Ready for My Close-Up, Mr. DeMille!

Last night, Himself and I watched the 92nd Academy Awards. What a show! 

I, too, once trod the boards. With dedication! With talent! With dreams of bigger things!

Ask me if I know about rising to the top … I do! Ask me if I know about the sacrifices made in the name of acting! I do! Ask me if I know how to cry at the drop of a handkerchief! I do! (Ask me if I can still bend over to pick up that hankie. Mind your own business.)

I was once among those who toiled in the thee-a-tuh!

If you must know (and if you don’t, I’ll tell you, anyway), I was once a movie extra. Movie extras are the background characters who cross streets, shop in department stores, walk dogs in the park, sip fake wine in fake restaurants, and flap their lips soundlessly in the background as the principal actors talk. 

All of the above, I’ve done, but was keen to get ahead. I was young! I needed the money! Which wasn’t like it sounds ...  

In those days, I lived in Vancouver, where movies are often made and where agents aren’t exactly hard to find. And so I found one. I called the first agency in the phone book, sent in my photo, said I had a car, and was hired on the spot. For assigning me to “shoots,” my agent took 15% of my handsome hourly wage of $10. Fair enough. 

I was now a starving “artiste” entitled call myself a “movie extra.” I lived in hope, as every extra does: Work hard and you might even get a small speaking part! 

To gauge how much “talent” I had, my agent said I needed a screen test. She told me to memorize several monologues, the most difficult being the part of a woman wallowing in misery. Did I look like a woman wallowing in misery? Don’t go getting ahead of me, now. 

Memorizing my lines at home, I thought it might be a good idea if the miserable woman in the monologue spilled her miserable guts to an equally miserable teddy bear. I also thought crying would help me advance my soon-to-be career as a bona fide movie star. 

(One thing wasn’t in my favor. Sad to say, I’m a happy person. The only time I cry is when I run out of money at the end of the month.) 

So (a) I bought a teddy bear and (b) whittled a hole in its chest and (c) stuffed a sock with chunks of onion, jalapēno peppers, and horseradish before (d) poking the sock inside the hole in the bear’s chest and (e) stitching the hole shut.  

A few hours before my audition, I tested my method at home. To guarantee success, I thought I’d better rub the same mixture on my hands and up each nostril.

Turning to the script, I cuddled the bear and began to emote (“Mah dahlin’ bay-ah! You ah mah one true friend!”). Which was when … 

KA-BLOOEY! 

A time bomb detonated in my nose. So much water streamed from my face that I looked like I’d sprung a leak. My contact lenses floated from my eyes like little life rafts on a flood of tears. Blinded, I smacked off walls like a human pinball.

The sneezing started after that. And the coughing. My beezer looked like a traffic light stuck on “stop” - except that it wouldn’t. I’d turned on the taps and nothing would turn them off. The memorized lines I spluttered didn’t sound anything like the words in the script. 

A few hours later, after two showers and after ripping open the bear’s chest and removing, refilling, and replacing the sock with just a little sliver of onion, pepper, and horseradish, and after restitching the bear’s chest, I awaited the Big Screen Test in my agent’s office. 

Her nose quivering like a rabbit’s, the first thing my agent asked was: “What’s that smell?” Saying nothing, I tried to look blasé. 

When the camera came out, so did the bear on which I’d performed sock surgery. Assuming a look of innocence, I poked minuscule slivers of onion, pepper, and horseradish up my nose at the very moment the agent looked my way. Her face registered disgust: She probably thought I was having a last-minute archeological dig. 

Just as I’d buried the slivers deeply into my nose, I now buried my face deeply into the bear’s chest. My lines may have come out as “Mmmfff! Mwhafff-fweind-bear!” but I sobbed a bucket of tears and was believably miserable.  

The agent said my ability to cry showed “natural talent.” Indeed, she said I was so talented that I needed only three years’ training - at $15,000 a year - at the acting school in the same building as her agency. I had a strong but unproven suspicion about the ownership of that school, but didn’t get the chance to find out.

Feeling the hot flush of shame, I said I didn’t have two nickels to rub together. And I didn’t. After my agent took her 15% commission off the top, and sent me on far-flung assignments that at times took most of a tank of gas, the hourly $8.50 I cleared (with income taxes yet to come) meant I sometimes lost money working as a movie extra. 

Once I confessed I couldn’t afford to go to acting school, my agent effectively said: “You’ll never work in this town again!” And I didn’t. She never sent me on another assignment. As quickly as it had begun, my brilliant career had swiftly drawn to a close.

©  Nicole Parton, 2020