Insights on Background Acting
My brilliant plan to enter California during a recession ended up having unforeseen consequences on my prospective job hunt. Three weeks and a trail of rejected employment applications later, I have admitted that I am professionally qualified to do very little besides standing at the back of a room in muted colors without drawing attention to myself. Hence I have become a background actor.
Background actors used to be called “extras,” but the profession is now so waterlogged with beautiful people groping for Screen Actors Guild cards that the name has been changed to reflect a broader context of performance. The vocation can be boiled down to the following duties:
Sitting in strategic locations.
Standing in strategic locations.
Walking in strategic locations
Talking while simultaneously performing one of the above duties. (Strategically.)
Thus I am inclined to think that my livelihood is now more or less derived from being a blinking piece of furniture. In fact I think “blinking furniture thespian” sounds a lot more colorful than “background actor,” but my colleagues get tetchy when I say this so I have adopted the official lingo.
My glorious career kicked off on Monday morning when I pulled into a Burbank parking lot at 6:30 for the shoot on Leverage. It’s an upcoming television show about a badass insurance investigator who goes AWOL and stops evil doers. To be honest I’m not sure how exciting a badass insurance inspector can be, but I’m willing to try out the program on the grounds that I should be able to finally discover what the back of my head looks like.
The gig turned out to be an amazing stroke of luck. A PA herded us into the back of a courtroom set, where we would play the role of onlookers in the unfolding trial. Moments later Jonathan Frakes walked out and I realized that Commander Riker from Star Trek would be my first director.
Which was elating, of course. Then Brent Spiner (Star Trek’s Data) turned out to be a guest star. Meaning that, in a limited capacity, I have worked with people I own action figures of. If I had managed to hookup with a girl in one of the wardrobe trailers that day, I would have accomplished all my goals from 1994 in one fail swoop. By the second day of Leverage I managed to puncture through the “wit barrier” (an inert boundary which keeps me from being clever around famous people and most swimwear models) and managed to joke with Brent Spiner before he grew tired of my sense of humor and quit making eye contact with me. In any event, I got a picture.
Both days on Leverage lasted fourteen hours. Generally background actors work about that long each day, starting very early or ending very late. This sort of schedule might impede my social life in Los Angeles if I had one, but given my recent entry, the concept of overtime, and the fact that I spend three fourths of the day chatting, reading or napping, keeps me from complaining much about the long hours.
It might get to me eventually, but at the moment I think it’s a great job. The hardest part of the whole experience was just convincing the casting agency that I’m actually twenty-four. (So many people lie about their age in Hollywood that I have taken to carrying my passport and driver’s license around to convince other actors I am actually in their age bracket.)
The second most difficult thing I have to do is make inaudible background patter. The extras will be told to casually chat somewhere, only we’re not supposed to say anything. For a while I would whisper stuff like, “I don’t care how well Mom hides her ski masks, we all know she’s a damned Canadian.” Or, “Just so you know, I reset your mobile phone to ‘extra loud.'” But that distracted my colleagues, so I’ve stopped.
Now I view background patter as an amazing opportunity to look intelligent and expressive without ever forming a coherent sentence. I will mumble something at another actor, then raise my eyebrows like I’m asking a question. Then furrow them and nod, like the other guy is saying something insightful. Then glance up thoughtfully before responding, as if I am truly adding weight to the conversation. Here’s a transcript:
Me: Do you remember if it’s the third?……. Rehnquist ……. Probably recusement…… well, I think it’s… coupe de gras… sans watermelon, of course. (Arches eyebrow.)
Less Talented Colleague: (completely inaudible.) ?
Me: (Nods after serious reflection) Yes, that should work….. Given that…. (shrugs a little)… happening after the fact. Appellate recusement. (Smiles.)
I have to admit that my presentation of silent babble isn’t seamless yet, but I think in time I’ll be way better at it than I am at normal talking. It will be liberating to gush forth interesting words without any relationship to each other, syntax, basic grammar, my expression or whatever the other actors are talking about. Rush Limbaugh must have tremendous job satisfaction.
The difficult bit is that I cannot remotely fathom how I normally perform rote tasks. Things like opening a door or walking across a room mystify me now that I have to reproduce them professionally. For instance, what do I do with my arms? I’m reasonably confident that I don’t stick them out in front of me, like Superman, but when I let them drape at my sides it feels like somebody taped hoses to my torso as an afterthought. If I put my hands in my pockets I look overtly casual, hands-on-hips seems standoffish, and hands-in-other-people’s-pockets would be in stark violation of the harassment policy the casting agency made me sign after reluctantly conceding that I am twenty-four.
Another agonizing debate is: how often do I normally blink? Because on camera I am shutting my eyelids with enough speed and repetition to broadcast “HELP I AM TRAPPED IN JONATHAN FRAKES’ BASEMENT” in Morse Code. I have tried to curb this effect by looking contemplative all the time, but this just adds squinting to the blinking, so I look like a mole. Yesterday on the set of Greek Fred Savage commissioned me to open a door, which I proceeded to open with more precision and focus than I ever have while legally entering a building.
I’m wondering if there will come a point when I give up entirely and start pretending to be a Muppet. Flail my arms slightly as if I’m directed by strings, open my eyes really wide, and methodically flap my jaw like I’m saying “bap bap bap bap bap bap bap!”
I kinda hope so, because I think background work could provide the funniest last day of employment imaginable. Given that I’m one of three people not lusting after a SAG card, I feel somehow at liberty to sabotage a production I don’t like until finally prompting my dismissal by yelling “cut!” indiscriminately to relieve tension.
For now, though, I remain quietly in the background. A blinking hat rack, a mumbling potted plant.
Acting.