More commonly known as an “extra”—the guy you see running behind a car while Jet Li kicks someone in the face—the background actor is at the very bottom of the food chain in the television and film industry. But every time a movie is made, hundreds or even thousands of people jump at the chance to be immortalized on film, or even video. This was certainly the case when Dreamworks’ military prison drama The Last Castle started shooting at the old Tennessee State Prison last March.

I was one of those people. To get a sense of what the job was like, think of the term “background”—you think of scenery, inanimate objects, a rock. For three months, that’s basically what I was.

Background on being background: I initially sought employment as a production assistant, but on a whim, I decided to look into being an extra, since I wanted to be involved in the film somehow and there were no guarantees I’d get on as a PA. When I went to the Belcourt Theatre, where the producers were holding a “cattle call” (a cute but appropriate name for an open audition), and saw the 100-plus-yard-long line outside, I thought there was no guarantee I’d become an extra either. But I did.

A few days after I showed up at the Belcourt, I got a call asking me to come in and read for a speaking role. Like most people, my thoughts on being an actor had previously been limited to a few secret daydreams while doodling in class or sitting through some boring meeting. So this development was an interesting surprise. It is here where my diary begins, after the third, and ultimately final, callback from casting.

March 3: Boot camp

I don’t think I’m going to get that speaking part. There are two weeks to go until shooting is supposed to start, and one would think all the parts have been cast.

Today we started with a lecture from the first assistant director, Bill. He told us a bit about the movie (at least as much as he felt we needed to know), a bit about what it means to be an extra, and helpful hints like, “Don’t talk to the stars of the movie.” Then came our military instructor, some retired sergeant major who talks just like every drill instructor you’ve ever heard speak in a movie: Southern accent, loud, the works. We were taught how to salute, stand at attention, etc.

After a couple of hours of this, I began to feel stupid and remembered all the reasons I decided not to enter the Naval Academy and become a pilot. But after the lunch break, I began to get into it, trying to lead, to perfect the skills.

In general, most of the people in the crew I’ve met have been OK. The PAs seem to be pretty cool. I engaged one kid—I’ll call him “Hats”—in conversation about movies. He’d given up Watkins Film School and now works on various little projects. He’s planning on shooting his own short this summer. I thought at first that he was some silver spoon type with the freedom to choose his steps with little concern for finance; I was right about that, but he still seems to be a good guy. And rather excited about being on this feature. Well, Robert Redford, James Gandolfini, maybe Sam Jackson—I’m a little excited too.

Several of the PAs have done some work at Watkins. Good news for anybody thinking about going there I suppose.

While waiting to get my first turn in a real Hollywood makeup chair, the second assistant director, David, walked over with his second, Mark. One of the second AD’s responsibilities is to make sure we background actors are in the right place at the right time, doing things to make it all look real and consistent throughout the film. I can picture the day when both David and Mark will be directing their own by-the-numbers action flicks. The director, Rod Lurie, popped in briefly, Panaflex lens around his neck, running around rather in a hurry. I think he spoke to the extras while I was getting a trim.

March 21: Getting started

Finally, the filming begins. We were to be at the prison at 5 a.m. So sad is the status of the extra that we weren’t able to park on site; we parked a few miles away and were shuttled to the set by a big yellow school bus. We reported to the extras’ holding area, the big gymnasium in the old prison where we had boot camp. The good people from casting were there to check us in and give us our uniform voucher. We took that voucher down to wardrobe, where we were to be given uniforms.

Here began one of the more interesting ongoing soap operas throughout the rest of the shoot. There was always tension between wardrobe and the extras. We probably had more contact with them than with just about anyone else on the staff. After casting, they were the first people we saw in the morning and the last people we saw before we headed home. Those wardrobe people who worked with us had a pretty tough job, overseeing the costuming needs of as many as 400 people a day. I think they all wanted to be working with the principal actors, and who wouldn’t? Would you rather be kissing Robert Redford’s ass or washing 400 pairs of our smelly socks?

The people in wardrobe were all cool with me, but apparently some extras felt that they treated us as less than human. But in a way, we were.

