Swinging in the 70's

Date: May 2010
Job: Eye of the Storm
Location: City

Seven weeks after the ad I do a film set in the 1970s so costume and make-up are provided, which is kind of fun. At the unit base I dress in a tent (no, I don’t wear a tent, that was late 70s, this is early 70s) and later I’m called into another tent to have my hair and make-up done. Of course the stars, like Geoffrey Rush, have a caravan. Sigh. One day.

Eventually a mini bus ferries us to the location, a posh Italian restaurant a few blocks away. We extras sit out on the street chatting, a habit we've all developed to pass the time. Should I be offended that they’ve married me to a grey-haired man in his late 50s when I’m… much younger? Not to worry, he’s a handsome, articulate man, and a good conversationalist. Once inside I am a little disappointed to find we are placed in a booth right at the back of the restaurant. Then they have the audacity to take my husband away and give me another! We find out later my second husband’s modern crew cut is the reason for his demotion from a table near the leads to one right up the back with me. There are lots of riotous jokes about wife swapping. Hubby #2 and I are left to our own devices as we realise, despite what the agitated AD tells us, we are not even in shot. The huge, and I mean huge, vase of flowers between us and the camera is a dead give away. So much for ‘being seen.’ And the trouble they went to dress me in this lovely orange knitted suit with gold trim and matching gold handbag and shoes and jewellery, not to mention my flicked back hair! So we sit there with our plates of cold pasta and glasses of grape juice playing ‘Pass the pepper. Which pepper? Oh, that pepper.’ (I’ll have to show you one day. Hours of fun.) and exchanging personal trivia in hushed tones.

Later I am given some herb cigarettes to smoke and my spouse and I work out a routine involving lighting my smoke with a candle, as we are thrilled to find his face and the back of my head will be blurs in the distance! Moving up in the world. The trouble is the cigarettes will not butt out and I have to keep replacing them and after several takes I realise I’ve smoked a whole pack. And I don’t even smoke! I try to hold the cigarette elegantly like I’ve seen in movies when it was considered cool, but I end up spilling ash everywhere. By the time we are finished there is a plate of pasta smothered in pepper, a mountain of cigarette butts in the ash tray and a table cloth mysteriously littered with grey filth and candle wax.

At lunch the extras are the last to eat, as industry propriety decrees, and I struggle to find things that satisfy. Against my better judgement, I eat a corn cob and have bits stuck in my teeth for the rest of the afternoon. Not that it matters. I could smear tomato sauce all over my face and it wouldn’t be seen.

During an afternoon break I see ‘The Rush’ sitting alone and decide to say hello. After all, we met just a few weeks before, at which time he chatted amiably with my daughter. I ask whether he remembers. He does. Then I stupidly tell him he looks tired. ‘Oh, we’ve been filming here today.’ ‘I know,’ I answer, ‘I’m one of the extras.’ I don't usually dress like this, you know.

The wardrobe people arrive and give us new outfits. We are re-arranged at the other end of the restaurant so that the camera can film the same scene from a different angle. I end up with an elderly gentleman. This time I’m facing the camera and actually within view of the leads! (Glad I didn’t go with the tomato sauce idea after all.) An AD tells me I’m a PA out to lunch with my boss. His ‘wife’ is now sitting at another table. More jokes about naughty goings on. ‘The boss’ and I chat between takes but when they yell ‘background!’ he will not make eye contact and, given we are miming, it’s impossible to co-ordinate our ‘talking’ and ‘listening’. So I give up and do my own thing.

It’s well after 7 pm by the time we get out of there. I whip off my costume and head off to a private screening of the docudrama I was in (see The Trial and Error, June), which is coincidentally showing at a nearby restaurant. I am wearing my 70s hair and make up but it’s not til much later that I realise I am also wearing a gold necklace that I have inadvertently stolen from wardrobe. Pity it wasn't the suit. That would have been something.