Boston Globe Living/Arts, Sunday August 3, 2003
Page: N9 Section: Arts / Entertainment
>> The kid (barely) stays in the picture:
As an extra in 'Le Divorce,' Ethan Gilsdorf jockeys to get his face, and
his poetry, on-screen
(story below, after clipping)
PARIS -- April 5, 2002. 4 p.m. Location: Paris, Le Marais, "American
bookstore." The film: Merchant/Ivory's production of "Le Divorce."
"OK, you are reading a book," instructs second assistant director Emilie
Cherpitel. "When Kate and Matthew walk here, you walk here." Then she
points. "And exit there."
"Got it," I reply. First day on the job.
OK ... bookstore customer. I can do this. I'm a writer. I love bookstores.
"Rolling!"
Kate Hudson and Matthew Modine begin their dialogue. Extras mime conversations,
handle books, walk back and forth across the bookstore. What's my motivation?
I wait for my cue, pull a book off the shelf. My motivation: Buy this
book. Bobby De Niro never felt more in character. I make my move.
But I fail to exit the frame fast enough and obstruct the sight line to
crucial action in the background -- the angry reaction of Hudson's character's
lover.
Sneers, grumbles. I'm the cause of filmmaking's most incriminating word:
"Cut!"
Emilie explains what happened. I apologize, feel my face flush, recover,
and get back to my first position.
"OK, people, quiet on the set!" Emilie barks, then repeats the command
in French for the mostly bilingual crew. "Take seven!"
This time, I nail it. And by the end of my four-day acting career, I've
learned how to pretend talk without talking, how to sip fake champagne,
and how to muscle my way to the front of the pack of "figurants" (extras)
and plot my rise to fame. Even sneaking into a cast party to schmooze
with Paris's little slice of Hollywood isn't beneath me.
Contrary to popular opinion, life as an extra ain't no cake walk.
My involvement in the film was a fluke. The set dresser needed stacks
of papers -- the "literary affairs" of poet Olivia Pace, played by Glenn
Close -- in "American handwriting." A friend of a friend had asked around
and my girlfriend Isabelle was hired to fill some notebooks with her lovely
script. Asked if she knew of any American poets whose verse she could
use as dummy text, Isabelle replied, "I live with one." Two weeks later,
my poems graced two dozen notebooks.
I lent the production some literary magazines and genuine rejection letters
to further dress the set. When I asked to stop by one of the 30-plus Paris
locations, I was told "Le Divorce" needed "American faces." I alerted
my friends, sent in a photo, and, voila.
All during the shoot I wondered if my face, my poems, and Isabelle's handwriting
would end up on the big screen or the cutting room floor.
Based on the novel by longtime Paris expat Diane Johnson (who wrote the
screenplay for Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining"), "Le Divorce" is a contemporary
black comedy of manners. American Isabel Walker (Kate Hudson) arrives
in Paris to help her sister, the jilted and pregnant Roxeanne Walker de
Persand (Naomi Watts), navigate the labyrinth of social mores underpinning
the standoffish French family Roxy married into. Close, Stockard Channing,
Sam Waterston, and Bebe Neuwirth appear in supporting roles, alongside
French actors Leslie Caron ("An American in Paris"), Thierry Lhermitte
("An American Werewolf in Paris"), and Jean-Marc Barr ("The Big Blue").
"We've gotten used to the way they shoot in France," says director James
Ivory by telephone from upstate New York, almost a year after the shooting
in Paris has wrapped. "Maybe this is a romantic idea but it seems everyone
is working together on a single piece of film art, from the director to
the cameraman on down to the dozens of people doing all the little things.
It's a collegiate spirit, which I don't encounter in other places where
we've worked."
It doesn't hurt that Merchant-Ivory films have always been well received
in France, says producer Ismail Merchant. "The French were the first ones
to appreciate 'Shakespeare Wallah,' our second feature," says Merchant.
"Le Divorce" marks 40 years of collaboration among Ivory as director,
Merchant as producer, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala as screenwriter, and the
sixth film they've made in France.
That cold April morning, my first day on the Rue Pavee bookstore set,
I had arrived at 7:45 a.m. and was quickly herded with the 50 or so other
extras into a handbag store that served as our green room. Unlike Close
and Hudson, who had individual stylists, we figurants shared three among
our chaotic ranks. We were asked to bring our own clothes. ("You're an
American at a poetry reading," the casting assistant told me. "Dress nice.")
