Quirky little shoots

My background acting career began on the East Coast and 95% of my jobs back there were major studio feature films. From the James Bond film, Licence to Kill, to the extraordinarily bad Burt Reynolds movie Cop and A Half, I’ve spent lots of time as a small frog in huge ponds.  After my inevitable move westward to LA, I began doing more television, commercials, and short films and I must admit that among my most memorable shoots have been the small ones, like re-enactment roles and indy films.

My first reenactment job in LA aired three dozen times on the Investigation Discovery cable network in early 2009. The show, Solved, is a true-crime series that presents real cases in which a mysterious homicide case unfolds through first person accounts from law enforcement officers.
My episode (Grave Danger) was about the 2003 shooting death of Louisiana Tech assistant professor Stephanie Pepper Sims. My role, with four significant scenes, was as Howard, the father of the murdered girl.
The shoot was was like hanging out with my son and his friends. Decked out in T-shirts, shorts and baseball caps, these guys and girls shot five setups all over the valley with a half-dozen re-enactors in about six hours of low key effort. Craft services was granola bars, fruit and bottles of water but the fun was contagious.


A few months later, I saved a child’s life when a plane went down in the Hudson River. Of course, since it was a television reenactment filmed for Nippon TV by an all-Japanese crew, I’ll probably never see it. (Unless someone in Japan wants to send me a video. Hint. Hint.) We did the whole shoot at Air Hollywood, which is actually neither one. (It’s not in the air and it’s not in Hollywood.)  Air Hollywood is an airplane mock-up studio out in San Fernando, a small town that exists primarily in the minds of its inhabitants. The studio houses a wide-body jet interior, several smaller airplane interiors and an expansive standing airport terminal set.

In the tiny extras holding area, I did what I usually do: I paid attention and looked interested. Sure enough, our Japanese-American handler approached me, “We like you play featured part. No lines but you get $50 character bump.”
He seated me by a window in the first row behind First Class in the airplane cabin mock-up. He introduced me to a young woman and a 2-year-old boy with his mother hovering nervously behind.
The director – a diminutive Japanese woman wearing a Sony T-shirt – talked rapidly to our handler who told me, “You are man who save baby life when plane hit river by holding child against his fat tummy.”
(Well, that certainly was type-casting.)

He handed the 2-year old boy to the woman beside me and the kid start bawling ten seconds later. The crew, the mommy and the actress tried for a half hour to get the kid to work without screaming. From the crew came everything from “Scooby Doo” and “Mickey Mouse” to “Fuzakeruna!” and “Urusai kono bakayaro!” No luck.
The crew tried for a half hour to get a simple shot of the mom handing the kid to me and me bending over forward with the child against my stomach before they finally gave up and brought in a stand-in; a doll. (The doll must have been SAG for it worked quietly, efficiently and - I presume - for more money.)

In all, an 8 hour shoot, all indoors with virtually no time in holding. Because of the character bump, my pay was $155 in cash on the spot. I drove away a happy guy.

Easy but odd were the two hours (at $150 an hour) I spent working The Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! The seriously weird fifteen-minute show, now in its fifth season on the Adult Swim divison of the Cartoon Network, is bizarre and satirical, like watching a day in the programming of a sloppily cut together, nonsensical cable-access channel.
Creators/stars Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim have a twisted sense of humor, one that leaves even die-hard fans scratching their head. That’s why I was amazed that they hired me to be one of four “dads” in a series of cut-aways about “dad’s day.”
They found me on Now Casting and called me in for an audition on a Wednesday morning at their secluded headquarters in a totally nondescript building a block off Santa Monica Blvd in Hollywood.  Afterward, as I navigated the Cahuenga Pass toward home, I got the call hiring me for $300 for two hours for a Friday AFTRA shoot.
Joining me on the shoot were an Asian dad, a buzz-haircut dad, and a black dad. One by one, we stood on the green paper floor in front of the green paper screen and rapped, sang and danced. Although I didn’t know until later, the tall guy directing us was actually Eric himself, while Tim was in the control room hovering over the monitors. It was immediately apparent from their feedback that Tim and Eric wanted us to be as bad as possible and we all rose (or fell) to the occasion. Within two hours we were done, laughing and shaking our heads as we turned in our costumes.