Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Any Actors on the Fire?

He started it!







I think.

Not really. It can be interesting, sometimes. Meet a few people, learn a little movie magic along the way.
Keep in mind what you are dealing with, as an Extra. On Army of Darkness, I was run down by a horse and rider, when the rider lost control of his horse as we were charging into battle.
That endless hoard you see is really the seme 300 guys, running in a football field sized loop, with the camera tilted up from a low angle, so you only see the near side. The plastic armor was one size fits none, and cut your legs while running. (Even with duct tape around your chins. The horses are the animals of extras, not war trained, and one paniced. I was in the way. The weapons though were real, sharp and the guy running at your back has never held one before. We sat in California direct sun for 6 hours, without making noise waiting for other shots to be filmed, and they had no water available or shade for extras.
There were perks on some jobs. I got to speak with Angela Lansbury, (they treat her like a queen. Nice lady). I got to discuss the under and over crossbow in LadyHawk with the man who used it ( Rutger Hauer. ) and I met the Iron Lady herself on Murder She Wrote,( Margaret Thatcher).
I caused a stir on the sidelines once, by sitting weaving chainmail while dressed full Amish. (Their creed is "do no harm to no man", but really says nothing about defense. They could walk about in full plate) lol
So not quite a regular job, but one of several side jobs necessary to keep food on the table, and a roof overhead.
The pay was never large, but varied by the job. Most was about minimum wage, and in one case, I was paid more to lose my full beard, than the commercial paid.

Yes, she was a very attractive girl. We dated off and on during the mid 90s and then we lost track of each other. In late 2001 her sister contacted me and told she had passed in Sept 2001. She was on a waiting list for a kidney donor and it never happened.
I also had an acquaintance who's young daughters were extras for the movie "Selena"

I spent a couple on the set of Windtalkers. There was extreme fire weather so the studio paid for 5 L.A. County Fire Engines and 5 Forest Service Type III engines to be on set for filming. The food was great. The pyro guys are crazy. I thought the safest place to stand was next to them, WRONG!! The stand way too close to stuff blowing up. I was there for the opening scene where the squad gets shot up in the creek, another in the village where there is a big shoot out and the end when they blow up the big guns on the hill. The dead body mannequins look totally real. Amputees are used as extras when someone needs to lose an arm or leg. It was weird to see G.I.s and Japanese soldiers in full costume discussing the upcoming Superbowl. The cast rode to different locations on shuttle busses. Nicolas Cage was an [bleep], he rode alone on a shuttle. Adam Beech seemed cool but very busy. He seemed very interested in everything going on. Cage showed up almost out of nowhere, shot his scene and left without even looking around or saying anything. The big explosions of the cannon was caused by igniting about 10 55 gallon tubs of a diesel/gas mix and was huge. Did I say the pyro guys were nuts?

Army of Darkness was shot in a quarry. That car the hero arrived in, was custom smashed, and placed in the quarry, by a medium sized crane.
The crane operator over-reached, while turned sideways on the only road in.
The crane toppled into the quarry, and the operator slid down the cliff face. He was not injured badly, but all filming had to stop, due to a crane in the shot!
It was cool as hell to watch, when about an hour later, two cranes arrived, and the big crane dropped the small crane into the pit. The two cranes worked together to right the medium sized crane, which was still upside down on the slope. Then the big crane, raised both cranes out, medium, then small.
It looked like they didn't waste a motion.

I started wrangling on a picture called Comes a Horseman in 1977. Since then I have worked on around 25 movies, tv shows,commercials etc. I have had a few lines and done a few horseback stunts and was the head wrangler on a couple small shows but sure not an actor. Some of stuff you may have heard of like Braveheart,Alamo,Kingdom,Magnificent Seven.My last job was driving for special effects on Transformers 5 last may and June.
I met a lot of interesting people and made some good friends in the business. I worked with a few actors that became really famous later on. Vince Vaughn, Vigo Mortenson and Kurtwood Smith.

