The assistant directors had come through the holding area and picked 40 or so background actors they wanted for the day’s big scene, audience members at a strip club emceed by an unknown female comic. The rest of us, in our greased-down hair, high-waisted pants, porkpie hats and 1960s evening dresses, would likely sit around on folding chairs for the next couple hours until they let us go.
Some days are like that. You go to your costume fitting (and Covid tests) and the shoot day arrives and it’s a big goose egg. It’s okay. They still feed you and pay you. And if you like, you chat with the other actors who are a mixed bag of nice or nutty or aloof, most of them with their eyes burrowed into their smartphones.
There was a group of ladies in evening wear chatting in a circle, poofy skirts and high heels and lots of hairspray. One of them, a woman in her 30s or 40s in a black dress with glittery doodads, was leading the conversation. She was asking everyone for their names, which we generally don’t do because we all know we won’t remember them. It read like some genteel ladies’ tea party from yesteryear with the lady in black as hostess.
Later on she was sitting near me holding a one-way chat with a woman who had her nose in her phone. I was resolved to not get drawn into her garrulous orbit. But this kind of character is hard to put off and I was pulled into the event horizon of her cheerfulness. She said she had flown in from Iowa to be a background actor for her favorite show about that unusual woman comedian. Work promised for Friday had gotten rolled over to Monday. So apparently her jaunt to the Big Apple had consisted of a costume fitting and multiple nose swabs for Covid. And she was returning to Iowa in the morning.
She drifted away and I exchanged a sarcastic look with Alan, who if you called Central Casting and said give me a gnarly NYC cabbie, that would be Alan. And indeed, he had shown me a clip on his phone of him as a cabbie with Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams in the backseat from a film called “Blue Valentine.” The week before, we had portrayed stagehands shooting craps on a theater stoop. I had been in the middle counting money with a ciggie dangling at 5 o’clock, while only Alan’s foot had been in the scene, next to a pile of bills. I had congratulated him for putting his best foot forward and he had regaled me with some Woody Allen stories.
“Iowa,” said Alan. “Who does that?”
“Rich girl,” I said. And I could picture her with a gaggle of girlfriends, the queen bee telling her big New York adventure story. Except she never got on camera.
I got up to stretch my legs and look for someone who might loan me a charging cable. We were in a big lofty hangar at Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Above us were big tarps hung to catch roof leaks and funnel the water through garden hoses into plastic garbage bins. There was a woodshop next door, and whenever they were filming a bell would sound and a red light come on to tell them to quiet their saws.
It occurred to me to speak to one of the production assistants to see if they might sneak Iowa into the scene. A younger version of myself might have done so, but the impulse faded.
Iowa. It made sense now, why she was standing out with all that Midwestern chirpiness.
At about 6:30 p.m. a PA came out and said those of us who hadn’t been used that day could return to wardrobe and check out. As I was heading out, I saw Iowa standing excitedly with a mock cocktail in her hand. Alan was next to a grumpy-looking PA and it occurred to me that Alan had spoken up for her.
Iowa wiped a little tear from her eye and said to me “I’m a cancer nurse.”
And then the sour-faced PA took Iowa and a couple sailors off to set.
