we were approached in the hawking district of colaba one day when we were shopping. someone named imran came up to us and asked annika and me if we'd like to be extras in a film. no thanks, we'd said.
two days later, he came up to me again (this time i was alone). since i was curious about the film, the actors, and the fact that he'd said it was going to be a blockbuster, imran had me hooked. so i was in. eventually annika and our aussie friend, alan, joined in.
so, here's how it happened. we were picked up in a bus (imagine a kind of 'magic bus' meets brady bunch van crossed with an old vw van...industrial size) headed north to goregaon, or film city, as many call it. the bus was filled with freaks, and i mean funny and freaky, weird, and, well, interesting people. for those of you who don't know, the agents pick out us westerners to act as extras in the movies...since the fairest skin is, in india, the most beautiful.
on the bus and in front of me sat a team of six or seven swedish tech people, here for training in bangalore. they were just visiting bombay for a few days and got lassoed in. behind us was a french israeli woman with dreadlocks, her hare-krishna clad lover, and their six-year-old son. there were tourists from south africa, the u.k., and the u.s. there was a dutch pothead lesbian. there was a seedy, bukowski-type junkie deadbeat in the back of the bus, talking to himself and later wandering about the set, clueless and chain-smoking, probably stranded here from ten or twenty years back. there were curious people like annika and me who, obviously insane, chose to live and work here. like i always say, you've got to try everything at least once. that goes for living in bombay as well as being an extra in a film.
once we arrived, we were whisked into an open corridor where we had to select costumes from a few racks of clothing. mine turned out to be a strapless velour wine coloured piece from hell that clung to my body as if it were painted on...we're talking woman-of-the-night wear, here.
soon after, with the arrival of the makeup team, i became known as the 'troublemaker' when i refused to let them apply the disgusting, neon-pink lip gloss that had probably touched the lips of hundreds of unknown women. finally, the only thing i could do was lie and tell them that i was allergic. (you can get all kinds of diseases from that!! i told my setmates. they grimaced with already glossed lips. when you're in your 20s, maybe you don't think about these things. but i'm a germaphobe to start with.)
the morning began with us holding up martini glasses filled with fake colourful liquid (our 'drinks') with one hand and slowly waving the drink back and forth in a 'festive' mood, and waving the other hand simultaneously to the beat of the horrifyingly 'happy' music (listen with the link below). the director and asst. director kept bellowing, 'be happy! smile! dance!' i have to admit, i got cramps in my cheeks from laughing so hard (as did the other participants). the whole thing was just too ridiculous to be true.
time seemed to be going fast. but by 4 p.m. we were ready to get the hell out. we had spent hours either standing around and "acting" (waving our hands with the drinks), or sitting and watching the russian girls do their dances in their red and yellow costumes. at one point, the assistant director and the director got into a discussion in which the drinks were distributed, then collected, and then redistributed. the other argument was regarding whether we should snap or clap on the staircase while we held (or didn't hold) the drinks. that was pretty hilarious. so it took about 20 minutes just to prepare the drinks for that scene, which never made it to the final cut, anyway.
lo and behold, those agents had been through enough cuts to predict our dissipating enthusiasm. they had locked all of our personal belongings into a huge room for "safe keeping." a south african told me that his friend had tried to escape a few months back in a rickshaw (he'd even left all his personal belongings!) but was actually 'captured' at the exit gate and escorted back to the set. the story annoyed us because we knew we were doomed. by that point in the afternoon, we'd heard the film's theme song hundreds (yes, literally hundreds!) of times.
my most memorable (yet least favourite) moment occurred when the famous and one of the biggest directors in all of india, subhash ghai, grabbed me and put me in the front row for one scene, so that i would be standing directly behind the even more famous and beautiful katrina kaif, for the shot of her playing the bass cello.
so here i would be, perhaps noticed for a moment behind goddess katrina, on the big silver screen. but alas, my hopes were dashed all too soon. before i could start to fantasise about my sudden flash of fame, subhash pointed his thick finger at me, yelled, "HIDE!" and grabbed two tall, blonde swedish girls to stand in my place. i humbly sank back into the crowd, or as a michigan farmer might put it, 'sucked hind tit' for the rest of the evening.
by 11 p.m., we'd each received a 500 rupee payment for a 12-hour day (about $10 u.s.). our 'agent,' imran, gave us a ride home and rekindled new hopes for my bollywood career when he asked me to show up for another, 'bigger' part. a week later, it turned out that he needed me for an advert for a watch, but this time for 1000 rupees. i couldn't have made it that day, so he is going to ring me back when something else good comes along.
if you are a masochist and have the time, patience, and sanity to sit out the credits, then feel free to watch our moment of fame via the link below. still cannot find myself, but my students and colleagues said that i was visible in at least three shots in the cinema.
http://se.youtube.com/watch?v=YdAGOH6v-I0
No comments:
Post a Comment