The first scene to be filmed was a basketball game that apparently frames the relationships of the prisoners. Same old story: Latinos on one side, blacks on other. Guess white guys can’t jump in prison. It was so cold, so so fucking cold. And we were only allowed the thin T-shirt and cotton uniform of the inmate. Those with speaking parts were offered jackets by wardrobe—I think it is a Screen Actor’s Guild, union-type thing. My first task was to walk to the side of the court and watch...and to pretend to be warm.

At 10 a.m., we had been on the set for four hours, on call for five. It felt as if it were time to go home, but there was still an hour left until lunch. I continued my walk around the court to watch the game with my impromptu partner “J,” another of the few wannabe filmmakers who signed up to be an extra. We made juvenile jokes and flirted with one of the PAs while doing the walk over and over.

Finally, lunch. We raced to the line to find a pretty nice array of choices, most notably a hunk of beef so rare that it mooed when the staffer carved it. Beef, cold; spaghetti and marinara, warm. I had the spaghetti.

There is a lot of hurry-up-and-wait on a movie set. After lunch, they rushed us to get in place, and then they’d set up lighting, have the tractors and cranes move in with huge cloth sun shielding, check camera line of sight, and wait for the actors—who, considering the weather, were understandably slow getting out of their trailers. It was getting old by about 3 p.m.

March 24: You’re never too old for high school

I never believed that I would be working with a castle full of geniuses, but I didn’t consider how profoundly annoying this environment could be. Actually, I have to fall back on the old adage that most people never mature much beyond high school. Even four or five or six years of college does nothing to help many. I often feel like I am back in high school during a very, very long period of gym class.

This is definitely shaping up to be a standard prison movie, in which all the characters are segregated into racial groups. So the black guys are always told to stand together, generally congregating around the basketball court. We are all taller and more muscular than most of the extras. We are all mean and scary. Redford will teach us that we are really good soldiers who have only made mistakes, and the blond Lincoln will save us all.

Actually, this de facto segregation probably suits a lot of people. Most of the black extras had already congregated together. The younger guys spend a lot of time laughing and joking and making fun of the outsiders. I’ve been given my brief initiation, and now I’m in on all the jokes. Even though these guys are high-school cruel and high-school silly, they can also be really funny, and sometimes we need a laugh, even if it comes at someone else’s expense.

There are also those white guys who want to be down—I’ll call them the “Eminemers.” You know, the guys expert in slang, playing spades, and calling their “baby momma” on their cell phones. They have kind of developed their own little crew. I don’t think the scriptwriter considered the Eminemers when he was writing the script for this movie.

Someone, no one knows who, made a noose out of some of the crew’s rope and left it in the extras’ holding area. Well, one of the black guys playing a guard happened upon some white guy making a joke with the noose as a prop. The joke was fairly vague, but the guy who heard it perceived it as racist. He told “us” about it but didn’t remember who told the joke. I think he withheld the identity of the person on purpose, which was wise, because some of the brothas were ready to go off. I wonder if the noose wasn’t a plant by the director, who wants his movie “charged with tension and anger.” Now the stage has been set for some tiny incident to spiral helplessly out of control.

I like to watch how desperate everyone is for camera time. The amateur would-be actors are all trying soooo hard. Some guys will knock you out of the way if they think it’s going to get them closer to a close-up. And we’ve only been filming for four days now. No matter how many times the ADs tell us to look natural or have “lots of energy,” these wackos barrel around like monkeys on amphetamines at all times.

The people we work with most often are two PAs; well, to us, they’re PAs, but to the rest of the crew they are the extra wranglers. They herd us like cattle from place to place, always sounding very upbeat and happy to have us, but looking as if they’d rather be anywhere else. Their being female seems problematic; every request is seen as a demand, and each instruction seen as an order. Hundreds of men, many former military, and most Southern, being “ordered” around by women? I see a train wreck coming.

Predictably, most of the men have gravitated toward a more masculine authority in the form of the two second ADs, Mark and David. Most of the time, they’ve been shooting scenes with us while the director is elsewhere. Their main job is to provide an added sense of realism to a scene; they make sure that the background actors aren’t just standing around picking their noses while the stars are in the foreground doing what they do.

