New Thing #30 - I Better Make It In the F'in Movie

Today Betsy and I headed over to the Crestwood Mall to try out to be extras in the new George Clooney movie "Up in the Air" being filmed throughout March and April in St. Louis. People in St. Louis went crazy since big Hollywood movies are rarely filmed in here. And because of this, there were thousands of people at the mall. It was insane.

Before the auditions, there was a form to fill out that included contact information, clothing sizes and dates available for filming. Most of the extras will be needed for 1, maybe 2 days during the 8 weeks of filming. They're looking for people with airport or hospitality experience since much of the movie will be filmed at the airport or a few hotels. I don't have any of that experience, but that didn't stop me from trying out. I mean, come on, how cool would it be to say "Look, that's my arm behind George Clooney!" :)

We also needed to provide a photo of ourselves showing us from the waist up. Since neither Betsy nor I had any photos we wanted to leave with the casting agents, we spent the night before taking quick photos of each other and getting them developed at Walgreen's. The casting information said they were particularly interested in multiple ethnicities, and as soon as I heard that, I knew Betsy would be a shoo-in. She has that dark coloring that is anything but Midwestern. I, on the other hand, am as white as white can be, so I opted to take my photo in a suit jacket to look more "professional". Hey, I had to do anything I could to get a leg up on the competition!


I'm a dork. :)

So this morning, we made it to the mall around 10 and the auditions were from 10-4. Of course when we got there, there was already a ton of people there, but the line seemed to be moving, so we weren't worried. Ah, to be young and naive again. We made it in the line and heard over the loud speaker about how if you had a blue ticket you could get in line. Well, no one seemed to have a blue ticket or even knew where to get one. We eventually found out we were in the line for the tickets. About 15 minutes later we made it to the end of our line where we received a white ticket. We found out that this was just our ticket into the actual auditions. We had to come back at 12:30 to get in yet another line. Without a ticket, you couldn't go into the auditions. So many rules!


This is only a portion of the people waiting in line for their tickets.

So, great, it's 10:15 and we have two hours to kill before we even begin to wait in line! Fortunately, we were right next to the post office where I applied for my passport last week. Betsy was also planning on getting her passport, but she just hadn't made it to a post office yet. So, to kill some time, we headed into the same Wolf Camera where I had my photo taken. It was kind of a madhouse because they were also taking and printing photos of people for the auditions that hadn't come prepared. Betsy headed back to get her photo by the same lady who took mine last week. She remembered me and said she couldn't forget those horrible photos I showed her. Great, I'm famous now for my orange skin. The whole process, including her getting her photos and passport, only took about 25 minutes, so we had a lot more time on our hands.

We headed to an empty bench to wait it out. Betsy brought some fill-in puzzles, a travel Trivial Pursuit game and solitaire on her BlackBerry. None of them interested us for too long though because it was more fun people watching than anything else. The diversity of the people auditioning was amazing. Two ladies were pushing their dog around in a stroller. And the clothing people wore was even more amazing. Girls in short shirts/dresses with ankle-breaking high heels, men in their captain's uniforms, girls in sweatpants and possibly-not-washed hair, and ladies with their matching track suits. One young guy had a nice looking suit on...that was about three inches too short. I'm guessing he busted out his graduation suit for the occasion. I thought about dressing up and wearing some business attire, but I wasn't stupid. I knew there would be a wait, and the last thing I wanted was to lose all feeling in my legs from the knee down. I opted for my comfortable and warm lined-boots. Best decision I ever made. I couldn't help but laugh at the women in their hotel uniforms, who were clearly trying too hard, with the pointy heels doing the high-heel shuffle. You know the one I'm talking about...where you put all your weight on one foot for a few minutes to try to give the other foot a break. Then you swap back and forth and all it really does is make you realize how stupid you were for wearing pointy heels. Of course, the joke will be on me if those girls get hired b/c they took the effort to wear their uniforms. Oh well, at least I was comfortable for most of the day.


This lady was selling water bottles, energy drinks and power bars. Her stash was demolished by the end of the day! I'm sure she made a killing.

A little before noon we headed back to find the line for the white-ticket holders. People in groups are seriously no better than trying to herd cattle sometimes. They don't always pay attention. It was a bit difficult knowing where to go because the line to get your tickets was right next to the line of people with tickets. Some genius didn't think that one through. After some finagling, Betsy realized we weren't in the right line so we moved up about 30 feet. We started making new friends with the people around us, and it's a good thing we did. We all became pretty tight over the next few hours.

