Valley Independent Sentinel

Extras Sweat It Out For Derby Movie Shoot

by Aly Shea | Jun 15, 2010 11:01 pm

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Posted to: Derby

Derby —

Sit around and sweat. Sit around and sweat.

The life of a movie extra is anything but easy.

Just ask Derby High School freshman David Mendez.

He was wilting Tuesday in the stands of the Leo F. Ryan Sports Complex, where scenes were being shot for a independent flick called “The Greatest Movie Ever Made.”

His thirst bordering on criminal, Mendez resorted to low-level larceny.

“I had to steal a few bottles from the (crew’s) table. They didn’t notice,” he said, passing a water bottle to friend and fellow extra, Hannah Walker.

“The Greatest Movie Ever Made” is being directed by Rob Burnett, a Greenwich resident best known as the executive producer of “The Late Show with David Letterman,” and Jon Beckerman, a former Letterman head writer.

Burnett is president and CEO of Letterman’s company “Worldwide Pants,” which is producing “The Greatest Movie Ever Made.”

The film’s production crew pulled Mendez and Walker from the high school at about 1:30 p.m. to be extras in the movie.

Two hours later they were still in the same spots they had sat down in after leaving school. It would be another hour before they were needed.

Their task? Exactly what they had been doing all along: sitting in the stands, watching the field.

Even with matching sunburns materializing on their cheeks, they were ecstatic to be on a real movie set.

“We don’t get a lot of action around here,” Walker said.

“We’re still not getting much action,” Mendez chimed in.

They didn’t spot any household names on the field, although Bill “Spaceballs” Pullman is attached to the movie.

Walker, 16, and a sophomore at Derby High, was bitten by the acting bug while performing with the school’s drama club in “Grease.” For her, being on camera is the key to her future acting career.

“It sounds stupid, but I’m hoping that, if I get a chance to be in a movie, I might be discovered. You know, a lot of movie stars start as extras and get discovered that way,” she said.

Hoping for a similar fate was Derby native Lindsey Barriga, 22.

When Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull filmed in New Haven in 2008, Barriga was among the thousands who lined the streets of New Haven hoping to be extras. After four hours in line, she was turned away. This time, the shoot was in her backyard.

Barriga and the other extras’ task was to watch a baseball game, in which nearly all the participants were members of Derby’s baseball team.

For the Derby baseball players, this was the second day they were involved.

Colin Haydu, 15, the team’s catcher, said team members, too, spent much of their on-set experience waiting around. Their few minutes on camera the previous day were redone several times.

“It wasn’t much. We just had to act like we were warming up before a big game,” he said. “We had to run across the football field. That was it.”

Besides baseball players, movie staff had sought 30 to 40 extras from Derby High students and locals to create a sparse crowd in the stands.

Just over a dozen came to the shoot, leaving crew scrambling to fill spots. Members of the public who stopped by to watch the filming, including this reporter, ended up as extras.

The production crew is scheduled to film scenes inside Derby High School later this month.

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