Tidbits About Yesterday's Movie Set Experience

Yesterday I wrote about being an extra on the set of Die Hard 5, which is filming here in Budapest. I'm still trying to round up some cool photos taken by buddies who were there, but I haven't received them yet...so that gives me an excuse for another post another day!

One thing that surprised me was how some details meant so much to the filmmakers, while in other ways they were very careless. When I mentioned I had a much nicer suit that actually fit me, they said they needed me to be in a Russian-made suit. They also made sure we had tiny details like extra ammo cartridges for our guns, even though they were unlikely to be seen. On the other hand, I saw a sign in Russian that was inaccurate; I saw 'Russians' with wedding rings on their left hands, when they are supposed to be on the right; and they made one of my buddies carry a McDonald's bag while exiting the 'police station', when it seems more logical to me that he would be bringing it into the station from the outside.

When it came to choosing extras for scenes, I would have thought a director would have looked over the extras and picked out the ones who fit the scene perfectly. Instead they just grabbed them randomly.

So, my buddy Bob was one of the detectives chosen to walk up the stairs holding a McDonald's bag (again, out of the station, which made no sense to me), while Bruce Willis was walking down the stairs into the station. It was a very simple scene of just a few seconds. Bob thought the first take went well. He was supposed to pretend to be talking to another detective and avoid looking at Bruce. So he was taken by surprise on the second take when Bruce jokingly tried to grab his McDonald's bag from him!

Besides seeing Bruce Willis, I saw another one of the stars, though I didn't know who he was at the time. I just found out he is Prison Break star Amaury Nolasco. He was super polite to the people working with him, so he seemed like a nice guy. The marines are inviting cast and crew to their gorgeous house on Friday, so I'm hoping some of them might show up to meet us (come on, Bruce, you know we love you!).

When the day was done, we were brought out to the street to wait for the bus to take us to get out of our clothes (and get paid!). Lots of people stared at us, since we were all decked out in various costumes--policemen, detectives, thugs, prostitutes, etc. A tourist bus was slowly approaching on the street, so one of the policemen got the idea to frisk some of the whores. He got them up against the wall and had some of his buddies begin frisking them just as the bus began going by. You should have seen all the people jamming cameras up against the windows. I wonder what they were thinking about this crazy city!