Two stories, one personal, one second-hand:

About 15 years ago, when I was unemployed for an entire summer, I took my then-ten-year-old son Cassidy to an open audition for extras in a Hollywood movie about to be shot on location in New Orleans. The working title was "Baby Blues" -- when the film (a real stinker) came out, they had changed the name, and I can't remember that name at the moment. (It was so bad, it never appeared in a threater in the city where it was shot -- went straight to video.)

Dennis Quaid and Kathleen Turner played former CIA agents who retired when they had a baby. They're on vacation in N.O. when some kind of incident happens leading to a very weak, stupid plot.

Cass was hired and (at first) I wasn't -- but rules required that underage extras be accompanied by an adult guardian at all times. So I went along, having nothing better to do and needing any possible income for the household. We went every day for about a week.

Cass had a pretty big scene walking down the central isle of the French Market (local farmer's market) when he gets pushed out of the way by a charactrer played by comedian Larry Miller. Cass was and is a big fan of comedy/comedians -- he's in New York right now, trying to make it as a standup -- and he knew and admired Larry Miller's work -- until he saw him in action as an actor, putting on a terribly bogus New Orleans accent and generally putting on a weak performance.

This went on for a couple of days, and I got to know some of the young ADs (assistant directors), and kept asking to be given an extra role, since I was hanging around anyway. I did finally get hired, and appeared *way* in the background, walking on the opposite side of the street, during the sequence shot at the French Market, which made it into the final cut. Cassidy is right in the middle of the screen and of the action for a good 4-5 seconds, but I'm in the background of the next scene only very briefly, identifiable only because I remembered what color clothes I had been wearing.

I got a call on the third or fourth day, inviting me to an overnight shoot on Bourbon Street. At the audition, I had filled out a questionnaire wherein I was able to mention that I played guitar, and I was "cast" as a street musician. No higher pay than any other extra, but plenty of hours (overnight), and maybe a better chance of showing up recognizably on screen.

They carefully posed and lit me under a streetlight with my guitar, directly across Bourbon Street from a bar. The camera was inside the bar, pointing directly through the door towards me. Of course, the scene being filmed involved characters inside the bar, with the shot set up so that the street, as seen through the wide double doorway, would serve as backdrop. When the clapper came down and the guy shouted "Action," crowds of people started walking in the street in both directions, and I couldn't even see the camera. I'll never know whether I was visible at all in the scene, since it didn't make it into the movie anyway.

Next, that same evening, they had a shot where Dennis and Kathleen are walking down Bourbon Street in the midst of a crowd, trading three of four lines of dialog. As always, there were multiple takes with interminable waits between them, and Ms. Turner complained that some extras she bumped into in the crowded street were runbbng up against her or feeling her up or somthing. Since I was carrying a big dreadnaught-size hard case, I was recruited to walk next to her and block off anyone else who might make contact. So for an hour or so, I functioned as Kathleen Tuner's lacky/bodyguard, and exchanged a little small talk -- and got paid for it. Big whoop. Of course, this scene didn't make in ino the final film, either.

One morning Cass and I showed up and it was raining. We were told that the scheduled scene requiring crowds of extras was cancelled for the day, and that they would shoot an indoor scene instead, which would require one adult male "stunt extra" who would be paid at a higher rate, not for speaking a line, but for getting hit over thehead with a breakaway bottle.

I was one of several volunteers, but didn't get the part. I talked with the lucky winner the next day, and he said he had a headache from getting hit so many times for so many "takes." The fight was staged in the very picturesque Saturn Bar on St. Claude Avenue, for those few of you who know the place, and the extra got knocked upside the head by actor Stanley Tucci.

Oh yeah -- I also made a few extra bucks allowing my car to appear (as a parked car, in the background -- an automotive extra) during two days of shooting.

My final day working as an extra was strictly audio -- they were filming the opening scene, a party at a Garden District mansion, featuring a good solid New Orleans brass band as live entertainment. Forty or fifty of us extras were there to be party guests. I never got into a shot, but the entire group was assembled around a microphone to clap and sing along with the band. That bit *did* make it into the final cut, playing with the closing credits.

I can tell you from experience that the moviemaking process is *excruciatingly* slow; they spend an hour or more setting up for a shot that might last for a minute or two on screen, and then proceed to film it a dozen or more times. Another bit of inside dope that I learned: "craft services," which means catering (food and drink) is available to everyone on the set at any time. If you have a legitimate reason to be there, whether you're the star or the director or a lowly extra or a guy making a delivery, you can get anything you want, at any time, cooked to order,for the asking.

Other story:

The Ray Charles biopic "Ray" was shot almost entirely in New Orleans last summer. It was a significant event for the local economy, because the film is not set in New Orleans, and they didn't use any of the obvious cliche only-in-New-Orleans settings. Instead, different neightborhoods and buildings were used to represent locations in Seattle, Dallas, Indianapolis, New York, Chicago, etc. etc.

Music writer Jeff Hannusch, aka Almost Slim, was asked to allow his *house* to be used as a location, and agreed. It appears in the film as the Seattle home of a woman club-owner who sort of nurtures and also exploits the young Ray Charles. Quite a few scenes were filmed inside and outside his house. Jeff devoted two or maybe even three of his monthly columns in the local Offbeat magazine to his account of the experience. He'd never do it again; the invasion of the film crew alientated all his neighbors, and the money wasn't worth the aggravation.

If you take the time to Google Jeff's name, you'll find the titles of his two or three authoritative books on New Orleans R&B music. You *might* even find back issues of Offbeat with his tales of turing his house over to Hollywood, but maybe not.