Extra, Extra

I know there are about 5 people out there reading this and wishing that I would blog more frequently, but like I said once before, blogging is tough! Especially if you have already told your stories or relayed your daily itinerary to family and friends or journaled or emailed! You start to feel like you are repeating yourself.

Anyhow, I am so behind! As promised, here are the details of the day Brandt and I became movie stars. Or something like that.

One evening we were sitting in the lobby of our hotel writing and interneting when we were approached by a college-age joven, Jan, who quickly asked us if we could be extras in a movie. He said they had too many Panama-looking people and needed American-looking people. “You know, people who are blonde,” he said. He asked what size clothes we wear, told us they would feed us dinner and pay us $40USD each. It might be a 12-hour shift though. The free food and cash outweighed the long hours. We were to star as extras the next day.

And now, an entry from my journal describing the day...

21 August 2014

This is a hilarious day. This is the day that Brandt and I are going to be extras in a Panamanian film. I will document this experience to the best of my ability.

1:00pm – We arrive home from lunch to find a note under the door stating that our show-up time has been pushed back from 2:30 to 5:30pm. I speculate this is due to rain.

5:00pm – Jan comes by our room to make sure we got the note. We did

5:30pm – Jan meets us in the lobby and leads us to our waiting area which includes 3 white tents, tables, folding chairs, a food truck, a buffet being set up. We sign wavers in Spanish. Our rights in exchange for $40. Deal.

5:35pm – Jan asks that we have our 4 changes of clothes, right? No. You told us to wear jeans when we asked you what to wear. Then you asked for our sizes and said they would dress us if they didn't like our outfits (which I was banking on). You said nothing fancy. I said not to worry, we are backpackers and don't have anything fancy. Also, 4 changes of clothes is seriously all of our clothes! We go up to the room and get, basically, all of our clothes. Thankfully most of them are clean. This is going to be nuts!

5:40-8:00pm – Nothing happens. Thank God we have our kindles. Jan says that we are waiting because some actor is late.

8:00pm – They tell us to get up and lay out our clothes on the tables. Seriously, our clothes are so boring. It looks like we have no style.  We have no style.  I wonder if we are about to get fired.

8:10pm – The clothing lady comes over. She doesn't fire me but she looked pretty disappointed with my clothing selection and apathetically put me in my peach dress. Brandt stayed in what he was wearing.

8:15pm-12:30am – We're starts! Being an extra is awesome! I don't know why people told us this would not be fun because it is VERY fun! We filmed a bar scene, sat at a table and usually just pretended to talk. A few times we actually talked and once they filmed a scene with just us and the waitress! Hopefully it won't all get cut out. There were 4 other extras and then 3 actors. One man named Edmund introduced himself and we chatted a bit between takes. He was an older man and in the end, fell asleep on set between the scenes. One of the other extras was as cute as a button. He looked like a 5 year old boy but was obviously not. He was 24 or 30, I couldn't tell which. He was even more excited than me!  (how is this possible?!?!)  He's the sort of person you want to put in your pocket. He was paired with a nice woman who was rather weathered which made for more of a mother/son combo than a hot date.

It was interesting to see how many people are involved behind the scenes – hair, make-up, directors, producers, cameras, sound, guys holding mics, guys moving stuff. Everyone was really nice and chatted us up. We even talked to the writer. He won a contest and $500,000 to get working on the film. I can't believe this was all shooting in our hotel! Anyhow, he said the cool ½ mill will only go so far and they have to get more sponsors along the way. Sadly we have to wait til next year (summer/fall) to see the film. It will become my favorite Panamanian film of all time and we will get copies for everyone we know. It's called KIMURA so watch out world!

12:45am – They just fed us an awesome espegetti and albondigas (spaghetti and meatballs) late night dinner and we are waiting for our $40 cash money.

Other tidbits:

• at first our “wine” was cranberry juice but by the end it was actually wine
• ladies came around to powder our faces and fix our hair
• pessimist Brandt thought we “ruined” the shot and they changed it to cut us out. But then we were in a scene with just us, so what does he know
• it takes 3-4 hours to shoot a few minutes of movie
• they had snacks and drinks (apples, cookies, cafe, agua) for us between takes
• we might pick this up professionally
• this is one of my most memorable days on our trip!
• Remember when we went to Panama and then were cast as extras in the movie shot in our hotel? Yeah, that happened!

left to right: the guy you want to put in your pocket, me, B, another extra, casting director gal, Jan

The faux bar designed on the first floor of our hotel where we shot our scenes