Epic Magazine

THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT. 

catmansmuckers:

sussybuckets:

I worked as an extra yesterday on Mad Men! Actually, it’d be more accurate to say that I got paid $8/hr to dress up in a 1964 dress and visit the set of Mad Men, since there is NO WAY any part of me will be visible in the scene I shot. I think the 2nd 2nd assistant director, who was in charge of placing the extras, could smell my desperation, and so put me waaaaay in the back, behind two tall people. Extra work is a lottery, and I lost. But I also WON because I got to get dressed by the Mad Men costumers, have my hair did and my face made up by the Mad Men hair and make-up people, and be “in” a Mad Men scene. In so doing, I crossed one item off my (sussy)bucket list. In between shots, I also got to stand close enough to Jon Hamm to reach out and caress his cheek, real creepy-like. I mean, I didn’t do that, I just thought about it A LOT. I also got to see Don Draper have his herbal cigarettes lit for him by a guy in a Phish t-shirt. Highlight!

I know this has been said a lot by everyone, everywhere, but the show’s attention to detail is phenomenal. I wore a bullet bra under my wool dress, and had my nails shaped and painted two different colors (one on top of the other) in order to stand in a dark smokey room behind two tall people, where I will not be seen at all. There is an army of hair, make-up and wardrobe people all working to make that show look as perfect as it does, and it was amazing to watch them in action.

I also got to hang around people who do extra work every day, which was a haunting glimpse into a terrifying future I would like to avoid at all costs. Please, if I ever get to a place in my life where I view non-union extra work as a chance to “network,” drive me out into a field, tell me to run ahead and start setting up the picnic, then shoot me in the head. As with every commercial audition I have ever been on, I walked out of that shoot with a burning desire to go home and work on my script(s), my solo show, a web series, ANYTHING THAT IS REAL. Because extra work, drop-in acting classes in the Valley, giving your “business” card to anyone who will take it, commercial auditions where you say two words five different ways for someone who loathes you almost as much as he hates himself … none of that shit is real, actors of Los Angeles! And if you let yourself believe it is real for even a second, you begin your descent into the deluded kind of insanity that half of L.A. suffers from. 

In conclusion, everyone watch season 4, episode 3, if you would like to not see me on television. And if anyone has ANY leads for how I can get background work on Gary Unmarried, leave your business card at Tammy’s Meisner class in Studio City and I’ll pick it up next time I’m there.

Congrats and a-fucking-men!