Is There A Doctor In The House?

Man, have I been busy this week! I had no idea doing background work was going to be so grueling. I got called again to work on "ER" and that's where I've been the last 3 days. The days on ER average 14 hours on set. I guess I should be used to it. Not much different from med school, lol. It was fun though.

The first day I worked on ER was Tuesday the 8th, and lucky me. When I was done with school last year, I honestly thought to myself that I was really going to miss all the free food that I got from all the interest groups at school. I couldn't have been more wrong. I don't miss that stuff at all!! The stuff they feed you on these Hollywood sets makes the pizza and subs from med school seem like rubbish. My first day on ER (they're second day of filming for the season) they had a "welcome back lunch" celebrating the start of the 13th season of ER (which start October 5th by the way). Man oh man, they had a live Mariachi band playing and all the food you could think of. They had salad, shrimp, chicken, steak, salmon, brownies, cake, apple pie, ice cream and it was all FREE and all you could eat. I was in heaven!!! I lucked out in another way by working on ER too. I've heard some horror stories from some of the other people about how rude and mean some of the crew members and even the actors can be on some of the other shows. Everyone on ER was pretty nice. It was a good experience.

Anyways, my call time for that day was 6:45 am and we didn't wrap until 10 pm that night. Looooong day, but it was fun. I played a hospital visitor in the background, yet I got to work right next to the actors. Mekhi Pfeifer is on the show as you know, so is Shane West and John Stamos. There are some other people, but I don't them because I've never watched ER before, EVER!!! Haha. I guess I'll start now. So, me and a bunch of other people had to walk up and don the halls and in the waiting room to make the hospital look busy. I was amazed at how real everything looks. I mean, I thought it would look really fake and stuff, but with lighting and camera angles it would look real on tv, but it looks really real in person. They even have all the WelchAllyn tools and instruments and everything. They have X-rays up on the wall, which I was of course analyzing, and they were all healthy x-rays, lol. There is one scene we shot where in the background you can see a kis getting yelled at by a cop through a glass door. I am that kid, and it should be in the first episode, lol. There isn't much to doing background work, and anyone off the street can sign up to do it, but all the people you see in the background in movies and tv shows aren't people just waling around. It's actually really choreographed. I hadn't realized that.

My 3rd day on ER was the most fun, for 2 reasons. 1). I had seen some of the same people for 3 days now and gotten to know some of them, and 2). I was asked to be a stand-in for one of the actors and thus got paid double what I was getting. By this time I was telling some of the people that I was a med student. I LOVE doing this. Not because it makes me feel all important or for any other egotistical reasons, but because I just plain love grossing people it. I'm sure most of my classmates know what I'm talking about. I was talking to one of the other extras, this lady, and I was telling her I can't be grossed out and that I've literally seen everything, including STD's and even STD's of the mouth and throat. And she thought that you could only get herpes in your mouth and nothing else. Isn't that amazing??? That people don't realize that you can get anything in your mouth!! So, I told her that I'd seen gonorrhea of the throat, etc., etc., and she got so grossed out and started grabbing her throat and almost gagging as if STD's were just floating through the air waiting to get her. It was sooooo funny. I was cracking up. Then that starts a whole chain of questions about bodily functions and what not. Then a few hours later while we were waiting for filming to start again, there was a extra piece of polyurethane skin laying next to us on a tray. (They made a fake chest for one of the scenes where they had a bunch of electrodes hooked up to the patient). Some girls picks it up and is playing with it, and touches it to the face of the STD lady. Now, earlier I had noticed that the STD lady had like 4 fanny packs on and this why. She freaks out and starts pullin stuff out of her fanny packs. She sprayed her face with disinfectant, broke out some lip disinfectant stuff, etc. I mean, talk about a germaphobe. Then she comes and says to the girl, "Ever since he told me about STD's, I'm afraid of germs now". WTF!!!!!!!! She tried to blame her obsessive compulsiveness on me?!?!?! LOL She brought all that damn stuff way before I told her about some STD's. I just knew she was a little weird.

So, that was my week on ER. I may or may not go back. It's fun, but in terms of just being a background worker for right now, I need some variety. It gets too monotonous going to the same studio every day doing the same thing for 14 hours. Plus, there is so much waiting around between takes and stuff that it gets boring. So, for Monday I'm going to work on a show at Paramount Studios. I've never heard of it though, so we'll see how that goes. I had to take yesterday (Friday) off and the rest of the weekend because I couldn't get anything done. Being on set from 6 am to 10 pm, I get get to places like the photo lab and the post office because they're closed before and after I leave the set. That's the good thing about background work. They book jobs day to day, not for days or weeks at a time. So, I determine my own schedule. If I want to take a day or 2 or 14 off, I can. So yesterday I finally got all my pictures put together, packaged and mailed out to some agencies. Now I can relax a little and wait for some agents to call. Wish me luck!!