her pale lips would end her Hollywood career before it began?

A makeup lady approached another girl, a few spots behind us, gestured at the girl’s shoulders and chest and said, “Come see me when you’re done in this line. We need to fill you out.” Suddenly, pale lips didn’t seem quite so bad.

My daughter’s dress, heels and hair all passed inspection, and she was approved to make the trip to set. They packed the kids in vans and off they went. Parents and other non-actors weren’t allowed. So I headed back to the Triangle.

The props department put a fake corsage on my daughter’s wrist (she ignored my texted instructions to steal it), and she went to fake prom.

Between takes, she rushed to her phone to send me updates:

“They have one of those snappy board things to clap when they say ‘Action!’” (She also ignored my instruction to steal that.)

“They come through with little pads to dab sweat off our faces between takes.”

“My feet hurt.”

At about 10:30 p.m., my daughter texted.

“They’re putting us back in the vans … for our lunch break.”

They needed to shoot all the prom scenes in one night, while they had the same group of extras, no matter how long it took. “We’re probably going to shoot until 5 a.m.,” she said. So I went to bed for a few hours’ sleep.

***

At about 5:15 early the next morning, the crew returned to the gym after their respective smoke breaks. A few minutes later, the van brought my daughter and the rest of the “other 75” back from set. She was exhausted but wired. She told me about the stunt man that did a fall for the lead teen actor.

“He was dressed in the same type of suit, and his hair looked the same,” she said. “But then, you looked again and … he was OLD. It was so gross.”

She then broke the news to me. Walton Goggins wasn’t in her prom scene. She didn’t meet him, didn’t take his picture, didn’t slip him my number so we could grab a beer and become best friends, didn’t even get the chance to steal the GOGGINS canvas back from his chair. (Not that she would have.)

She did, however, get paid for eight hours of work, as contracted, and another seven and a half hours of overtime. She also proudly announced, “I pulled my first all-nighter!”

And, of course, she was going to get to see herself in an actual movie, at least for a few seconds, in the background, if you knew where to look.

“I’d definitely do it again,” she declared. “But I’d wear different shoes.”