Golden Time, Baby!

The Universe is being so good to me! Call time at 5:30 am, wrapped at 8:06 pm. That's 36 minutes of Golden Time!

Golden Time is when you work any time over 14 hours, and in theory you get paid your daily base rate per hour. In other words, if your base rate is $54 for 8 hours, in Golden Time, you get paid $54 per hour. But I don't think they actually pay Golden Time to non-union, it may still just be double time. But even so, that's 4 1/2 hours of double time. And this is just the first day of five! Gonna be a very nice paycheck! The Universe has got my back!

Today did turn out to be a large call, at least 200 background, I don't know why the 25 of us Blue Collar Fans were singled out to come to a fitting when the other 175+ background actors weren't. And do you know that 60 people--Six Zero--did not show up for the call today?!?

Even though the day was long, there was very little down time between takes. We spent the entire day on the set, excepting lunch and the occasional 10 minute break while they changed the lighting and moved the cameras. They kept moving us around the stadium, seating us in this section, then that section. I don't understand how people can sit for 14 hours. I couldn't sit. My butt got sore. My shoulders and neck got stiff. Every few hours I would stand and walk in place between takes because I couldn't sit any more. And I was usually the only one to stand up. I don't get it.

And how amazing is it that they were able to find a photo double for WF who not only is the spitting image of him both in face and body type, but is also a professionally skilled ice-skater?? Although both WF and JH did a lot of their own skating today for the first (slower) part of the routine. They both seemed rather shaky on the ice and were still struggling with the routine a bit this morning (WF much more so than JH), but by the end of the day they had the routine down pat and were nailing it every time. And the stunt doubles did the lifts, which required wires, and really makes it clear why men don't skate as pairs.

But it was really neat to watch JH because you could see he was absolutely loving the whole figure skating thing. In between takes, he was constantly practicing his half of the routine but it was with such joy at being graceful, and he began to explore and improvise, play beyond the moves for the routine, you could tell how much he was enjoying it.

I spent the first half of the day sitting with two new friends that I met today, a very nice older gentleman, and a man my age who seemed to enjoy talking to me, joking with me, but would not look at me most of the time when we talked, just kept looking out at the rink. (Not sure what that was about.) Anyhow, we started joking about how I was a spy and the velvet prop roses I had been given were really bombs and would explode when I threw them on the ice, so the comedy would suddenly become a terrorist drama. Then we decided it was really a horror movie: After a few days working on the set, we would turn into the rubber dummies seated throughout the stadium--we'd never get to leave again!

About 75% of the stadium was seated with rubber dummy head/torsos. And each had a plastic face mask (and each of the faces were different) and a variety of wigs, they looked eerily almost human. Some of the extras sitting near us made up a game of finding famous people among the dummies. I found Stacy Keach (during his Mike Hammer days).

And that was pretty much today, in brief. I need to go shower and go to bed now, another 5:30 am call tomorrow.