Cargo

SEPTEMBER 20, 2009

Late summer can sometimes be cold, rainy, and miserable, and after a week-long stretch of spectacular weather, I was wishing that’s how the day was when we left Michigan. After all, a gray, drizzly day would’ve made it so much easier to leave. Instead, the aqua-colored lake sparkled in the sun, beckoning us for one last swim. A warm breeze rustled the leaves, which were still green in the treetops. “Where are you going?” it all seemed to say. “Not back to New York, I hope.”

Yup, back to New York to do New York things. Things happen fast in the big city of dreams, and the stories are beginning to get backed up. Even though I still have a dozen half-finished vacation stories and several hundred photos to go with them, I’m afraid it’s time to move on.

As much as I wanted to spend the Saturday in bed, recuperating from the long drive home, my first day back from vacation involved a meeting about work. At the end of the meeting, Abby, the woman I met with, asked what I was doing the following Friday.

“We’re in the middle of shooting an independent feature film right now,” Abby said, “and we need as many extras as we can muster for a club scene.”

She gave me a quick synopsis of the movie — about human trafficking — and told me about the scene which takes place in a Russian nightclub in Brighton Beach.

“Where’s the shoot?”

“On location, in a real Russian nightclub in Brighton Beach. It’s right off the F train, so it’s fairly convenient to reach. Can you do it?”

“Sure, why not.”

When Friday arrived, I made the mistake of driving to the set, which caused me to be about an hour late for the call time as I drove around in circles looking for a parking spot. When I finally got to the club, Abby met me on the street.

“Sorry, I’m late,” I said.

“It’s fine, really, no problem. But before you go in, I have a couple of questions for you. Is that your pickup truck you were driving?”

“Yes.”

“Can we borrow it?”

It’s a pickup truck, so I figured she wanted to use it to pick up something — maybe cart equipment from one place to another — but, no, she wanted to use it in a couple of scenes. “Our rental vehicle fell through at the last minute, and we’re kind of in a bind. We need an old pickup for a few key shots. We’ll pay you, of course.”

“Sure, no problem,” I said.

“Wait. Before you say yes, I have one more question to ask you.”

“What’s that? Do you want to roll it over into a ditch and blow it up?”

“Well, no, but we do need to break out the rear window. We’ll replace it, of course. There will even be a glass guy on set to replace it right away.”

Like I said, back in New York, doing New York things.

My work as an extra included two scenes: First, standing around pretending to talk to a guy near the club’s entrance, and second, sitting at a red velvet banquette with a tall, beautiful Russian girl and a short Russian dude, both in their early twenties, pretending to talk to them as well.

As cheesy as the place was, it felt even more so at ten o’clock in the morning, so as I sat across from the Russian duo, I pulled out a suitably cheesy line: “So, do you come here often?”

“No,” the girl said, “I’ve never been here before. Have you?”

“No, I was just joking,” I said, “We’re supposed to be making small talk. It’s a classic line. A cheesy line at a cheesy club.”

“Oh yes,” she laughed.

Seeing that the question wasn’t as far-fetched as I thought it was, I asked the guy the same thing. “How about you?”

“I work here,” he said.