My Four Days at "The Office"

It has been three weeks since I lasted posted. The reason for the long lay-off is that after I worked four days on "The Office," I was sick and in bed for ten days. As many of you know, I am disabled with a ruptured disc and a chronic systemic illness, so usually I have to stay in bed for every one day that I work. But this time I got a really nasty upper respiratory infection, caught from one of the cast members of "Windows" (thanks for the parting gift!), and I'm still not completely over it. I guess I'm going to be forced to get an anti-biotic. I kept thinking it was just a virus and would wear itself out. Now it appears it's really a bacterial sinus infection, and it's going to take a Z-pack (Zithromax) to get rid of it this time. So it took me longer than usual to recover from my four straight days of work; it's clear that I'm still not able to work full- or even part-time yet.

Anyway, I digress. First of all, let me stress that it had been about ten years since I had worked four days in a row. I had my accident at work on March 3, 2000 (a day that lives in infamy in my life, because it ended my corporate career and changed my life forever), and retired for good on September 1 of that year. I worked from February 23-26 on "The Office," so it was almost exactly ten years later. Obviously, this work was very different from the kind of work I used to be able to do. In 2000, I was working as a management consultant for the Boston-based firm, The Aberdeen Group. I would wear fancy suits and take clients out to lunch, interviewing them about new products; I would visit public relations firms and be interviewed by the industry trade press as an "expert" and then get quoted in their publications. I was also traveling back and forth quite a bit between SF and Boston. I wrote articles frequently, and in the two months I had been with Aberdeen when the accident occurred I had already been published twice. And of course, I made a lot of money.

All that changed on March 3. I was in Boston for a week of training and a staff meeting, and it was unseasonably warm in Boston that Friday, so I decided to walk the ten minutes it took to get from my hotel to headquarters in downtown Boston. The air was brisk, and I remember how good it felt to get out and walk after being cooped up in the hotel all week. I had a sinus infection then, too - I get them almost every spring. Anyway, the sidewalks are cobblestone there, and my right ankle turned over on one of them. I had a briefcase in one hand, and a training manual in the other, and the sidewalk was going downhill, and suddenly I was picking up speed and falling, unable to catch myself. I remember thinking "this is going to be really bad" as I went down, and sure enough, it was. I hit hard on my right knee, and twisted back to my left, landing hard on my left hand. It hurt, bad, and I was dazed and suddenly surrounded by Bostonians, all full of ideas. "Do ya want me ta call an ambulance?" "Ya oughta sue tha city, with these damn sidewalks." I insisted I was fine, but I was bleeding at the knee and on my palms,and looking back, I should have gone to the hospital. But I didn't - I walked on to the meeting and even took the six-hour flight home that night! I saw my chiropractor on Monday, who insisted I file a disability report, and within five days I was in so much pain I couldn't walk.

It has been a long and difficult struggle back to where I am now. It took months of physical therapy to learn to walk normally again, and finally I starting getting epidural shots in my lower back on a regular basis to basically deaden the nerves around the ruptured disc so I don't feel so much pain. But in October of 2000, my year in hell, I was also diagnosed with Lupus, and my appendix ruptured, unrelated events, I think. After I had my surgery, I became a regular patient of the pain management clinic where I still go on a monthly basis for my pain medication and my discussion about what steps we can take to improve my quality of life. And it was this last question that led me to take the acting class in May of 2001 that ultimately brought me to LA and where I am now. I have reached the point of acceptance of my accident and subsequent illness, because I know I would have never had the courage to leave my cushy corporate world without being literally brought to my knees so that I couldn't do it any more.

I write all this to explain just how different my life is now. Being an extra, or "background actor" as we like to call it, is not a cerebral job, but that doesn't mean it is easy. First of all, the call times, when we have to be to the set and ready to go, are usually early. They can vary from oh-my-GOD early (5:00 a.m. is the earliest I've ever had) to a reasonable 9:00 a.m.; mine was 7:45 a.m. all four days on "The Office" which is fairly standard. The casting director tells you to plan on 10 to 12 hour days. We are paid based on an eight-hour standard, which goes to time-and-a-half for 8 to 12 hours, double time over 12 (this is known as "golden time" and does not happen very often). The non-union rate is currently only $64/8, or $8 per hour, so it's not very lucrative, but you do get fed ("craft services") pretty much all day, and it's incredible food, especially on hit shows. This week we could have had a custom omelet every day if we wanted, plus a choice of three entrees, potatoes, vegetables and a huge salad bar at lunch, and about six choices of desserts. On the last day we had Cold Stone Creamery ice cream! An actor can get really fat unless you exercise a lot of self-control on the set.

