movie extra

My mid-life looking backward tour continues and led me to a giant box of correspondence* wherein I found an entire letter I had typed to my family immediately after being an extra for a day on Outbreak, which shot in Ferndale, CA in 1994. I am very thankful for my devoted documentation b/c I remember about 5% of the details. I include it below in its entirety along with a couple of cool documents they issued to me then. Kind of miss the idea of writing letters - to say nothing of typing them - and appreciate revisting my unjaded take on being on a movie set, not to mention me listing prior credits of the cast to my family. (note: I mention Joe Don Baker and saw him on set throughout the day but he was ultimately cut from the film). Funny to think that 7 years later I was working in the mailroom of a production company in Beverly Hills who also shot a movie in Ferndale, hearing reports and seeing dailies from the set of this town where I had been an extra on a movie set, a town adjacent to Arcata where I had lived and incubated all my filmy dreamings. It all felt like some vital profound bookend to me then, past and present intersecting to create a star-lit pathway clearly designed to illuminate and embolden the trajectory of my ascendant cinematic destiny whereas now it just feels like the sheer randomness particular to the yawning indifference of the ice-cold unfeeling universe. (Or maybe it’s me that’s changed?) In any event, I ended up doing two days total on Outbreak but the second was a week or so later and came after what’s documented here. You can’t see me on screen per se but I am located somewhere in the circled mass of humans above.

*I am unable to shed anything like this - letters, trinkets, errata - except for my biannual manic gemini throw-it-all-out-it’s-all-void-of-meaning nights.