Even over the telephone, you can tell Carol Grant of Carol Grant Casting doesn't work by the hour. "They want to call the series Palm Springs, but it looks like someone owns the title," she explains with rat-a-tat-tat precision. "Anyway, we need shoppers. We're shooting on Palm Canyon Drive, and the call is for 4 p.m. You should get about three hours' work. Some people will be asked to stay for scenes in the coffee shop after."
Three hours' work as an extra on what is known as The Untitled Kevin Williamson Project sounds perfect. "Okay. That works for me. How should I dress?"
"Dress as you would for shopping. There is work available Tuesday night as well. That one is a cocktail party and dinner at a country club. It's shooting at Parker, and you need to wear something you would wear to a country club, but not too dressy. That shoot will start late and run into the morning. You'd have to be willing to work all night."
"That's okay."
"Now for tomorrow, we need all kinds of shoppers. On the application, there was a question about 'would you play gay.'"
Now we're getting down to it. I cut to the chase. "I am gay. I wouldn't have a problem with that."
"Great. Just follow the signs and park in the lot behind Desert Fashion Plaza. There will be people to direct you to check-in. And don't forget to bring a second choice of wardrobe."
I don't need the big yellow UKWP signs to know how to find Hollywood in downtown Palm Springs. The shiny, white 18-wheelers parked on the street indicate glamour has arrived on wheels for a location shoot. I follow the signs to the parking lot and the large white tent. Inside, extras are spread out, standing or seated in folding chairs. Around the periphery, craft services have set up steam tables, a salad bar, and coolers with iced tea and lemonade. I get in line with other extras and fill out the releases, payment voucher, and IRS forms, checking in with Jill, who finds my name on a long list of extras under the heading, "Gay male shoppers." There is one other name below mine; a new boyfriend is in the offing.
Chaos rules. This is an outdoor shoot, and the desert's typically mild April weather has turned threatening. It is warm and humid inside the tent, and dark, ominous gray clouds, laden with moisture, hover over the San Jacinto Mountains. A bedraggled production assistant in tank top and beige jeans stands. I've been watching her compulsively patting down her brown That Girl bob, as if flattening out that flip of hair might calm her nerves.
"All of my shoppers who are checked in, follow me over to wardrobe."
Twenty of the newly anointed follow her to the trucks. The first truck is the wardrobe trailer, where two women and one remarkably sanguine, apparently gay man size up each extra for the look they want. The male costumer has long brown hair and a bit too much of stomach, even for a man in his 50s. But he bears the unmistakably unflappable air of one who has seen and done it all. I am sure 20 years ago, he was quite a knockout. Even now, I'm drawn to his low-key approach and gentle demeanor.
"And who are you supposed to be?" he inquires matter-of-factly.
"A gay shopper," I reply, in my khakis and crew-necked T-shirt.
He looks at my shoes, a lime green pair of deck shoes I picked up on a lark at the outlet mall.
"What do you have in that bag?"
"A pair of Diesel jeans and a turquoise shirt."
"Unless you have a pair of shorts, I'm going to put you in something else." He disappears into the wardrobe trailer and emerges with a lime-green plaid pair of shorts and polo shirt that precisely coordinate with my shoes.
"These are vintage," he explains. "Go try them on, and let us take a look."
I move to the next 18-wheeler resting curbside, which has been configured into four separate dressing rooms. I put on the shorts and shirt, which fit perfectly, and return to receive an enthusiastic seal of approval and an introduction to my new boyfriend.
Matthew is 28 and a vision in powder blue. Standing beside each other, we look like a couple of gay psychedelic ice-cream cones. We are a colorful May/December couple, something that's easy for Matthew to accept since his current Palm Springs lover is a retired dentist, 32 years his senior.
With arms around each other's waists, the gay shoppers head for the set, a two-block stretch of Palm Canyon that extends from the abominable life-sized bronze statue of Sonny Bono past Enzo's restaurant, where the coffee-shop scene will be shot.
An assistant director gives us our directions. She asks, "Now, what are you supposed to be?"
"Gay shoppers," we reply.
"Okay. Well, when the director calls 'action,' do whatever it is you do. What do you do, anyway?"
