Out of the Orbit

Hollywood Milieu©2009

Written by Denny Dormody

It’s Sunday about 545 am. It’s early. I heading down 6^th Street in downtown LA. These streets are nothing to write home about, especially at this time of day. As the song says, the darkest hour is always just before the dawn. This is early morning LA and it’s dark. Dark and nasty. Homeless. Broken glass. Debris in the streets. An empty MTA bus passes in the night like a ghost ship disappearing into the fog. It’s pilot season.

A pilot is a new TV show. Producers pitch them. Networks bankroll them. I act in them.

I’m a background actor and this is yet another pilot. I have no complaints. I’m happy to have work. Especially, on the weekend which is normally two days of acting down time.

6^th Street runs perpendicular into Los Angeles Street. I’ll hang a left and a sharp right into the production base camp. I look forward to ordering an omelet, picking up a cup of coffee off the catering truck and hanging out with other fellow actors, writers and film maker as we all ride the Hollywood glacier, working as background extras.

I especially look forward to hooking up with the PA or production assistant handing out pay vouchers. I turn the corner. There is no base camp. This is not my beautiful home. This is not my beautiful wife. This is desolation row in the dark shadows. This sucks.

I see a lone shrouded figure with a clipboard and a flashlight. Other background actors are briefly stopping their cars, being given a map and directed to another parking location. Again. I pull a semi u-turn and pull up and receive the map to the new location. I half-smile. Same old; same old. It’s pilot season.

Pilots are the most disorganized shoots ever. The wrong location directions are given. Somebody forgets to pack the coffee pots in the catering van. There are no chairs for the background actors to sit on. The PA in charge of background has no idea what the rules for overtime are and how we extras are to be paid.

I’m dead reckoning through the back streets of downtown LA. I jump on the 101 on-ramp and head to Hollywood and Vine, the site of our actual location shoot. Minutes pass. I’m heading down Vine Street and past the fabled Capitol Records building, featured in the opening sequence of Ocean’s 11. The shining stars on the Hollywood walk of fame are wet. Wet with the morning dew. This is a heck of a way to start a shoot.

Finally, the base camp comes into focus. We park. Inside a large ‘lunch box’ trailer our pay vouchers are handed out. We inhale our breakfast. We head to set.

A street scene. Two principal actors are standing on the corner in conversation. We are crossing behind them. Some background are driving their cars in a traffic loop. Some one forgot to bring Walkie Talkie’s for the car drivers. ‘Rolling, Speed, background, Action and Cut” will now all have to be screamed up and down the streets, adding to the mayhem and general confusion. Some of the confusion can’t be helped.

Most of these crew people have not worked together. Everyone has to be introduced and get in sync with each other. Everyone is trying to get along. Everyone is trying to get a bong. Everyone is trying to stay employed. We extras have an edge in this business. Our edge is something that keeps us going shoot after shoot.

We work almost every day. We are in the orbit. I’m lucky, I can walk on a movie or TV set and I know people. I’m blessed that now I get hello’s from Make-up people and Wardrobe people and 1^st and 2^nd AD’s and PA’s and even crew. I hope this means that my glacier is melting and I’m moving slowly but surely up the Hollywood food chain.

Some crew and some PA’s working on sets, don’t work every day. They hardly know anyone. They are so glad to have a gig, they are afraid to rock the boat. They flounder. They make mistakes. You can sense when a director and crew are in not in sync with each other.

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I’m working License to Wed in Long Beach. This is day 1 of 38 shooting days. I can see how the cast and crew are not picking up their cues. Takes turn into Going again, second takes and third takes. The coordination between departments and duties is strained. You would expect it to be. This is only day 1. I saw this being out of orbit syndrome during the last season of ER. This time with not a crew member , but with an actor.

We are working ER. A patient turned crazed gunman is spraying bullets in the hallway. A SAG day-player is an FBI agent. He’s talking to the chief hospital boss. His line is something like: “I’m Bill Clinton, I’m with the FBI and I’m in charge now.” That’s it.

Not Shakespeare. A sentence or two. He keeps blowing the lines. After three muffled takes the director is getting let’s say anxious. Veins are beginning to appear on the director’s forehead. Things start to get ugly. My theory, not to be confused with My space: The day player is not working a lot. He is out of sync with the industry and out of sync with set protocol.

Ask this guy where Crafty (coffee and snacks) or where the Honey Wagon (the john) is, he probably couldn’t tell you. This guy is not in the employment orbit, because he works so few days. I imagine he works about every 3 months or so. We extras work every day.

The profound question is asked: Is it better to work one SAG day and make more money or make less money working non union and work a lot and stay in the active job networking orbit? Only the Dalia Lama and Richard Gere know for sure. I prefer to work a lot. Movies. TV. Commercial shoots. Autopsies.

Work is work. If you get a gig on a pilot, work it. Stay in the Hollywood working orbit. Expect to be sitting around. Expect to run out of coffee. Expect the unexpected. To paraphrase our old buddy Forrest Gump, Pilot is as Pilot does.

Denny Dormody is a Los Angeles Times Magazine published comedy writer and author of Riding the Hollywood Glacier. dennydormody@gmail.com