Delurking to tell my one 'Hollywood' story
A few years ago I was homeless (abusive stepdad, left home, the usual), and at the time of this story I was living in an unheated bedsit, and as it was November I used to hang out in the library and a church youth centre quite a bit. One day I noticed signs saying they were holding an open call for movie extras that weekend. I toddled down and was duly cast to spend a week filming for a big British film by a famous Hollywood director. Exciting!

Less exciting at 5am when the coach supposed to pick us up didn't arrive. After about a dozen phone calls, we were told to take taxis and that they'd pay us when we got there. Even less exciting when we found there was no one to pay us back, and we'd be spending 12 hours wearing rags in driving snow and sleet, standing on top of narrow 12ft high walls.

As I got colder and hungrier (no food apart from a dry cheese bap for lunch), I got more and more pissed off, so when we finally wrapped and had to wait an hour to have our papers signed off by an assistant director, I was not in the best of moods to be told a) they were writing 6pm (when legal overtime kicked in) rather than the time we actually finished, and b) we were only getting £10 towards the cost of the taxis, not the whole thing. I kicked off and demanded the full cost from the assistant director, who eventually capitulated.

Result? Only when payment never arrived did I find out he'd lied that I'd never shown up, so not only did I not get paid for the two days (filming day plus costume fitting day) I'd worked, I was also left £20 out of pocket for the taxi.

**** ****** is getting punched in the fucking face if I ever see him again, best music video of all time or not.
(lisasimpson2011, Thu 9 Aug 2012, 13:13, 3 replies)

that's a bummer.
I spent 3 days as an extra when I was a teenager, and even though there were hundreds of us, everything was absolutely first class - massive catering trucks full of top grub, cash payment for the day, plus a bit extra if you were in anything more than a background crowd, even the stars would sit around and talk to us between takes. (John Hurt was one of them, don't remember the others).

You got a shit deal. What a shame.
(username failed moderation, Thu 9 Aug 2012, 13:20, closed)

John Landis, Burke and Hare?

( Wet-chinned bag shanker Cannot parse Wogan, Thu 9 Aug 2012, 14:09, closed)

Why not
post the name?
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Thu 9 Aug 2012, 15:06, closed)