...and the Evidence of the Extra

So shooting is underway on the television show I am investigating. Dailies have begun coming in, and it's fascinating to watch which takes work and which don't. There are some takes that don't succeed for mundane reasons - boom in the shot, flubbed lines, but other takes fail when the unexpected occurs. The dead dog doesn't play dead. The child runs for his life with a big smile on his face. Or maybe you have an insane background player.

Actors have it rough out here. It is an unforgiving and unfair industry to everyone, but to actors in particular. It's said all the time in a genial, ha ha way that actors are crazy. I am telling you in a non-genial, no laughing way: the great majority of them are nuts. Bonkers.

There are people who have great amounts of talent and who also have a very specific personality that is self-aware, secure, pragmatic, and comfortable with uncertainty. Those make up 1% of the actors out here and they should continue to act, because they are awesome. For the rest of the people out here, I truly believe it's a personality-destroying occupation. The tool most actors counteract the forces that work to crush any normal person is delusion. Heaping amounts of delusion. However, it doesn't work all the time, so through the delusion one can occasionally glimpse the yawning chasm of insecurity.

I want to emphasize that I don't blame them -- I think that is the normal human reaction to pursuing a line of work with constant rejection, no meritocracy, a out-of-whack emphasis on looks, no end of bitchiness, and a common motivator of fear. I think it's how 99% of people would end up. But bottom line, they're nuts.

Which brings me to extras. Some extras are just extras - they think it's a fun, painless way to make $75 or $100 a day. There's an extra on ER who's been an extra daily since it aired. I really want them to let him direct an episode sometime - after 11 seasons of watching production every day, he'd probably get them to make their day by lunch.

Other extras are actors trying to break in. This is a great idea as long as you don't get stuck in extra limbo. It gets you experience on a set, shows you how everything works, and after a few times, an extra is often thrown a bone - made a featured extra or given a line, especially if they've proven themselves sane and responsible and the production people know they need SAG points.

But there is extra limbo. People who extra for years doing no other work, yet still believe they are going to make it as a star. People who believe this is a giant step in their career, when if I can equate it to something writing-wise, it's sort of like having specs. It's a way to get in to the circle that seems knowledgeable. This isn't the "good" circle, merely the "has a clue" circle. Some people never leave the extras circle, and some of those people are in our dailies. And it's fantastic. I spent an evening recently bursting into peals of laughter with some assts and writers as we watched a set of dailies in which the woman in the background of one scene effectively destroyed take after take with her acting.

The scene was set in a nice restaurant. This woman in the background was framed nicely between the two leads having dinner at the table in the foreground.

The first take went pretty well, the lead actors hit all the unspoken back and forth beats of the scene, ending with a detente. The scene ends with a nice little moment of the characters reconsidering each other. The actors regard each other for a beat and then, in the background....YAAAAAAWWWNNNNNNNN. Extra Lady started yawning. A feeding time at the zoo yawn. It's so funny. It's so beautifully timed with their little actorly moment. If she planned it, I'd think she was brilliant.

In subsequent takes, she became so absorbed in the scene between the two leads occuring at the table next to hers that she simply turned straight to the dinner table and watched. When there was a suspenseful moment in their conversation, she held her breath. She then progressed to leaning toward the table as if waiting for the answer. I think she may have created a whole backstory that her dinner date (who valiantly kept cutting his pork chop and trying to silently talk to her as his "date" ignored him and stared at the table next door) had been rude and she was giving him the silent treatment when who should appear at the table next to hers than her friend Barney whom she hadn't seen since junior high and her motivation was to eavesdrop on the conversation. Or maybe she just had no awareness that she kept ceasing to act and instead stared gape-mouthed at the two actors in the scene.

I know she probably can't ever be hired again, but I hope she becomes our every-day-for-eleven-seasons extra. If only for the enviable stomach muscles I'd develop from laughing.

...and the Mystery of All the Vanishing Hours of My Day

I have discovered that it is difficult to be either a detective or a writer while one's cover takes up 14 hours a day. Note to self: in future, showrunner asst makes for lousy cover job, as you spend large chunks of the day tied to desk, away from enticing mysteries, and will probably not have time to buy food, take out the garbage or brush your hair, much less solve a case.