Most people don’t really know what making a movie is like. They have a vision of some guy sitting in a cloth-and-wood chair right next to a camera, shouting out orders. Well, the shouting hasn’t changed, but with the advent of technology, most all else has. The black-and-white checkered clapboard is a mere anachronism, its usefulness replaced by a digital marking of the beginning of the scene. Whatever is being shot on the (most often three) cameras is recorded digitally as well, making it instantly available for playback. Some extras spend a lot of time watching that playback, looking to see if they will be in the scene.

The last couple of days have been pretty slow. When we aren’t needed on the set, the lot of us are asked to stay in the holding area or, for those smokers, outside on the steps. There are various ways to pass the time, the voluminous amount of time, when we aren’t actually filming. Cards are pretty popular, as are books. I’ve already finished one, and I think I’m going to finish several more before this is over.

We spent a lot of time on Friday yelling at the bus that will bring Redford’s character into the prison. God, it is such a lame scene. If it were realistic, the prisoners would be pushing and shaking and pounding the bus, not chanting “you,” as if it were some high-school basketball game.

April 5: Bad hair day

When I called in to casting today, I was told to report to a barbershop where the studio had contracted all their haircutting for the extras. It was empty, save for one customer and two young men deeply involved in their console game. They asked if I was from Dreamworks, I said yes, and they stuck me in the chair. I figured that this would be a quick trim and I would be out. It was quick, sure; but a trim? I got out of that chair looking like I had just leapt from the cover of a late-’80s rap album, avec red, black, and white Air Jordans on my feet. All I needed was some big goofy eyeglasses.

A week passed before I worked again. It seems they had lost some information on me that they needed before I could work. I don’t know how this happened, or if it was just some ruse. Furthermore, I found out that our checks were sitting in some computer somewhere in Los Angeles, waiting to be authorized by Dreamworks. So our pay was a bit late.

Pay was one of the ongoing complaints from the extras. If you are an extra, you get a daily rate, meaning that you get paid for eight hours of work even if you work less. You work more, you get overtime. And for every day we worked, we were to get a check sent to us a week later. However, one week often turned into two weeks or more.

One extra got so upset about the late checks that, instead of choosing to talk to one of the ADs or PAs, he called a talk radio show and complained, muckraker-style, on the air. What the hell was a local talk show host going to do about it?

Our collection of movie stardom hopefuls was awash with prima donnas. These guys were a never-ending source of amusement. I especially liked the guys who made up their own lines in a fit of improvisational glee, shouting out things just after everyone else had gotten quiet, or those who gave suggestions to the director.

Redford finally appeared this week. We were reshooting the scene where his character arrives at the prison via bus. (The studio didn’t like the “you, you, you” bit any more than I did, I guess.) They lined us all up, and Lurie came and picked out the meanest-looking guys he could find. Guess who is big, mean, and ugly? My reward was to be placed in a prime camera spot during the filming. Our picture was taken, perhaps for some promotional stills. I am in the movie.

The funniest bit about this was Lurie’s sudden decision to have almost all the African American extras wear some kind of head dressing, be it cotton pullover hat, doo rag, or Mr. T-like headband. Fortunately for me, the costume designer decided that I would not need this for my “look.” All the Latino actors, meanwhile, would be wearing barrio-style tank tops.

There are some real former prison inmates on the set as extras. One of the guys I met spent some time with me on the heavy punching bag. This guy, perhaps in his late 30s, was pretty damn good.

April 22: In the middle of it all

This was the first full week for the “featured” extras, of which I am now one. We worked 13-hour days Monday through Saturday, and spent two days shooting one pivotal scene with Redford. I was placed in between Paul Calderon and Mark Ruffalo in another scene, so you know I got some serious face time (depending on the whims of the editor, of course). When we weren’t filming, it was dead interesting listening to Calderon talk about movies with Ruffalo; his knowledge of film history is deep and wide. He is also a pretty funny guy. It is hard to believe he is nearly 50 years old. He’s one of the most recognizable faces in the cast; nearly everyone can recall seeing him in movies like Pulp Fiction or King of New York.

