[failure to launch - in production]
 

justin bartha and phil sevin - separated at birth?

Essentially, I was paid to not be in this film.

Tom Dey (director of Shanghai Noon) helms this comedy about a thirty-something slacker still living at home whose parents hire a girl to romance him into his own domicile. The cast includes Justin Bartha, most recently seen as Riley Poole in National Treasure. I was selected from a group of four Bartha-likes to perform as his stand-in during filming.

What's a stand-in? Well, when the director designs a shot, the camera and lighting crew position the camera and lights, which can take anywhere from thirty minutes to three hours. It's not that the crews are slow; they're the best in the business... it just takes that long to arrange cantankerous film equipment. And who's gonna stand there that long while the light the scene? Not the actors, that's who. They're off in their trailers, getting hair, makeup, and wardrobe done. And that's where we come in. We stand in for the actors, and when the scene is built, the actors tag us out and perform.

A silly process, but hey, they pay you for it, so I ain't complaining.

So what's the job like? Well, you are not an extra anymore, but still not technically part of the crew; most of them call you 'lens meat.' You're always in the way, because the crew is a well oiled machine. When you get out of the way, you move into someone else's way. It's like one of those sliding-tile puzzles. And when you're not standing, you're sitting... for what can be hours. And since the crew is so densely packed around the set, you have to sit out of earshot, and because of this, when they call for you, you're always too late.

That said, it's a blast. You never know what new place you're going to be, or who you're going to meet. For example, I found myself across a table from Matthew McConaughey, who disengaged from his iPod long enough to shake my hand and say, "hi, I'm Matt." So when it kicks up, things are amusing.

Here's highlights:

WEEK ONE
We filmed in New Orleans. The first day was a brutal introduction to the job of stand-in. It was a yoga scene, and I spent most of the day in the downward dog position. I discovered that even looking at the spandex-clad posteriors of hot yoga babes is difficult when all the blood is your head. We also pulled an all-nighter in the Aquarium of the Americas, where we filmed in front of their large shark tank. Most of the staff stayed with us to monitor the temperature in the fish tanks to make sure our hot lights didn't boil the livestock. We also filmed by the penguin exhibit, where a handler tossed the penguins like darts to make sure they were in the shot. No animals were harmed in the making of this film... yet.

WEEK TWO

Gadsden, Alabama. We spent a week living on a hillside in Cherokee Rock Village. Beautiful view from the rocks. We filmed stunt men flipping mountain bikes and falling off cliffs. These men are as brick as you get... several times there were falls where sheer technique kept them from injury, but in one stunt, Mark Norby got hauled up by rope ten feet in the air and dropped on the ground. I asked him how you do a stunt like that without getting hurt, and he said, "you don't."

Also, one of the running gags is that Matthew gets bitten by any animal he touches, and so masters of animatronics Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff arrived with toys. They puppeteered a chipmunk and a rock lizard so detailed that you could only tell they were animatronic by the bundles of cables sprouting from their tails. The wide shots called for the use of a live chipmunk, and so a handler arrived with Rosaline, a three-year-old trained chipmunk. She was a pro, and during rehearsals performed brilliantly; unfortunately for her, immediately after the first rehearsal she was accidentally stepped on and killed. Seriously. Sounds like something that would have happened in this movie, but I actually saw it happen. Three days later her replacement Romeo stepped up. He was horrible. Had no concept of blocking, character development, or inner monologue. Doubt if he could have told you who Stanislavsky was. The short version of this story is that now we probably don't get our 'no animals harmed during the making of this film' tag. We did hold a moment of silence for the brave Rosaline though.

WEEK THREE: FIRED!
Shortly before filming resumed in New Orleans, the casting director called with the bad news. The dailies had shown that Justin is a bit more tan than I am, and so they released me from the film in order to find someone with a bit more color. Fancy that, not making it to the finish line on a movie called Failure To Launch. Matthew's stand-in also got the axe, in this case his being several inches taller than Matthew being the offending factor. Great fun, though, while it lasted. Now I just have to find a pasty-white actor on whose coat-tails I can ride to fame. Maybe there's a vegetarian somewhere.