30. Strictly Background

I'm not sure why but I found this documentary pretty sad.  It follows the lives of ten (?) actors that are strictly background actors.  Some are doing it because they love being on set and helping out the scene with whatever is asked of them (even getting naked) and others are hoping to get a break and one day become a famous actor.  To me in this film the women seemed a lot more sensible than the men.  They knew they were past their prime and the parts weren't going to be coming in as often.  While the guys would be trying harder to make a living at it.  At one point a guy couldn't afford to go to his mother's funeral and was living out of a friend's garage for $150 because he loves being in the spotlight and have people coming up to him telling him they saw him in a film.  Honestly if they didn't black and white everything from the scene except the background actors, I wouldn't be able to tell.

It did bring me back to the days of casting though.  Those were always interesting.  You weren't quite sure what colorful characters you were going to get, and this film was full of them.  However, the documentary seemed to lack focus at times and just had a basic layout of explaining what an extra was and how they work in the industry.  There wasn't a lot of heart in the movie, which is probably the hardest part about making a documentary.  They also seem to only get older background actors that weren't that varied from each other. It kept saying that 90% of background actors quit during their first year, but they didn't ever follow anyone that was just started.  It would have been really easy to find a wannabe actor that just moved to LA to follow around for a bit.  They would have loved it.  But overall, I didn't really feel much for the characters.  Except I wanted to yell at them to just give up before they killed themselves (that sounds harsh doesn't it).

Rating: *

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0IZA_iMwSg