Makin' Movies, or, why nobody likes BG

The other day it was time to film the wedding scene on the set of The Film That Shall Not Be Named.

Wardrobe Team, having been worried about this scene since before we started filming, gets to work an hour early. I'm steaming clothes like a crazy person (seriously, where do you keep this suit? In a plastic bag at the bottom of your closet?) when BG (extras, or background) starts to arrive and, of course, fuck up our shit.

(Now let me just preface this rant by saying I understand BG are human beings with thoughts and feelings and needs- like going to the bathroom, or having some water, or getting tired. That's totally cool. I've been BG myself in the past. 

But to be perfectly blunt, you are not that important. We need you because a wedding with no attendees is not really a wedding, it's an elopement. You are essentially human set dressing. I need you to sit or stand in the same spot until we are done rolling. I know it sucks, and you're only making minimum wage, but seriously I don't care. You're not going to be discovered as an actor on this set, especially not if you continually piss of the 1st AD. [ And don't fucking tell me about how Nicholas Cage did that, because his uncle is Francis Ford Coppola. Also would you want to be remembered for Ghost Rider?])

So anyway. BG begins to arrive, and get in the way, and act like I should prioritize approving their outfits over prepping the wedding dress (worn, by the way, by the actress who also happens to be Wife of Extremely Important Actor), when what do I see? a BG who has shown up in a lace cream dress. 

To a wedding scene. 

For which they were given very specific instructions regarding clothing. 

She was fired immediately.

There were of course also little children on set who would not be satisfied by removing their costumes and throwing them on the ground- no, pasta sauce had to also be applied directly to their clothes during lunchtime.

But the final straw in my contempt for BG comes when during the champagne toast scene one of them asks me for "a few more empty champagne glasses. I need them for my seltzer." He asks ME. The wardrobe intern, the girl who has only been pestering him about his clothes all day. He is met with a long, hard gaze, and a vacuous but contemptuous "No."

It can be good to be the unpaid help. They really can't fire you.

Tap Dancing a Gesture Drawing

Getting to watch the tapdancers backstage was exhilarating.

I love tapdancing, and to be so close

to so many talented people

and to (get paid to) watch them every night

did nothing to diminish my respect

for their craft.

Unfortunately, tap dancers are much more difficult

to draw than Shakespearian actors

or even Modern Dancers.

Some of my drawings looked like this:

    

***

But most of them looked like this: 

What's in my Bag? Work Edition

If I worked in the kind of place where I got a desk or a space of my own in which to do my job, all of these things would live in my bottom drawer. As it is, I work backstage and usually put things in a corner. This is my bag which lives at work, and I keep the things I need to do my job inside of it.

Some of these things stay on my body at all times, while others (like the mug and the notebook) are just nice to have.

This is the stuff I always wear: volleyball kneepads (because I kneel often to put on actors' shoes), my knife belt, a pen necklace, and my hip bag. I only wear the wristie when I'm working in the shop- it would get in the way if I wore it backstage.

Before I bought this hip bag, I would use a waiter's waist apron. Some people wear a fanny-pack, or buy something really fancy from Manhattan Wardrobe Supply (the greatest "stuff"-for-clothes store in the world, even if you don't work in a theater), and I believe Makeup artists have a whole other thing going on if they don't have a station for their brushes and palettes. This thing did cost me almost $50, but it's really perfect & has lots of little compartments. Let's take a tour, shall we?

First of all, there's the structure of the bag itself- I can move the two compartments onto my back if I need to crouch, or put one on each hip if I need to sidle past somebody.

I attached a key chain to my safety pins pouch so I can rip it open quickly and easily. My cellphone lives in the zip compartment behind them, since just because I need to run up and down the stairs, doesn't mean I can't look good in a skirt doing it!

 The headlamp goes on my head, and I find it infinitely preferable to a bite-light, which is a light you put in your mouth and bite down on when you want it to light up- bad for your jaw AND deeply unsanitary.

For the show I'm currently working on, I also wear a wrist sweatband with french pins and bobby pins stuck in it, as I need to change the actors' wigs frequently.

Inside the pouches on one side I keep my run sheet full of instructions given to me by the Wardrobe Captain, a  moleskine for doodling & writing grocery lists, and a spiral-bound notebook of index cards which I can tear out and put in.... the binder.

In the other pouch is the binder itself, my most precious totem. I keep all of my notes on what I need to do each show inside this. Although I generally have the order of things memorized after a week or so, it's nice to have a reminder of what I'm doing when I get back from my days off, and a place to keep all of the little extra notes I might accumulate that don't fit on a run sheet.

The binder came about when I got very jealous of the stage manager's binder, but knew it would be ridiculous for me to carry a standard 8 x 10 binder around backstage- I would inevitably put it down somewhere silly & forget about it. I came across this little gem in Staples and have been using it ever since. A binder is better than a sheet of paper or a notebook because during tech week, things change over and over, and a page with twenty cross-outs is very difficult to read. With a binder, if the order of something changes I can swap around the order of my cards.

So there you have it! My work life in a bag. What are the things you use every day for your job? And what do you always keep inside your bag? I'm nosy & want to know!

Waiting

The thing that brought me to NYC

(kind of)

was the theater.

Acting, specifically.

All through High School and college

I was praised for my abilities

and I thought

"This is it!

It will be hard, but I will persevere.

I will live on couch change until

I am 40, if I have to."

Then I started actually auditioning.

If it's a contest of who cares the most,

I don't win.

I'm sure you'll gather from my

previous posts

that this does not mean

I've given up on the theater entirely.

I've found alternative angles to keep

a hand in,

an angle I quite like, actually.

And an angle people are willing to

pay me to take.

Auditioning was interesting, though.

I got to read some incredibly awful

audition notices,

and I once auditioned in a theater

above a small claims court.

I only did a year of auditions

before I decided I wanted to do something

I could be objectively bad at.

So now I do the laundry

(and work at the Javits center,

wait tables,

take paid surveys

and babysit)

and I still get to work with

some of the most joyous people

anybody could hope to have 

as coworkers.