So what does an extra do, exactly? Well, first of all, it's important to understand that we are there to make the principles, the main cast, look good. We are there to support them and fill out the set so that the scene looks believable. We're not there to draw any attention to ourselves, unless the director tells us to. We are just "filler" - the people on the street, the patrons in the restaurant, the passers-by in the hallway - that without us, the scene would look unnatural and phony. Background actors can ruin a scene, by looking at the camera, by looking fake when they mime eating or talking, by NOT reacting when a cast member does something outrageous that a normal person would absolutely laugh at. There is an art to it, and there IS acting involved. It always annoys me when people say "background isn't real acting." That usually means that person was a bad background actor or has never done it. There used to be an Emmy and an Oscar for Best Background Actor; apparently the Academy considered it "real acting." A good background actor thinks about their character and where they fit in the scene, and why they are doing what they are doing. I usually talk to the people who will be in the scene with me before we shoot, and we agree what we mean to each other and what we are going to "mime" about. That way we at least have some sense of reality when we do that shot. I like to think that's one reason why I never have trouble getting background work, and why I get featured in a lot of shots. Because I think background is "real acting."

On this particular job, we were shooting "on location" at the Universal Studios' Hollywood Walk, which is an outdoor entertainment complex with a lot of shops and restaurants. We were at a restaurant with an arcade and a bowling alley, similar to a Dave and Buster's. The episode we were shooting is called "Happy Hour" and involved the entire cast of "The Office" going out together for a night of drinks and game-playing. This was fun for me because I love this show, and I got to see every single cast member. There is a rule that extras are not supposed to initiate any conversation with the principle actors, but if they talk to you it is okay to have a conversation. I had hoped that this cast might be friendly as had been the case with many of the shows I have worked on in the past, most notably "Arrested Development" and "Without a Trace" as the friendliest casts. But unfortunately, none of the cast members even made eye contact with any of us during the week, and the three big stars (Steve Carell-Michael, John Krasinski-Jim, and Jenna Fischer-Pam)were escorted around the set by bodyguards. Did they think we were going to ambush them for autographs? Good grief. This was disappointing for me.

Apparently, "The Office" normally shoots at their own office building in Burbank, but since we were on a location shoot that meant we had just a small "holding" area for the extras, separate from the "green room" that the cast was in. Our holding was actually the bar opposite the bowling alley, upstairs from the set, and when we went to the set we had to descend a long, winding staircase that more than one person - though, thankfully, not me - fell down during the week. Going up the stairs was tough on my back, since we were not needed all day every day and usually had to go up and down about five times each day. We also put in long hours, averaging nine each day excluding our half hour lunch. We aren't always "working" all that time - a lot of the time we are just waiting in "holding," which usually means talking (I call it "networking"), reading, making phone calls, or napping. This can get really boring. On this particular shoot, though, they must have liked my look - I wore black pants, a white collared shirt, and a lavender cashmere cardigan, for four days straight, folks, because it was all just one episode - so they used me in a lot of scenes. I was featured right behind "Angela," the very tiny
Angela Kinsey as she was "carded" at the door, and with my "date," at a table right in front of "Andy," played by Ed Helms, as he ponders his next move with "Erin," played by - some girl whose name I forget. I don't know if I'll show up in the final cut, but it was fun getting to "act" for the cameras with the principles.

Some notes on the production: "The Office" uses two hand-held cameras on all shots. This is very unusual for TV. The traditional set-up is a three-camera fixed set on a sound stage, with or without a live audience (Seinfeld, Frasier). Some shows now use a single camera and are not filmed with an audience; most of these use dollies or tracks when they need to move the camera. Using hand-held is much more difficult to keep it in focus, but it allows the operator to whip the camera back and forth much more quickly, which if you watch closely they do a lot during this show. I believe they use the same technique on "Parks and Recreation" which I worked on in December. It's very innovative. Perhaps because of this, I have never been on a TV show that did so many takes of each shot. It was excruciating! There must have been 20 takes of every shot! And when Ed Helms or Steve Carell were doing solo shots, they improvised freely, changing the words, the phrasing, the expressions. It was fascinating for me, as an aspiring sitcom actor, to watch these men at the top of their game practicing their craft. It was like an acting master class. And that in a nutshell is one of the key reasons I do background work.

There are two other reasons I do background work. One, of course, is for the money. I made over $400 this week, which is not bad for an actor who lives pretty cheaply in Hollywood. The other is for the chance to get a SAG voucher or two or three, which unfortunately didn't happen this week for me. There are two unions for film and TV actors: the Screen Actors' Guild (SAG), and the American Film, Television, and Radio Association (AFTRA). AFTRA allows any actor who can pay the admission fee and quarterly dues to join, so I am a member. SAG, however, has no set rules about who gets vouchers. The first assistant director is the one who makes the decision to hand them out on the set, and it can be as arbitrary as: he thinks you're pretty, he knows you'll sleep with him (not making this up), or he was told to by the director because he knows your father. Or it can be legitimate: you were featured in a scene for more than 30 seconds; you had special skills (in "The Office" episode this week, it was playing pool); or you got a line, in which case you were "Taft-Hartley'd" which means you got an exemption under the Taft-Hartley Act and are now automatically eligible for SAG membership. It costs twice as much to join SAG as it does AFTRA, and the dues are twice as much. SAG actors are paid about eight times as much per day as non-union actors are, but I'm told they only work about half as much. Still, I'd love to be eligible. I need three vouchers, and I haven't gotten any yet. Or I need a line in an AFTRA production and I'm automatically eligible. I'm off to work ten days on an AFTRA web series called "Held Up." Right now, I don't have any lines, but I'm going to plead my case. Wish me luck!

Til next time,
Jennie