The Mentalist

I got booked as an extra for the Mentalist today. I had to show up in Burbank at 7:30am. I was so paranoid about being late that I jumped the gun and wound up showing up way too early. Still, better early than late. The problem is that I can't remember the last time I got up that early, and as a result I also cannot remember the last time I felt this tired at 9pm. I'm giving myself one more waking hour before I head to bed.

As far as he actual extra work, I have a few comments to make. The food is amazing, career extras are really friendly, but kind of weird, all those other crew people remind me of carnies. Many, although admittedly not all, give off a creep vibe.

The producer, director, whoever he is. I don't know, the guy in charge gives you a look like "don't you dare screw this up" which did initially make me slightly nervous. They had me driving my car around in the first scene, and when the guy in charge came out with a very stern look on his face to tell me exactly where to drive and at what speed, I was irrationally worried that I'd screw up. A completely unfounded fear since it was all but impossible to really screw it up. I was only driving a few feet through the background shot, and someone was standing right there to cue me when to begin driving. The guy in charge did say that my car is beautiful. I've always thought so, nice to know others do too.

After that there was a lot of standing around more food, and then they made me put on a wool cardigan and stroll down the street pretending to talk to someone. Planes kept flying overhead and so that shot took quite a while, and I was getting pretty bored with traipsing back and forth in the background. I was chatting with the woman who was walking with me. She's a career extra, who firmly believes that movies and TV shows are "nothing without the extras. We are the meat of the production..." Like I said, the career extras are a little odd. I changed the topic after that.

The whole experience was really interesting, and kind of fun.