A while back I told the tale of the one and only time I scored a speaking role in a movie that actually went to cinema – Strange fits of Passion.
Well next week I will be returning to my roots by doing another small speaking role, albeit on television rather than film. But when discussing the previous speaking role with friends last night, it put me in mind of an incident that happened on a different movie set – this time the 2000 TV movie – On the Beach.
This time I was a simple Extra playing a Submariner, and had the joy of the director making me shave off my goatee right there on set since my agent hadn’t deigned to inform me we had to be plain chinned. My defoliated face now freezing, I prepared for several days of pretending to talk in the background while Bryan Brown and Armand Assante did their thing up front for the movie cameras.
On the second day of the shooting this undersea aquatic adventure I was involved with an unplanned event, and it is truly the one and only time I have been swept away so much by a mob mentality that I didn’t even really realise what I was doing.
So sit ye down me hearties while I tell ye the tale of:
The Unsanctioned Food Fight!
The Set
We were in the ‘submarine mess hall’ set. Six tables set up with 6 sailors per table. Really low ceilings and submarine diagrams all over each wall, though it perhaps speaks to the budget of the film that none of these were even laminated and, I’m pretty sure, affixed with blu-tac.
Every Extra has a plate of food and a beer in front of them. The food was your standard meat & veg and ice cold, whilst the beer was both zero alcohol and warm. The glamorous life of movie acting eh!
The Incident
The scene was supposed to go like this: The decision has been made for the submarine to surface, which is going to result in the entire crew dying of radiation poisoning within a couple of weeks like the rest of the planet has always succumbed to. So as food no longer has to be rationed for months, this is to be the crews ‘final feast’. Hence why we have all this delicious food and beer in front of us.
There have been a couple of takes thus far. We Extras are fake eating our freezing cold mashed potatoes and meat with congealed gravy, and sipping from our horrid beers, all whilst fake chatting to each other in the way Extras do when the Director wants your lips moving but no sound coming out.
Then the Director made a big error in judgement.
The Director lent over to one of the Extras and whispers ‘This time, ‘accidentally’ spill some of the beer over your shoulder on to the guy behind you so it looks like you are all having fun’. The director did not inform the other Extra this would be happening to him – guess he was going for an authentically surprised look.
So the next take, the first Extra does as he is told and splashes the guy behind him with beer. But then that guy turned around and promptly splashed him back big time!
And now the mob mentality starts – I’ve never seen anything like it before or since!
With the precedent set by the two guys splashing each other, all 36 extras now stand as one. Like the command to arise was sent directly to our hindbrains and our legs operated on automatic. And thus the biggest food fight I’ve ever been a part of commences! Everyone is throwing at everyone else every bit of food they can lay their hands on! Mashed Potato Missiles and Meat Mortars fly through the air as beers are shook up and wannabe actors spray them on each other like drunken frat boys! The Director fled and so did the cameramen, no doubt to stop the horrendously expensive filming equipment getting soaked. When people had thrown everything on their plates they started scooping up already thrown food to throw once again. The air was full of beer and food and yelling and laughter!
After about two minutes it ended and the mob mentality faded. An eerie silence descended upon the room as all us paid-props looked around and realised what we had done. Food slowly unstuck itself from the ceiling with comedic little plops, the ink was running on all the diagrams on the wall because of the splashed beer -the set was trashed!
After about 20 seconds of complete silence there were a few nervous giggles. We were all so going to be fired!
The Aftermath
Well it turns out none of us got fired. If it had simply been one or two guys involved they would have been out on their arse, but you couldn’t have a movie where half way through the entire crew suddenly changes because you sacked the original actors. So we all got sent to sit outside in the sunshine for a couple of hours so that our uniforms would dry, and then got a stern talking to. The director was pretty pissy with us for the next few days as well, any tiny mistake by any Extra earned them a public berating. But hey – we were Extras – we were used to being treated like the crap you’d find on the main casts shoes so it didn’t worry us much. And a tiny portion of the food fight scene actually did make it into the movie so we were all pretty proud of that. You can see it here at the 4:55 mark.
So there ya go, the one and only time I can say that my individual will was truly subsumed by a mob mentality. A fascinating, oddly liberating and surprisingly fun experience.
Related Article:
My Immortal Words on the Big Screen