Ruffalo, who received a great deal of notoriety from his role in last year’s You Can Count on Me, is also pretty funny and engaging. His success couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

The movie seems to be in an extras deficit. New ones filter in every day, but due to the difficult conditions—the cold, the running in fake rain, the hours on our feet, the low pay—most don’t last over a day. The filmmakers have managed to get more Hispanic men and are still in search of African Americans, particularly bald guys with a lot of tattoos and a lot of muscles. The makeup crew have been diligently applying fake tattoos to some extras.

The directors all made speeches on Monday and proclaimed this movie to be an “important” film about leadership, one that we will all be proud of. Perhaps so, but the speech didn’t seem to have any effect on the troops. Most just mumbled about wishing they had a speaking role. Actually, Lurie talked about this to another director, wishing that he could give us featured guys some lines. But once you get a speaking role, you are sent packing, because they aren’t going to pay you $750 a day for the rest of the shoot.

We had the first real “special effect” this week: We got to push over a big wall of rocks. It took an entire day to shoot the scene, though the wall was only pushed over twice. We shot one take in the morning, went away, and came back later to shoot it again. The wall itself was a combination of wood, plastic, polyurethane rocks, and real ones, of course. The whole thing was set up on hydraulics. When we all lined up to push it over, someone activated the hydraulics so that the wall would crumble. More special effects are to come—hopefully, something besides rain.

Redford has been on set all week, dutifully doing some very minor stunt work and taking direction. Well, taking suggestions is more like it; how do you give acting directions to an Oscar-winning director? Very carefully? He rides in on his little Schwinn mountain bike from his trailer, sometimes resembling a slim and trim Nature Boy Ric Flair from a distance.

May 1: Joy in repetition

If this diary were made into a movie, well, no one would watch it. But I have the tag line for the previews: “Repetition has a new name: Rod Lurie.”

Man, we sure have done a lot of takes. It seemed Lurie had it under control at first; it was like five and out. But now we are up to like 15 takes for each scene. The director even jokes about it himself, albeit a little self-consciously. Speaking of jokes, someone decided to lighten the mood when Redford missed his mark by saying, “That never would have happened if Paul Newman were here.” To which Redford replied, “Yeah, because Paul would have forgotten to show up.”

This week we were filming a key turning point in the picture, and that could be why the director wanted to get it just right. Can’t say too much about this scene, except don’t blink or you’ll miss me. Actually, I’m used to one of the ADs giving me a good mark to hit—I guess because I never try to jump in a scene. Some people are getting jealous, though. It is funny how one day I’m standing just behind the main focal point of the scene, and the next day, when we come back to that scene, 10 people have appeared who weren’t there before.

Overall, we are treated pretty well, although I think the food sucks most days. Some idiot dropped a big rock on my hand during one scene, and a paramedic was Jane-on-the-spot with a Band-Aid.

Like I said already, there are some pretty amusing people on this set. But the funniest are usually unintentionally so, as is often the case. Some of the stand-ins are the epitome of the unwittingly comical. Stand-ins are people approximately the same height and eye color as one of the principal actors; they’re used by the photographers and lighting people to make sure all the focal points are on point and the shadows fall the right way before the actors come in to say their lines.

Redford has his own personal stand-in, a man who has been working for him in this capacity for around 30 years now. The man says he couldn’t get acting work because everyone told him he looked too much like Redford, so I guess he did the smart thing and made a career out of looking like Redford. He isn’t so funny, though; it’s the local actors who were asked prior to the first day of filming to act as stand-ins. One of these guys, this “actor,” brings his own fold-out chair to the set.

Lately, whatever glamour there was in this gig has worn off. It can be incredibly boring. I’ve taken to setting up a stick on the grassy part of the courtyard and throwing rocks at it to see how often I can hit it.

May 12: May days

For the month of May, we are to be filming most of the big action sequences that take place during the prison revolt. In addition to about 300 extras, 20 to 30 stuntmen and the stunt coordinator are on the set. While this sounds exciting—explosions, lots of running, gunshots, fistfights—the boredom continues. Most of the extras spend hours upon hours in the holding area, and we’re running out of ways to pass the time. I am surprised that there has only been one fight, but tension is diffused by heavy doses of (mostly) playful put-downs and general chicanery.