Still, a subtle hierarchy existed among the extras -- those with speaking
roles, and those without. Sullen and aloof, the experienced extras applied
their own makeup. Some took it seriously, spending an hour checking their
hair and eyeliner. Too seriously, I thought. We may have stars in our
eyes, but nobody cares what Poetry Reading Audience Member 37 looks like.
Until now, my second day on the set. Confident I've cracked this extra
racket, I get friendly with Emilie, figurant wrangler extraordinaire.
For the poetry reading scene, I jockey for position close to the all-seeing
eye of Ivory's camera. Slyly sitting myself in the first row, I try to
make eye contact with Watts. No dice. Rule one: Stars don't look back.
Under the lights, however, my reddish face glows like a warning light
behind Close's close-up. An assistant dashes over and smears a Frankenstein-green
foundation on my nose, cheeks, and neck. Techies adjust scrims, run cables.
There's a panic about a drilling sound next door.
Through it all, Ivory remains stoic. He walks over to confer with the
actors about a way to play the scene differently, relying on his assistant
directors to arrange the extras in the same configurations for each take.
"I don't like to interfere with an AD's work," said Ivory. "But there
are times when an AD is not adept at moving extras around in a good way.
Then you sometimes have to go in and say, 'I want that person there and
this person here, and I want this person with their back to the camera.'
This may enrage the extras, who don't want their back to the camera."
You definitely don't want to enrage the extras. We can be surly, stranded
in our segregated bubble and on call for 12 to 14 hours. All for 85 euros
a day (about $75 at the time), plus a bit more for lunch, and a whiff
of fleeting, low-budget fame.
The day ends well. But what is shot today won't be in theaters for months.
Such is the nature of Hollywood's fickle mistress, Fame. She teases. Tantalizes.
Then makes you wait.
That "Le Divorce" is finally being released Friday, just past the nadir
of US-French relations, doesn't faze Ivory. In fact, he's happy to play
against the cultural misunderstandings. "That is the fun of the story,
because the stereotypes are there," he says. "There's stuff that you'll
see that is quite timely, but that was accidental."
Then Ivory adds, cryptically: "You'll have to see the film."
As for me, I did see the film, more than a year after doing time on the
set.
At the Paris press premiere, in a private screening room called Club 13
not far from the Arc de Triomphe, Merchant makes a flourishing welcoming
speech. Parisian actors such as Caron are in the audience, alongside novelist
Johnson. As the film begins, Isabelle and I scan the crowd scenes for
signs of my blue shirt in the bookstore, green shirt for the garden party.
And the poems.
I see my friend Lee in the film's opening shot at Charles de Gaulle. He
marches past the camera with "I gotta catch that plane" determination.
Joe is tiny but recognizable. My friends Bremner and Chicu are nowhere
to be seen.
Later, a former colleague appears. He has a speaking part (and a screen
credit!); I try to be happy -- after all, I told him the production needed
Americans. But, truth be told, a tide of resentment rises in my bloodstream.
The promise of celebrity inspires such pettiness.
Isabelle's notebooks appear in one scene, closed, her lovely calligraphy
unseen. Glenn Close's character removes a sheet, crumples it, and tosses
it into the fire.
As for my debut at the poetry reading, I appear as sincerely attentive
Audience Member 37, one among dozens. I get my 15 seconds. In the garden
party scene, I'm an out-of-focus green blob in the background. My moment
with Kate and Matthew -- my infamous book-buying, scene-stealing block
-- has been cut.
Taking solace, my mind turns to my final day on the set. Merchant has
announced a cast and crew party at a nearby bistro, with Indian food prepared
by none other than himself. Not knowing extras aren't invited, I talk
my way in. Between bites of chicken curry, I chat with Modine and Watts.
Close wanders by in Red Sox cap and sunglasses, carrying her lap dog.
"Hi." "Hi."
By midnight, I'm sandwiched between Hudson and her husband Chris Robinson
(formerly of the band the Black Crowes), sipping real champagne and hearing
bubbly stories about Malibu, Goldie, and Kurt.
Last Metro.
"Au revoir," says Hudson.
"It's not 'au revoir,' but 'a bientot,'" I say, then boldly make my exit.
Ethan Gilsdorf can be reached at egilsdorf@yahoo.com.