NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — I blew my previous shot at stardom.
It was 1987. A film crew came by my college looking for extras for a movie they were shooting at a nearby lake resort in Pembroke, Va. — a little film called “Dirty Dancing.” One of my friends went, became a production assistant and got to follow Patrick Swayze around with a spritzer bottle, making sure he looked appropriately sweaty.
She’s now in Hollywood, the movie capital of the world. I’m now in Hartford, the insurance capital of the world.
On Tuesday, I got another chance. A film crew was looking for extras to appear in scenes at Yale for the fourth installment of the “Indiana Jones” franchise. So I headed to the Omni Hotel for my chance to be discovered.
I got there about three hours before auditions were to begin, did some interviews and walked into the hotel about 90 minutes later. They had decided to start early.
My first stop was a ballroom, where I was handed a pen and a form. Hollywood wanted to know my height (5 feet 10 inches), my weight (too big to audition for any “Thin Man” movies), coat size, shoe size, pant size, hat size, occupation and whether I’d ever played football or been a cheerleader.
Huh?
I had been told the scene they were shooting was going to be a chase down the streets of New Haven. Some of us might get to run across the road or something. So I asked the 20-something guy handing out the pens what the deal was with the football question.
“There’s a football scene,” he said.
My first big scoop.
They also wanted to know whether I had a dog, and if so, what type. “They like to have some extras walking dogs,” I was told.
So now you know, the movie will involve dog walking and football. You heard it here first.
After filling out the form, and checking “yes” next to each date that I would be available for shooting, I sat down and waited to be called.
After about 10 minutes my row was asked to move to another line. As I waited, I hummed the words that my sister-in-law — a huge fan of the Indiana Jones films — once made up to the movie’s memorable theme: “Indiana, he’s our man. Indiana, when you’re in a jam...”
The woman standing behind me wasn’t bothered by the wait either. Kyle Ralston, 57, has been in show business since age 3. She’s now a “song and dance girl” with a local Dixieland band called “The Clamdiggers.”
Her last audition was in New York for “Regis and Kelly.” They had been looking for acts to appear on a special show from Disney World. She spent a whole day in line and lost out to a man in a rubber suit who whistled through his mask. Oh well, that’s showbiz.
She, like many others, came dressed for the part: a shocking pink blouse and black poodle skirt, sans poodle, that she had pulled from her own closet.
“I’m a ’50s kind of girl,” she said.
A lot of the guys came dressed as Indiana Jones. When I informed Joe Olayos, 69, that I was pretty sure that part had been cast, he shrugged.
“I’m hoping to get Harrison Ford’s lookalike, something like that where they can use me at a distance — a stand-in, something like that,” he said. “I’d even do it for nothing.”
Olayos added that he often gets mistaken for either Ford, or Leonard Nimoy from “Star Trek.”
In about 45 minutes I made it to the front of the line. A woman asked if I had a “head shot.”
Yes! I produced an 8-x-10 of the photograph that I use for media credentials. She seemed impressed and stapled it to the form. Then a man asked me to step in front of another camera.
I had worn an orange shirt and a cowboy hat to the audition, thinking this might stand out. But the hat turned out to be a bad idea. The man asked me to take it off, and took another picture of me in sweaty hat hair. D’oh!
The interview went like this.
“So, you’re a journalist.”
“Yup, I am.”
“Did you go to school for that?”
“Yes, in fact a film crew once came by my college and I almost ...”
“OK, thanks, we’ll call in about two weeks if we need you.”
Oh well, it was worth the shot. And if I don’t get it, I understand they are filming “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2” in Connecticut soon.
I’d be more than happy to follow Alexis Bledel around with a spritzer bottle. I’d even do it for free!
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Pat Eaton-Robb has worked for The Associated Press since 1995. His favorite movie is “The Graduate.”
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