Finally, it started looking good and we finally proceeded into the "official" line at 12:26. We had to pass a security guard and show him our ticket to proceed. At this point we had made a friend in Aaron, a singer/stage actor who had recently moved from Chicago to St. Louis for his wife's job. He was part of a band, but still tried to get as many acting jobs as possible, regardless of how small. He was really nice and we had some good conversations. It's amazing how much you can learn about another person when you're forced to stand next to them for 4 hours. At least he didn't smell.

When Betsy and I passed the line earlier in the day, it didn't really seem all that long. I mean, yes, there were a lot of people, but we figured the line would move pretty steadily. Oh, how wrong we were. The first hour went by pretty quickly since we had a new friend and had a lot to talk about. The next hour went by a bit slower, because we were running out of things to say. We started talking to the women behind us who were an absolute riot. The one girl, Michelle, was very outgoing and not afraid to speak her mind. She was our kind of person, and we were glad we had her to occupy our time. In the third hour, the natives started to get restless, and it all went downhill from there. It's really frustrating when you can see the end of the line, but you don't seem to be moving. AT ALL. Betsy mentioned her Trivial Pursuit, so everyone told her to whip it out to kill more time. I started reading questions and ended up having nearly a dozen people trying to answer them. It was fun while it lasted, but people's attention spans couldn't handle more than a dozen or so cards. It was an ADHD fest. At least it killed a half hour or so.


We're only around half-way through at this point...yep, those are all the people in our way.


There's way more people behind us that you can't even see. (The gentlemen in the bow tie on the right overheard me talking about my blog and told me I should write it in Iambic pentameter. He said if Shakespeare could do it, so could I. I was equally flattered and weirded out at the same time.)

Aaron, our new singer friend, had originally needed to leave at 2:00 to make it to a friend's surprise party in Springfield, IL at 5. (Side note: what are the odds that this random guy we met is originally from the same area my brother now lives...small world.) I told him he could easily make it to Springfield in an hour, so he shouldn't give up so easily. Believe me, 2:00 came and went, and we weren't even close to the end. He eventually decided to stay until the end and hoped his friend wouldn't be mad he was late to the surprise party.

We had one scare as we neared the end of the line. One lady's sugar levels dipped really low and she became really lethargic and had to sit down. She wasn't very coherent and a half dozen or so people were trying to get her to eat. No one had any juice with them, so one lady ran to the vending machines to get a soda. It seemed to help a bit, but it took way too long to get the paramedics there. You would think they would have an ambulance on stand-by at something like this. She ended up moving to the front of the line and that's when we all realized she was an absolute genius. :)

It was 3:50 when Betsy and I finally made it to the end of the line and headed into the audition room. Lots of cheering erupted from our new friends. We finally MADE IT! It's amazing I could still walk at that point. I felt like someone had done the electric slide on my back. The audition room was just an old store in the mall that had been gutted and filled with card tables and chairs. There were less than a dozen casting agents, which was ridiculous with the amount of people waiting in line. The attendant asked if we wanted to go together or separate and we said together in order to go a bit faster. I had lost feeling in my left arm at that point from carrying my purse and my coat. I wanted to be done as quickly as possible.


The magical room.

The casting agent was nice and kind of tried to make a joke about how long we had been waiting and that she was tired of sitting all day. I wanted to staple her hand to the table. The interview itself lasted only a few minutes. Of course, nothing like standing in line all day to talk for 3 minutes. She basically asked if everything on our form was current and if we were available anytime. She asked if we had any acting experience, and Betsy told me I should tell her why we were trying out. She was enthusiastic about my New Things and hopefully she puts in a good word for us. ;-) She gave us a form saying that if we are selected, we will be called by the casting agents and told which day to arrive. Then, we will receive an e-mail with all the information we need to know about the filming. We could be called anytime between next week through the end of April. So, I may not even know if I've been selected for 3 more months. Great. That was the end of our interview and just like that, the day was over. She stapled our forms together and added them to the stack-o-applications from the rest of day.

I couldn't believe we were finally done. I had better make it into the f'in movie after spending six hours at the mall. It really wasn't all that bad. The last hour was pretty brutal, but only because we could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I possibly got some freelance work for Aaron's band, and I didn't stop laughing for most of the day. Will I ever stand in line to be an extra in a movie again? Hell no. I'll just mail the damn form in next time! Wish us luck, hopefully we charmed our way in!





**I read the news, and they said that over 8000 people tried out for the 2000 available spots over the course of the two days of auditions. 2000 more people were turned away.