The stuntmen spend most of their time huddled together (forcibly) in what is to be the prisoners’ mess hall—where, as one might expect, the guards will be distracted so we can do our dirt. Whenever the stunt guys are outside, many of them practice their martial arts moves. Some of them are well into their 70s. The older guys are as cool as you might expect them to be. I haven’t had the chance to chat any of them up for a long stretch, however, as they are just one more group the untouchable extras aren’t allowed to come into close contact with.

Stuntmen are an interesting bunch. If you watch them for any length of time, you’ll notice that they’re just wired differently from the rest of us. One of their scenes involves an armored vehicle, so they spend a lot of time between takes milling around the vehicle. From a distance, it looks like an episode of Wild Kingdom that follows a pride of lions: The young cubs are engaging in playful fighting, the older ones are sitting in the shade trying to stay cool, and those in the middle prowl, looking menacing.

This week we had to bid goodbye to those who refused to play by the rules of our Lord of the Flies-like village. The overzealous who tried too hard to impress the principal actors...gone. The devious who were not quite so devious as to avoid being caught breaking the rules...gone. The extremely annoying who were way too hungry for stardom...gone. It was a gentle reminder to us background actors that we are all expendable—as expendable as the black guy in science fiction/horror movies.

As the deadline for completion of the film looms, tension is starting to thicken. PAs like “Hats,” who early on showed so much exuberance for the project, have become jaded, though not yet disgruntled. The days are starting to seem like a grind—a job rather than an experience. Extras are arguing with PAs (which also gets you the red card), ADs with ADs, PAs with PAs.

Then there is the ever smiling and gregarious James Gandolfini riding back and forth between the prison set and his trailer, appreciating those extras who always yell, “Hey Tony!”

Everyone was excited about the prospect of seeing Sam Jackson on the set, but as it happened, he turned the role down. In stepped Delroy Lindo, an actor of equally great stature and presence. He’ll arrive later.

June 4: Wild on the set

Lurie’s birthday was a few weeks back. There wasn’t much of a brouhaha about it, but an extra wrangler organized a little male strip show for the occasion. It was a joke, of course, performed by two extras who stripped to their underwear with some wacky message printed on their bodies. It was actually kind of funny, and the director’s reaction was priceless.

Gov. Don Sundquist took a tour of the set that day as well. I don’t even think most of the Tennessee residents recognized him, though I don’t know who that makes look worse—us or him. Ribs were served to the extras, we thought in honor of the convergence of events, but really, it was just leftovers from a big event catered by the food service company.

I finished my seventh book, Ryu Murakami’s Almost Transparent Blue. I’m tired of reading. I’ve been playing a lot of cards lately.

One of the extras got so bored, he decided to liven things up by bringing a bottle of liquor on the set. He got piss drunk. The production crew found out about it and decided to confront him. For some reason, the man decided to run around the set like a madman as the PAs chased him. He was only going to get fired, not arrested. I have no idea why he ran. His wife was waiting for him with the car. What was he going to do, run home? It was like a bad episode of Cops.

It was a day when all I could say was, “Kill me now.”

June 8: Movin’ on up

Upgrade—this is moviespeak for what happens when someone gets a promotion that corresponds with a groovy title, a pay scale increase, or, even more coveted, screen time, lines to recite, or a screen credit. A PA became a second second AD. That was cool. An extra became a principal actor, complete with trailer. Another man performed an impromptu rap song, got bumped to day player (a notch up from being an extra), and may even get a song on the soundtrack. Hey, even I got a little upgrade! But more about that later.

One of the more frustrating experiences continues to be the pay. We get paid by the day, but we can’t predict when the check will come. Sometimes it’ll be a week after the day, sometimes two. Sometimes we get one check and then five days later we’ll get three, then a couple more days will pass, and then we’ll get another. What other job pays you this way?

Even though this is taking on all the characteristics of a real job, I can still get a little jazzed when the directors pick me to stand next to one of the principals in a two-shot or dolly.

For the past week, we’ve been shooting the final scene of the movie. With shooting the various angles, close-ups, two-shots, and tracking shots, it took the entire week, and we still aren’t finished, though the director hopes to move on tomorrow. As far as climaxes go, this scene will feel a little familiar even to the occasional moviegoer. Fortunately, the scene features Gandolfini. It was quite interesting to watch him prepare—he was almost like a defensive tackle getting fired up for a goal-line stand.

