The Ten Percent

So my job for the past three weeks has been 90% boring, 10% fantastic.

Now that it's over, let me tell you about the fantastic parts.

No, that doesn't mean this blog will only be one-tenth as long as the other one.

But it might be ten times more interesting.

Let's find out...

Pretty Cool Thing Nbr. 1: Robert Downey Jr.
First day on set, I'm standing in my assigned spot trying not to get in the way. (As an extra, that's really your primary job: to not get in the way.) I hear this voice and four feet away from me, Robert Downey Jr is nattering with the wardrobe guy and trying on the gloves for his costume. He's just as handsome and charming in person as he is on the big screen - which, given my experience in LA, is not always the case.

Keeping to my primary job, I don't bug him. That doesn't stop some other d-bag extra from approaching the guy. "Hey, uh, hey Robert- Uh, what was the last name of your character from Less Than Zero? Julian... Julian what?"

I'm thinking to myself, Really? That's your opener? Some tidbit of trivia it would take you three minutes to look up on IMDb?

RDJ blinks at the guy once and casually replies "Wells. Julian Wells."

"Uh, thanks. Thanks, that's been bugging me all morning," says the extra, beating a retreat from his own inanity, "I couldn't remember what it was."

RDJ flashes the guy a smile. "Well, it was a quarter of a century ago," he quips. "We are not young people."

He's like this for the whole shoot: calm, easy-going, focused, and engaged in the film-making.

One day in between camera set-ups, he spends a good 40 minutes off on the empty end of the set, sparring with his karate coach. The guy could be in his trailer. But he's not.

Pretty Cool Thing Nbr. 2: The Effects
I can't tell you anything about this scene, except that they blow a lot of shit up. A LOT OF SHIT. But not in that "blowin-shit-up-for-blowin-shit-up's sake" kind of way. The scene actually has some great development and reveals. I wish I could say more. Anyway...

I will tell you that I saw some incredibly nasty stuff done to cars.

I watched a set decorator take a claw hammer and a blowtorch to a $400,000 vehicle. I got to run past one of three primary cameras to do a "swipe" as they blew up a car. ("Don't fuck this up," the 2nd AD warned everyone, "you do NOT want to be in front of our lens when that pyro goes off.") I saw what a bunch of tube steel, a compressed-air ram, and 300 feet of industrial-strength towing rope can do to a car. It may just be movie magic, but it's some pretty cool magic in and of itself.

Although: you're working on this big-budget blockbuster and there's green screens everywhere and you think everything, everything, EVERYTHING is CGI. They need some smoke and flames, they just CGI it in, right?

Nope. Some guy comes out on the asphalt with a stainless steel chafing dish, dumps two gallons of straight diesel inside with the head of a mop to act as a wick, and WHOOSH. Instant smoke.

Why spend $800 on CGI when you can make smoke with a twelve-dollar trip to Ace Hardware and a couple of gallons of gas?

Pretty Cool Thing Nbr. 3: The Stuntmen
These guys earn their paychecks and they really earned my respect on this shoot. They get set on fire, they get slung around on wires, they get pinned into all kinds of uncomfortable places and positions. On a big action sequence like this, they worked more than the principals did.

The interesting thing about RDJ is that Iron Man is basically a CGI-sculpted character. So they have a motion-capture/stunt guy come in and do the Iron Man movements whenever they're showing the full suit and then the FX guys use their computer wizardry to put the suit in around that. Robert really doesn't have to be involved in any of it.

And yet, he was out there on the set, working with the stunt guys to help craft the fight choreography, to put his twists and turns into it. Again, the guy could've just checked out.

Pretty Cool Thing Nbr. 4: The Nerdery
I got to see the scale model reference mock-up of the new Iron Man suit. I was there for the introduction of the Whiplash character and saw the harness/whips up close. Iron Man was my favorite comic book character when I was a kid, this experience was all around just over-the-top nerdtastic.

Finally...

Pretty Cool Thing Nbr. 5: The Acting
Background acting is not like any other type of acting. (You can legitimately argue it's not acting at all. That's a whole 'nother blog post...) But for three weeks, I showed up on set, and put on a uniform, and carried a gun belt with a fake gun and walkie-talkie, and - when called upon - I got to act.

Not in a way that's going to be featured somehow, not in a way that's going to advance my career or give me a notable credit, not in a way that's going to matter to anyone other than the two dozen friends and family who happen to recognize that cop with the glasses.

But for a few weeks I got to pull down a paycheck and be paid to pretend.

Most people do the same thing, only they're hoping they don't get caught.

-Tom, hoping he doesn't get caught either, to be honest.