Extra, extra! Read all about it

As I previously mentioned, I've been trying to make the most of my free time, so when I saw a post about being an extra on this website I frequent, I knew I had to do it. It was unpaid, but so much fun. The movie, Mr. Tambourine Man, stars JK Simmons.

Sample Work: Spider-Man, I Love You, Man (plays Paul Rudd's dad) and Juno and on TV in Law & Order and The Closer.

Mr. Tambourine Man is based on a true story written by Oliver Sacks about Gabriel, a man who after having a brain tumor removed, loses his ability to form short-term memories. His family hires a music therapist and together they discover that because we hear music differently than we hear speech, he can respond to music from Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead and can begin to form new memories.

The scene that I am in is a Grateful Dead concert that I can only assume happens towards the end of the movie. JK Simmons and another young actor attend the concert and other stuff happens which I am not obliged to disclose.

The movie takes place in 1987, so the first daunting task for me was to figure out what to wear. Should I go with Grateful Dead garb, or should I go 80's? I realized after getting some tips from the wardrobe crew and from asking friends, that most Grateful Dead concert goers style didn't really change much based on the decade. I decided to go with a short hippie-style dress over torn jeans. I think it worked. I didn't have tie-dye or have the time to make one, so I went with this and it worked well with what other people were wearing.

Let me tell you though, making a movie is a difficult task. There's a lot of waiting around, a lot of standing, a lot of blocking and not a lot of actual filming. I think we filmed a total of 4 scenes from 10am-6pm, including the concert and a couple of dialogue scenes.

I'm fairly certain I will be in one shot. They did 6 takes and I'm not in only 1 of those (which is the one they'll probably use, haha). It's the scene in which the young actor and Jk Simmons walk into the concert. I'm standing there dancing to some low pre-concert music with my friend Jess and chatting while they walk in. It was so cool to have JK standing a foot away from me while we were filming. As I joked with my brother, we are co-stars! hahaha

The concert scene was exhausting because we had to have a lot of energy. They had a cover band and I think they looked pretty good.

Waiting for the next shot with "Jerry Garcia"

Jk Simmons was extremely nice to everyone. He took pictures with a lot of people (unfortunately, those people were very pushy so I wasn't able to get one with him) but I did get this one to document the day.

It was a long, but fun day. It was interesting to see what goes into making a movie and how much work it really is. I am so glad I did it and I'm excited to see the final movie, even if you can't see me in it :)