Delroy Lindo made his appearance. He brought his own makeup person and an assistant. (He hires “black”—only those who know what this means will find it important that he does.)

Now, on to my upgrade. Though I am one of the extras who is supposed to have a lot of scenes, this week I found myself with the second unit, which shoots stunts and anything else that doesn’t involve the principal actors or anything the director doesn’t want to shoot himself. The first day was kind of disappointing; I mostly ran around the set pretending that I was being shot at from an overhead helicopter as the stuntmen pretended to pound each other in the main shot. We inhaled a lot of black smoke and endured the ever-present foot pain from wearing combat boots.

There was one scene in which a principal actor was to appear, but he was shooting another scene with the first unit. So they needed a body double. It was down to me and one other guy, neither of us looking much like the actor, who is 4 inches taller than me and about 100 pounds heavier. So one of the women from wardrobe had to pick, and she chose me, meaning that I was upgraded to stand-in/photo double.

Better pay, better food, better snacks. I might actually be on camera—and not as “the extra.” You might see my hand and arm from behind a tank. Drawbacks? I can’t sneak off for a nice nap on the makeshift beds in the extras’ holding area. As a stand-in, you have to be on set all the time. Other stand-ins have complained about no camera time, but at this point, that’s not really an issue for me.

I must say that the other half live quite well on this production. Lunch is an entirely different world. People actually walk up to you and tell you what is on the menu. The tantalizing smell of grilled fish wafts in from outside when anyone opens the rear gate. At breakfast, rather than soggy eggs and oatmeal, there are freshly made omelets and hash browns. On Saturday, a live band plays to help aid your digestion.

So basically, I got to hang out with the stuntmen and look tough and listen to their stories of drunken revelry. I wonder if they’ll give me a screen credit for this?

The production is rolling to a slow close. We were supposed to be done already, but it’s likely we will be finished in a couple of weeks. Can I stand another two-and-a-half weeks of this? I don’t know, but I think so. Last week, when I was still an extra, I was considering calling it quits. Funny what a little upgrade will do for your motivation.

June 22: Last go ’round

I was amazed at the number of extras who became principals within the last week of first unit shooting. It seemed as if Screen Actors Guild cards were being passed out like massage parlor flyers on 47th Street in New York City. I guess I would have liked to have been one of those recipients, but perhaps I was a little unaware that you had to lobby for it.

The best thing about working second unit is how quickly they operate. Two takes, then out, compared to 10 or so on the first unit. Granted, the second unit shots have to be meticulously planned because of their nature, what with the life-threatening stunts. And there’s little or no dialogue to screw up. I think the one thing second unit fears most is Lurie returning to monitor the work. He would probably slow things up considerably. (And just when I was pondering this question, who should appear but him.)

The second-best thing about second unit is how laid-back everyone seems to be, even though a lot of the stuff is dangerous, and there is fire and gunfire everywhere. They don’t seem to be quite as...consumed with what’s going on. And the drama quotient is far less.

My body is taking a beating. I’ve had a huge rock dropped on one of my fingers for the second time this shoot. Instead of feeling the pain of walking all day, I’m now feeling the pain of sprinting across the courtyard for battle scenes. And I got some kind of virus. In addition to coughing from the smoke on set, I’m hacking up a lung at home. So it ain’t easy getting sleep. And I hear the voices of the directors at night. “Cuuuuuuuuut.” “Cut, cut, cut, cut, cuuuuut.” “Rrrolling.” “Action!” “Quietly, people.” “Background, shut up!” “Go to two.”

Then there are the good things that can make you go a little longer. After a particularly depressing, rainy, hot, sweaty day and a missed lunch, one of the wardrobe people offered to make me a sandwich from craft services. Can you beat that? At the time, there could have been no better gift. Better than getting SAG-eligible, for damn sure.

Epilogue:My first time on a major motion picture shoot ended pretty much as it began, with me playing phone tag with casting, trying to find out when I would be needed again. There are no wise conclusions I’ve come to about movie-making, no profound realizations—only that, ultimately, being an extra is just a temp job like any other.