Emmy nominations? Yes, that was over a week ago, but if you think I'm running late, you'll have to get in line behind my laundry, my cats, my mechanic, my friends, and my landlord to scold me about it. I'm trying, y'all.

Right. The Emmys. If you personally are nominated for an Emmy, then I imagine they are pretty exciting. Otherwise, I think no one in the world, including people working in television, care at all about the Emmys. Like the Oscars, they tend to play it safe, award old favorites, and award based on past work rather than the actual submission. Unlike the Oscars, Clooney doesn't attend these days and the gift bag does not include a trip to a Caribbean island.

Speaking of the Caribbean, I had spam in my email account labeled "Pirate Survey" this morning -- it was a survey for people who had seen the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie. But just for a second, my heart had leapt, thinking that someone had sent me the results of their survey of pirates. Wouldn't that be wonderful? What do you suppose the questions would be: how many striped shirts do you own? What is the name of your parrot? And of course: what's your favorite letter of the alphabet? (answer: ARRRRRRRRRRR!)

The Emmys. Right. There are always a few people around who manage to get their knickers twisted about the crime against mankind that is the omission of this show or that actor, but I so fully expect the nominations list to suck that i'm just happily surprised when those doing the nominating get it right. Yeah, Lauren Graham unjustly continues to be the primetime version of Susan Lucci, but without even the nominations to console her, and Battlestar Galactica is a much better show than West Wing, but come on, what are you expecting?

So let's celebrate the happy surprises this year:

* "Trapped in the Closet" was nominated for Outstanding Animated Feature.

* Not a damn housewife in the bunch, whew. (yeah, yeah, Alfre Woodard is nominated, but she's not one of the original monsters whom we all loathe. Alfre, like Felicity, we merely pity for being leagues above the material in terms of talent and class.)

* Jaime Pressly - yaay, girl! I've loved you since "It's already been brought-en." And after that New Yorker article on you a couple of years ago that bluntly pointed out that you had another 24-30 months to make it or not at all, I'm even more glad that you got a role you could really knock out of the park.

* Allison Janney - she doesn't really deserve an Emmy this year at all for CJ, mostly because the writing for her this year kinda blew, but I still want her to win every award for which she is ever nominated, especially every award having to do with CJ Cregg.

* Andre Braugher - I think it's weird that Thief is defined as a miniseries, but boy howdy, he is one good actor and likewise deserves to be nominated for and to win every award that he possibly can. Here's hoping he can beat the Pope and Gandhi.

* Kate Winslet for Extras. So awesome. She does drama so well that it's easy to overlook the great comic moments she has in most of those roles, and how well she does them. It really makes me want to see her in a Christopher Guest movie.

* Best Comedy nominations for Arrested Development, Scrubs, and The Office. I thought the chances of all three getting nominated were non-existent, and seeing all three right up there where they should be makes me glow.

A couple of random thoughts:

* How on earth do they pick the nominees for Best Lighting for a Sitcom?

*As great as he is on Boston Legal, if I had to pick one award for William Shatner, I think I would prefer that he win for the History Special 'How William Shatner Changed the World', because REALLY??!!! There's a documentary produced by The History Channel about HOW WILLIAM SHATNER HAS CHANGED THE WORLD? Did Esperanto catch on while I wasn't looking? Is his horrible Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds THAT horrible? Whuh? And yet, as floored as I am, it'd be so awesome to see him win that. Especially given that we could have to hear Rosie O'Donnell yammering on and on about her dumb inclusive family cruise.

And even though not two paragraphs ago I mocked anyone who cares about the Emmys enough to feel disgust, I must put myself in that category long enough to add:

* Truly, Emmy voters, what the hell is with you and Two and a Half Men?

* Find me a writer outside of the Grey's Anatomy staff who thinks the second half of It's the End of the World, As We Know It belonged on television, much less a list of the best episodes on television. Even Shonda knows it was bad. She does. She wrote it while she was sick as a dog, in virtually no time at all, and I mean this quite sincerely, that is an Impressive and Amazing and Incredibly Difficult to Do. But everyone knows that it was awful, including her. She had to explain what happened in the episode to about 1/3 of the people who wrote to her about the episode. One out of every three people could not tell what had happened during the episode. That alone should get you knocked off a list of contenders.

All right, my cover job demands that I go take some notes now.