Thursday, November 09, 2006

Memories from location

Two weeks ago me and Andrey took the bus with the rest of the extras and found ourselves on Krumovo Air Base, near Plovdiv. We were going to be soldiers in "Brand Hauser". Several trucks, trailers and cars were waiting for us near the entrance of the airport. The first thing to do was to get our cupons for food, get dressed and sign the contracts. No big deal here. Only that on the xasting they said we'll get 30 leva and it came out that we'll get 20 leva. I guess the cast and teh crew drank the rest of our money... I warned them to dress me as a soldier with a helmet, not like the special forces with black outfit and a baretta, cause I wanna hide my hair under the helmet. They said OK, but at the end they dressed me as one of the specs. And here goes some lady, supervising the whole thing I guess "Oh, he cannot be a guard with a ahir like that, we'll have to cut it off". Damn, I told them to give me a freakin' helmet! "Oh, have we? Just give me a helmet. I don't wanna cut my hair." So here I am, waiting for the rest of the extras to come and to switch places with a soldier and get the ordinary military uniform with a helmet. I can tell ya, the crew wasn't too happy about that, especially the annoying wardrobe lady, which looked wile a wardrobe herself. But they don't pay me enough to cut my hair, no way! And by the way the soldier's costume is much more comfortable.

Me and Andrey were joking all the time - "So did you memorize your lines, dude?", "They didn't gave me tre script! How am I supposed to create a background for my character and get into the part? When someboy buys the DVD and freezes it on pause during one of the 3 seconds I'm on screen and he sees my face in the distance I want him to know - Oh, this is a guy from southern Minesota, his brother is in jail for speeding, his mother is in hospital, he joined the army cause there was nothing left for him in his hometown..."

Then they gave us our Kalashnikov machine guns. A lil bit heavy, you cannot shoot with one in each hand like in the good ol' 80s action movies... Anyway - we're locked and loaded! Finally everything is ready and the shooting begins. The scene - John Cusack gets off a plane with some other guys around him, and we soldiers walk around patroling the airport. I see everybody carrying their guns in exactly the same way. "Damn, how am I supposed to recognize myself in the movie when it comes out?" - and I decide to carry my Kalashnikov with one arm only on my shoulder, chewing a bubble gum, pretending to be some cool bad ass son of a gun. And I don't even know if I'm in the shot at the moment. LOL!

The next scene - a hummer passes through the military base we're guarding. I have to walk around, but I again decided to do some fancy stuff and pointed my machine gun in the back of a truck pretending that I'm there to check the cargo. You'll probably won't see that in the movie but it was fun to play soldiers :))

to be continued...

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