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Tales of the Trev

Unsanctioned Food Fight on a Movie Set!

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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.

“I WANT MY BEARD BACK!”

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.

The Mess Hall of a submarine which for some reason was parked at Crawford Studios.

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!

“This wasn’t in the script! This wasn’t in the script!”

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.

And if you go to the 5:55 mark you can see me angrily dancing on a table for 3 seconds, completely surrounded by seamen.

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

 

Tales of the Trev

My immortal words on the Big Screen!

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Back in the days when I still held hopes and dreams of being a brilliant actor – adored by the masses and mobbed by beautiful women wherever I went, I mainly scored the highly glamorous  work of being an extra on different TV shows.  Name a bad Melbourne-made Aussie cop show from the 90’s and chances are if you watch a few episodes carefully enough you will eventually spot me milling around in the background.

I did however appear in three movies.  One was ‘made for TV’ (On the Beach) and two went to cinema.  In one I was just an extra (The Road to Nhill) but in the other I auditioned and actually scored a speaking role!  This is the tale of how I ended up there and the immortal words I got to utter on the big screen.

There is zero chance you have seen this film…

The movie was Strange Fits of Passion, a very teenage-angsty flick.  It was being shot in 1998 for a 1999 release.  Quite a lot of the people I was doing Drama with at La Trobe Uni auditioned for different parts but if memory serves I was the only one who achieved success.  Yes I got picked but I’m not sure, given the role I auditioned for, that this was a compliment.

I auditioned at some studios in St Kilda along with probably a dozen other guys.  When I went in they had a camera set up to film me and asked me to riff some ‘sexist abuse a yobbo would yell at a girl’.  Now, being a country boy while at the same time dating a woman whom I secretly loathed, I had me a plethora of inspiration to work with.  I looked down the camera and let fly with the kind of gutter talk that had never before or since passed my lips!

I was thanked for my time and told they would be making a decision in the next 10 days.  However 40 minutes later as I was driving home my mobile rang – it was my agent calling:

 

“Trev, we don’t know what you did in there but they said you are perfect for the role.  You got it!  They shoot in two weeks”.  I was officially Hoon No. #2

 

A fortnight later we are shooting on Little Flinders street in the city.  The police had the road closed off and were redirecting traffic.  I sat there in my flannel top and footy scarf in my actors chair awaiting my scene as the stunt driver pulled up in a two door car.  I got told to sit in the back  and to then lean up and over the driver’s seat so that from the waist up I was hanging out the window.

We did about a dozen takes, each time doing a blockie to come back and shoot again.  It was very cool to be doing 70kph in a 40kph zone whilst hanging out the window  from the waist up, all in front of police who not only did not stop me but blocked traffic so I could do so!

 

So here we are, the scene and my immortal lines:

The heroine of the movie is at her lowest ebb.  There is a fine mist of rain.  She walks down Little Flinders street in Melbourne with her head hung low.  As she passes a construction zone where someone has spray painted “Kill yourself – it’s cheaper” she looks up to see the man she craves silhouetted at the end of the alley.  As she starts towards him a car slowly drives by which distracts her.  There is a handsome yobbo hanging out the window who yells at her:

“Show us ya pink bits baby!”

“Give us a headjob ya uptight slut!”

Then as the car continues down the alley he looks back and chants “Shows us ya tits!  Show us ya tits!”

She looks back down the alley but her dream man has gone.

 

I got paid $52 an hour for that gig (a lot of money for a struggling actor back in 98′) and got to watch myself say it on the big screen to boot!  I may have never become a star, but I will always have that warm memory from my short lived career.

 

Update:  My mate Kenan actually found this movie on youtube!  If you wanna hear the line and see a red beanie blurring by which is yours truly, you can find it here at the 32:20 mark!