My Big Screen Debut Now On Your Littler Screen

Back on October 1st, 2006, I was an extra in a movie called Shooter starring Mark Wahlberg, Danny Glover, and a really cute girl. They shot in the heart of Philadelphia, and I was an extra on a number of locations thanks to the Preston and Steve Show who put the word out on the open call.

I saw the movie opening weekend with great anticipation. I thought there was a chance you would be able to see me front and center when they were filming a car-chase scene. Cop cars were chasing Mark Wahlberg's car, and I was charged with playing Surprised (But Not Overly Surprised) Guy With Backpack Walking With Girl. It was a tough role, but I dug down and grabbed the emotion required for the film. I didn't want to let Mark down, although he never even set foot in Philadelphia when we were shooting. Much to my disappointment, that angle never made it into the final cut of the film.

BUT the shoot was not a total loss for me. There is a scene where the President is coming to Philadelphia from New Jersey via the Ben Franklin (or maybe Walt Whitman?) bridge. They shot a huge motorcade coming over the bridge while a group of other extras and I waved little flags and pretended that some people do that for presidents. As I remember, there were about three takes of this, all backing up traffic. The most interesting thing about the backup was to see the drivers' reactions. Most Philly drivers are demons who have no soul. But for some reason when you tell them the traffic backup is for a movie, all is excused and they want to know if their car will be in the movie. We usually tell them yes, although there's no way their car would ever be in any movie.

The whole reason I'm sharing all this is because you can actually see me in one of the shots, and the DVD that came out yesterday proves it. It's only for a couple seconds, and you can't really see my face, but these pictures should be enough evidence to show that I was there waving a flag.

All in all it was a fun day. I got paid a decent amount for a very long day, and eventually got to fill a W9 from Paramount Studios. I would highly recommend doing extra work if you can. It's fun to see how the film process works, even for a day. My day was very long, and required a ton of effort and money from a large number of people, and all of it was for a total of about a minute-long segment in the film. Not the most efficient use of resources. If we could pool the same amount of money, resources, and labor for a worthy cause, we would have world hunger kicked by 2009. Maybe someday a film will inspire us to do that.