Without missing a beat, I reply, "Fellatio."
She laughs so hard she has to ask the director to repeat the instruction coming in over her earpiece. For the rest of the evening, whenever I catch her eye, I mouth the word "fellatio." It cracks her up every time.
On the set, extras are not called extras; they are "background." Stand-ins are called the "second team." The "first team" replaces the "second team" after lighting and camera angles are set; they are the stars. Tonight one of them is Taylor Handley, formerly of The OC, who is 21 but plays a mop-topped addict of 16. His love interest is Amber Heard, a teen siren out of the Medusa cum Brigitte Bardot mold currently inspiring erections among the skateboard set. The proposed TV series involves a young boy with a substance abuse problem (Handley) whose mother (Gayle O'Grady from American Dreams) moves him to a gated Palm Springs community, assuming that suburban relocation is the middle-class antidote to addiction. Handley's character rides a bicycle this evening to meet Heard's character at the coffee shop that was, until a few hours ago, Enzo's Italian restaurant.
Twenty cars and drivers move back and forth as the establishing street shot is executed more times than any of the extras can remember. Each time the cars must back up and begin again from precisely the same spot, maintaining their original position and distance from each other. All the extras must also move in the same way, at the same speed, for the multiple takes. This continues for almost four hours. Cameras, lights, cords, microphones, and reflectors insinuate themselves into corners just beyond the view of the camera's lens. Considering the tedium involved, the cast and crew are remarkably patient and good-natured.
When lunch is called, we head back to the tent. On the way, my new boyfriend, Matthew, tells me he met his lover over the Internet. "I weighed 240 lbs. in high school," he volunteers, "and I didn't get circumcised until I was 23 years old."
Why, I wonder, do people tell me these things?
After lunch, the goodwill of the evening wears thin as the proposed three-hour shoot runs into the frigid night. The crew passes out bottled water to help the background players avoid dehydration. But we can't carry them while filming, so we park them behind trees, plants and benches, making sure they are far enough away to be out of the shot. With the cameras rolling, we watch helplessly as a homeless man with a shopping cart deftly pushes his chariot along the sidewalk, absconding with all our carefully stashed, imminently recyclable bottles of water.
Sidewalk studies
As extras, we are both expendable and necessary. Extras provide movement, context, and a sense of reality the production would not otherwise have. When we are given a sidewalk placement and specific movement for a scene, we are expected to remember it and repeat it until the director is satisfied. Each time we re-shoot, the background players are instructed to reset.
At the end of a take, the assistant director corrals all within earshot and calls out, "Background, reset to one." This is followed by "camera is rolling," and then, "action," which is our cue to move. These three directives, which always follow in sequence, are the extra's mantra.
We walk the streets of Palm Canyon all night, getting blistered feet and frayed nerves in what ultimately becomes a literal forced march. I have stepped on Ruby Keeler's and William Powell's stars on the Palm Canyon Walk of Stars so often, I imagine them rising from their graves to ask a production assistant to bitch-slap me for my insolence. My pay: $54 for eight hours, plus time-and-a-half for overtime. Tonight's proposed three-hour shoot lasts 10 hours and 45 minutes.
Sometime after Midnight and before we are released to go home, my newly assigned boyfriend, Matthew, points out a guy standing quietly alone in the shadows of a doorway near the Plaza Theater, about 50 yards from the camera.
"Look," he whispers, "it's Kevin Williamson."
Auteur Williamson seems deeply absorbed in thought about something or someone a million miles away. He is as much absent as present. There is a lot riding on this production — money, careers, and industry clout. At this point, it's a crapshoot. Williamson is one of the few openly gay writer/producers working on this level in Hollywood; his Dawson's Creek was a phenomenon. But what if no one picks up the new series?
At 3 a.m., I turn in my time sheet and stagger to my car. The next shoot begins at 6 p.m. I will play an upscale country club member and have been forewarned that we'll be shooting all night, at Parker. I haven't pulled two consecutive all-nighters in a row since my Organic Chemistry and Set Design finals were scheduled back-to-back when I was an undergraduate in Ann Arbor. (Continues next week.)