Fred

I'm certainly not an actor and have never been in a movie, but my handwriting was! In 1989 or so, some movie people came into the first gun shop I worked in. They were filming a movie called "Chattahoochee" at the old State Insane Asylum here in town. It was about a Korean War vet who came home and lost his noodle. They had a M1 Garand that they needed to have some 'smithing done so it would cycle blanks and an old Smith model 10 with hardly any blueing that they wanted refurbished to look new. We did whatever to the Garand and reblued the Smith and refinished the grips.

When the guns were ready they told us they wanted to bring the "Star" of the movie in and have us walk him through how to handle the guns because he was a Brit and was unfamiliar with firearms. A few days later they showed up and introduced us to their "Star", a very unassuming fellow, who turned out to be Gary Oldman. None of us had ever heard of him at the time, I think his biggest role prior to that was playing Sid Vicious in "Sid & Nancy". A few years later he hit the big time as "Dracula". Anyway, he had all the personality of a stale donut. Another guy and I took him back into the indoor range and showed him how to hold the Garand without looking too much like a wuss. Finally he was ready to "shoot it". He cranked off a few quick rounds and then, with some panic in his voice, proclaimed "The bullets are hitting me! The bullets are hitting me!" The ejected empties were simply hitting the divider between the bays and harmlessly bouncing off his shoulder. Our hero was not amused...

He finally got with it and is seen in the opening scene firing the Garand in Korea. Later in the film, he is seen buying the S&W in a pawn shop and the gun tag is the one that I wrote for them with the make, model, caliber and a 1955 price on it. Of course it can't be easily seen but I knew it was there when I saw the movie!

So that's my claim to fame. It was not a blockbuster, but besides future Star Oldman, it had Dennis Hopper and Ned Beatty. I think it was only in the theater for a month or so, but I bought it on VHS and have it around here somewhere. I might pull it out and watch it again this weekend.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099242/

You ain't kidding!

L.W.

I spent part of a day being filmed in the making of "Easy Rider"
I was a member of the marching band.
Fonda was mostly drugged up, and Hopper was being an azz.

Wasn't impressed then, and have not changed my mind.

As they film a LOT in our town, I've briefly met some stars.
Some are personable, but a disproportionate number think their [bleep] don't stink.

I only had the opportunity to work on one movie, but the Teamsters I worked with had a lot of stories. A few said Rob Lowe was the biggest azzhole they had ever met, most thought Jack Nicholson was a great guy.

One guy told me a story about working on a movie with Woody Harrelson. He insisted that the main generator for Home Base be run on Bio-diesel. He made a huge stink about it. The transportation manager looked all over town for another generator truck set up to run bio, but came up empty. Finally a guy at one of the generator truck rental places went out in the shop and came back with about six bio-diesel decals, winked and said "don't forget to tell your guys, straight diesel".

That actress Levin Rambin was an absolute little bitch, Elizabeth Shue was as nice as I hoped she would be, Gerard Butler was OK. The director Curtis Hanson who has a pretty good list of movies was a weird duck, and ultimately had to be replaced mid-shoot, I think he had a breakdown.

One night the CHP working traffic for the shoot waved a drunk driver over and was giving him a sobriety check about 25 yards away from the shoot. Being I was hanging out at the craft-services table getting fat, Hanson was standing next to me and he asked "what is going on over there?" as he nodded at the CHP and drunk.
I said "I think they are going to arrest that guy for DUI".
Hanson said "oh no, that is terrible, I'm going to go see what I can do".
"Huh? That's not a good idea Mr. Hanson".
Well he walks across the street and starts to walk up behind the officer giving the test and his partner spotted him. He pulled out his big flashlight and made a b-line for Hanson. "Don't hit him, he's the director!". The officer stopped and looked at me. "If he's in the hospital we all go home: I said smiling at him.
He changed his tune and just grasped Hanson by the arm and steered him away. A day later Hanson was gone and a new director flown in.

Funny/interesting stories.

When I was in school a movie named "The Explosive Generation" with William Shatner was filmed at our high school. There wasn't much interaction with the movie people except for one pretty class mate who apparently got friendly.

When I was in college Jerry Lewis filmed on campus for a few days. He was filming some exterior shots of "The Nutty Professor".
He was as nice as he could be to the students. He even put on a show for them in the football stadium. I've thought highly of him ever since.

I was impressed in both experiences how much "Hurry up and wait" was going on.