Movie Extras No More
Movie extras want a new designation. They want to redefine themselves like the rest of the world. Waiters are now called servers. Hotel cleaners are room attendants.
Nurses are medical practitioners. Divorced people now call themselves FF, finally free. Drunk drivers are called ‘impaired drivers’ from pairing alcohol and driving, I suppose.
Movie extras want to be called ‘essential support’ because movies need people moving about in street, coffee shop, wedding, synagogue, market, bookstore, or restaurant scenes. They do, because movies are not one-woman Broadway plays.
Movie extras feel that ‘extra’ puts them in jeopardy. It means something you can do without, something superfluous you can cut out when you edit the movie.
They don’t mind that when the director says ACTION, he is calling them as a group and not one person, like the star of the movie. They don’t have chairs with their names like the star, don’t have personal assistants that answer their cellphones on location and definitely not chauffeur driven cars like the star of the movie.
No problem. The immediate call to action is according respect to human bodies that make the story laudable, believable. “Essential support. That is who we are,” said their press statement.
By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.
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