sparkles

Whew...it has been too long since I've blogged. I'm sorry about that. This has been a very crazy week for me. That is what I am here to tell you about!

So, you may have heard that I was an extra in a movie. For two whole days! Wow! It's true. I was "Pedestrian 185" for the movie they were filming in Northampton. They liked my pedestrianing so much on Tuesday that they asked me to come back and pedestriate again on Wednesday. You should have seen me walk up and down the street in Northampton, you would have thought that I was walking my whole life. And you know what? You'd be right!

It was fun. I have never been involved with a big budget movie, so I was interested in how the whole thing went down. For an extra like me, it was a whole lot of standing and walking. And no, I did not see Mel Gibson. I didn't really care if I did. I think most of the extras just wanted to try out the whole "extra" thing. I talked to a lot of people and nobody really seemed to care if they met Mel. Most people just wanted to do something different. A lot of them were folks in the Screen Actors Guild and they were just trying to make a living from acting and being an extra is a good way to get some cash. I don't envy them. It has to be tough trying to make it in the movie business.

You wanna know who didn't have fun? A lot of folks from Northampton. There were a LOT of unhappy pedestrians. Not paid pedestrians like me. People who just walk for free (why would anyone walk for free???). What was interesting was listening to some of the people who were supposedly upset. I was set up on the street and people could sit to the left of me and they would be out of the camera shot. They were complaining about the movie being made there, but they sat there forever watching the whole process. This happened with a whole bunch of people. They sat and complained and watched me walk up and down the street. I guess they were so mad about the inconvenience that they couldn't move. Sometimes I get so mad that I'll hold my breath, so I can understand where they are coming from.

Overall, I had a nice couple of days getting paid to walk. We had to fill out legal stuff so we could get a check sent to us. The cool thing was that the sheet had a spot for us to put our "actor name." I put down Sparkles. So if you see the credits for Edge of Darkness, look for the name Sparkles. I was thinking of making it Sparkles McAwesome, but I don't think I could fool anybody into thinking that I'm Irish.

I'm off to pedestriate. I really hope that word doesn't mean something bad.

Enjoy!

-DJ