A report from my day on the set of The Next 3 Days with Russell Crowe.

Warning:  Long!  If you are lazy let me skip to your burnings questions.  YES, Rusty was near me…as close as 3 feet at one point!  NO, I did not speak to him nor get a pic or autograph. (Extras are forbidden to bring cameras and phones to the set.  And talking to the real actors is frowned upon.)  MAYBE, a scene w/me in it could end up in the final film.

The stars’ trailers are set up on the corner of Ross and 3rd in downtown PGH.  Shooting took place near One Mellon Center at Ross and 5th/6th.  Later this week they’ll be filming inside the Allegheny County Jail, which is also nearby.

Let me preface by saying that being an extra basically sucks.  I can’t believe that there are people who choose to do that as their primary job.  But thank E they do, or Hollywood couldn’t go on.

I was told to report to the “Extras Holding Area” by 6:30am.  I got up at 5:20, caught a bus at 5:50, and made it in plenty of time.  They were storing us extras in a building owned by Robert Morris University.  It was fairly shabby.  I filled out a form so that I could get paid (a whopping $7.50/hour!) and then we all sat and waited.  And waited.  I overheard one of the production assistants say that they didn’t have permission to start using the street until 9:00.  I tried to get some reading done (they advise you to bring something to do), and then went on a walk around the block/to find some coffee.  The “breakfast” they served to the extras was NASTY and coffeeless.

While I was waiting around I met up with my new Crowe Friend, Jo.  She got herself an Extra job too and found me online and suggested that we hang out during the day’s work.  Jo is about 70ish(?), came in from Greensburg, got up at 3:20am to be there, and has a mostly metal left leg/foot due to a bad break last year.  But she showed up.  Such is the power of Russ.  She brought along her daughter Laura, who was about 2 years older than me.  They were both very cool ladies.  You can read Jo’s account of these events here.

Finally at shortly after 9:00, they herded us out to the corner of Ross and 5th where our job was to cross a street in the background while in the foreground Russell would be running out the back of a building.  (Oh, I forgot to mention that we were told to wear Pens or Pirates gear for the scenes.  I wore my JStaal jersey and beat-up blue Crosby cap.)

At first we didn’t know that Russell would be in the scene.  But as they were arranging us all on the curb, I happened to glance up in the direction of 3rd Ave (where the trailers were) and saw Russell, looking completely unassuming, waiting with a few bodyguards to cross the street and get to the set!!!  This was about 9:30.  I was the first to spot him and pointed him out to my friends.  He was wearing grey jeans, sunglasses, and a blue sweater with a grey t-shirt underneath…this was basically his “costume” for the whole day.  Much to our glee and wonder, he crossed the street, then crossed again so that he passed within 10 feet of our group!!  As he did so, he smiled, gave a little head nod and mumbled “good morning.”  Before he got away I had the presence of mind to yell, “Go Bunnies!!”  (the rugby team he owns).  I know he heard me because I saw his little smirk tighten a bit and the corners of his eyes did that little crinkly thing that they do.  Squee!!!  We Crowe Hos felt that the day had already been worth it…little did we know it would get better.

Once Rusty showed up, we started filming the “crossing the street” scene.  First we had to practice a bunch of times because they didn’t like how we walked.  (”Too clumpy” was one common complaint.)  Then we did it a bunch more (really, I lost count) times while Russell did whatever he was doing in the foreground.  I don’t know what it was, because we were instructed to NOT look that way (towards the camera) while we walked….this was very, very difficult.  :)  But we got to enjoy watching Russell stand around during breaks/camera adjustments.  During this time he was about 50 feet away.

I don’t know if they ever got exactly the footage that they wanted, but at around 10:30ish they moved all of us around the block to a nice tree-lined mini park behind One Mellon Center.  They spread us out along the length of the sidewalk that cuts through the park, and we were supposed to be a “sea of black and gold”-clad people leaving a game (we’ll imagine it was a Pens game) and Russ and his movie-wife were supposed to lose themselves in the group.  (In the movie, they are on the run from the Law.)  In this scene, Russ wore a Pirates jacket (they SO should have made him wear a Crosby jersey instead…I’d have died) over his sweater.

