Forget Bollywood...I'm going straight to Hollywood!

As many of you know my real reason for coming to India was not to save the world, but to become a Bollywood star. While I have made very little progress on that front, I had the unexpected chance to get a taste of Hollywood this week. It goes like this:

I saw a posting on a listserv to be an extra in a film by Brad Pitt’s production company called Eat Pray Love, staring none other than Julia Roberts. I signed up and was told I would be contacted shortly, only to hear nothing back. The whole thing operated in a very “India” way, meaning that I got a call on Sunday asking if I could leave around 4 am the next day to go to the set. As if I have nothing better planed for my Monday. Well, actually that was true so I told them yes of course. They told me they would call back with details. At 8 pm on Sunday I still hadn’t heard anything, so I had to call them to remind them. Sure enough they still did want me, had forgotten to call me back, but yes, a cab would be arriving at 4 am to take me and Jack to the set. Obviously Jack was also involved because we clearly can’t be separated for a full day without having severe separation anxiety.

The cab showed up at 4:45 and was already full – so Jack and I had to squeeze in for the bumpy hour and a half ride out to the Ashram, where the filming is taking place. A bit of background: Eat Pray Love is based on a memoir and includes a part about the main character travelling to India to stay at an Ashram to meditate, do yoga, and find herself.

Apparently while they were filming in New York they forgot to do a wedding scene, which is a flashback scene to a wedding in Connecticut in the early 90s. So the production company rounded up 60 white people from Delhi, had us dress in our nicest western suits and dresses, and shuttled us all out to a hotel near the Ashram to film this scene. The first crazy part was hair and makeup, where I was transformed from a sleepy bedhead to one crazy looking wedding attendee. I forgot that stage make up is not exactly flattering. The shade of pink on my lips has not been seen since the mid 80s and my eyelids rivaled Mimi’s from The Drew Carey Show. After feasting on a fabulous catered breakfast we were off to the set. The second crazy part was seeing a bunch of Western Europeans sitting around in sleeveless dresses and suits and ties. I don’t think I’ve seen more than three other white people together since I’ve been here, so to suddenly be surrounded by them dressed to the nines was quite a trip. Unfortunately, Jack and I were not even chosen to be in the scene. Although we had both seen Julia, it was surprisingly anti-climatic; who would have guessed she kind of just looks like a person in real life? We were definitely bummed to have missed our 15 minutes of fame as we drove the hour and a half back to Delhi.

At 9pm, however, our luck changed as I got a call from the production company asking if we could come at 4am the next day and stay at a hotel near the set to be extras for the next three days. Considering we get paid over twice as much per day as the daily equivalent of our NGO salaries, not to mention the fact that being on a movie set is far more exciting than working from home, we of course said yes. Please note that we are not completely neglecting our jobs, we both brought our laptops and have been doing work at night and in between scenes on the set.

Being an extra has actually been pretty cool. There are about 10 of us who are called “core extras” meaning we show up every day to do the general Ashram scenes. We’ve all bonded since we have plenty of time to hang out and we’re quite the motley crew – some Lithuanians, Russians, and Brits, me and Jack and another guy from the US, and an Aussie – all dressed in authentic Indiawear. There are a few scenes of me walking around in the back, as well as one where I am checking new arrivals into the Ashram. So when the movie comes out do look for me in the back saying goodbye to Richard. It was a very emotional day and we were quite sad to see him go J

I think the coolest part, though, was being chosen to be the stand in for a smaller character named Corella. (Same hair color and height, combined with my obvious talent and good looks and natural ease in front of the camera won me this role). The part is played by Sophie Thompson, who I learned from google is Emma Thompson’s younger sister and was in Sense and Sensibility and Emma. She has been so much fun to work with and is really chatty while we’re not working. As I’ve learned, the role of the stand in is to walk through the actor’s movements and lines so that they can check all the lighting. First we watched Julia and Sophie (aka Team 1) do the scene to see what they do, then they call in Team 2 (me and Charlotte, Julia’s stand in) to recreate it. We then run through it numerous times, pausing throughout etc. It’s a little weird to know that some big shot director is sitting in his folding chair watching your face intently to see how the light falls across it. Then comes the highlight, which involves Julia Roberts coming back to take over and making eye contact and smiling at me. Considering the only “celebrity” I’ve made eye contact with before is good old Ben Bernanke, I thought it was pretty cool. Not to mean any disrespect to Ben, he is after all The Man.

The other cool part about being a stand in is that everyone, the assistant directors, cinematographers, cameramen, etc, are all standing around watching the scene with you so you get to whisper with them and learn about what goes on behind the scenes in movies. They were all really friendly and have worked on a lot of pretty sweet movies. Plus now they all know me by name, so when I’m walking with the other extras and they wave and say “Hi Suzanne” I get major status points.

All in all, its been a jam packed 4 days (we did get to sleep in until 5:40 today which was absolutely luxurious) and I have to say that while trying to save the world is pretty cool, being on a movie set has its perks too. I apologize for the lack of pictures, needless to say cameras are absolutely not allowed on set.