We practiced this this forEVER, with several variations.  First they told us we were going to walk past a cameraman on the side, and when Russell passed the cameraman they would get a closeup of Russ removing his jacket.  Then they told us that a Steadicam operator was going to pass through our crowd and instructed us how to walk to avoid being run over.  That took AGES and I don’t know if they really did those shots or not because Russell and the director were at the very end of our sidewalk full of people.  But we walked the length of that sidewalk umpteen times…but being wiley Crowe stalkers, each time they made us start over, the three of us backed up a bit so that we eventually ended up at the very end of the sidewalk within 15 feet of Russell!  Here we had ample time to observe The Man.

He seemed in good spirits at this point.   He was laughing with one of the sound guys, chatting with the director, doing some little leg stretches, etc.  He had very slight stubble and had some faux movie cuts and scratches applied to his forehead.  (I assume he got beaten up in a preceding scene.)  From watching him, I think that Rusty is one of those people (like me) whose face in repose just doesn’t look happy (I’m always getting told to “smile!!!!” by total strangers even when I feel totally fine.)  That may be where his Mean Asshole rep stems from, because for a while he was just chillin’ there, hands in pockets, staring off into space in our general direction, but it looked like he was glowering right at us.  Which was very unnerving…like, “OMG frigging Maximus is glowering at me!! What did I do wrong?!”…but also sexy as heck.  But he wasn’t glowering, that’s just how his face looks, you know?

ANYway, now the super-awesome part.

During all of our practice walking we kept hearing the “too clumpy” refrain and the director started culling extras from the group.  They did this about three times, but our little group of fangirls was never eliminated.  (Thanks be to the JStaal jersey!)  So with fewer people around, it was even easier to watch Russell.

Finally they had it down to a more aesthetically-pleasing group size and did the scene again, this time with Russell (and Elizabeth Banks).

Now remember, we weren’t supposed to be looking around us which is how it was that as I was walking along Russ passed RIGHT by me and it took me a blink of an eye to realize OMFrigginG he’s RIGHT THERE.  Thank all the gawds that this scene was being shot from behind us, or else surely the look of ‘STUNNED’ on my face would have ruined the take.  Then I faintly may have heard someone say “cut”, and the group (including Russ) stopped walking, and then Russell turned around so that now he was within 2 or 3 feet from me and facing me!

And he squinted and said to no one in particular, “Did he say ‘cut’?”

I guess he decided so, because he started walking back to the director (Paul Haggis, btw) and of course we all followed.  They had monitors off to the side so they could look at the footage instantly, and Russell and Haggis looked at the monitors and apparently liked what they saw.  They decided to keep what they’d just filmed and we didn’t have to do that scene anymore.  So there is a possibility that eventually you may be able to glimpse me and my JStaal jersey in a movie within 3 feet of Russell Crowe.  Added bonus for me of getting Staalsie’s name up on the big screen….I’s gonna make mah baby famous!

After that it was unclear for awhile what we were supposed to do next, so we just hung out and watched Russ at work.  A makeup guy came and dabbed at him a bit.  He chit-chatted.  We could sometimes hear the cadence of his voice, but not make out what he was saying.  A catering lady came around with some mini-meatball subs and I snagged one.

And then….Russell disappeared inside the BNY building and they made us go back to our original intersection for more walking.  Nooooooooooooo!  We had a brief break at the snack cart they had parked there; it had a nice selection of things.  Drinks, apples, granola bars, beef jerkey, nuts, candy, chips.  Then they arranged us out of the street again but this time they were shooting the part where the cops/baddies/whoever is after Russell come running out of the building with guns drawn.  Russ was NOT in the scene at all so our motivation for crossing that corner a billion times was really, really shot.

By the time they broke for “lunch” at 2ish, we were all really beat.  It was hot in my Pens jersey, my legs and knees hurt from standing for 6 hours in my Doc Martens, and poor Jo was totally done-in and in pain from her bad leg.  We went back in a crushing mob of extras to the “holding” building where they had provided a really disgusting-looking lunch.  We’re talking grade-school cafeteria crap.  I snuck around to the table where the Production Assistants had been sitting and found a list of what we were supposed to film today…each scene also mentioned which characters were going to be in it.  There was nothing on the schedule involving Russell for the rest of the day…so we all bailed.  :)  True, we will never get our $7.50 an hour now but being 3 feet from Russell and getting to watch him work and observe him in his natural environment well, like the commercial says…

PRICELESS.

Oh, here some some pics that some lucky non-extra took on that day.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 7:55 am and is filed under Hooray for Hollywood, Wastes of Time & Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.