In my continuing series of posts and stories about my Forrest Gump-like life, here is the time I was an extra on the movie Sin City. I definitely got a few wonderful stories out of my two day experience on the set. I was lucky enough to know amazing Emmy award winning casting director Beth Sepko as her office was just down the hall from mine back at 501 Studios. At the time, 501 Studios was a collective of a bunch of businesses, many in the film space, but I was just running my web development company there and had a tiny office. I actually moved through several different offices over the few years I was set up there.

SIDENOTE: The photo above was released as a PR still along with the movie. You can see the three main stars of the movie. Bruce Willis. Jessica Alba. And my dumb face. Here is a link from the original media release on JoBlo. https://www.joblo.com/tag/sin-city/

Through Beth and Sheila, I was a dependable guy down the hall and if they were ever in a pinch for an extra that would actually show up, shut up and be part of the scene dressing, I was one of their guys. So, I got to be an extra for two days back in May 2004 on the set of Robert Rodriguez's Sin City.

Looking back at the star power in that movie, it has made my personal Kevin Bacon number under 2 to most of the legends of Hollywood. The two days I worked I got to be part of two scenes. One with Mickey Rourke and the other day with Bruce Willis and Jessica Alba. Both days started in the evening and went into the early morning and were done on the real two story bar set from the movie. No green screen.

My time on the set with Bruce Willis was notable for several reasons.

1. Just before we were let onto this set, they were filming an empty bar scene with a close up with a dancer. The dancer wasn't Jessica Alba, but instead a look-alike who did the dance scene topless. Maybe they were going to do a body double thing post.
2. Frank Miller was on the set that day too. He and Rodriguez were literally using pages from the Sin City graphic novel that Miller wrote and drew to frame the shots. Kind of cool to be in the presence of both while they were creating.
3. This shoot took place on May 13th, 2004. The reason I remember it all of these years later was because the San Antonio Spurs were playing the L.A. Lakers in the playoffs. This was the evening of Derek Fisher's legendary 0.4 second shot to beat the Spurs. I had my phone in my pocket (this was pre-iPhone), and my wife was texting me scores as the game was going on. This coincided with me literally being on the set and an extra in the bar. In between takes I would tell other extras the score as the game went on, and it ultimately made it to the director and Mr. Willis. So for about an hour I would be giving the score updates to Robert Rodriguez (Spurs fan) and Bruce Willis (Lakers fan) directly.
4. Brittany Murphy while shown in the scene, wasn't actually there at this particular day of shooting and she was green screened in later. So Willis did his lines while no one was actually there.
5. Roark Jr., the evil yellow guy from the film, was actually more of a Smurf blue color in real life on the set.
6. And yes, I was paid to sit and stand around while Jessica Alba was dancing in what is one of the iconic dance scenes on film.

For my time on Mickey Rourke's scenes, they took place with him sitting around the bar. He had bright orange bandaides on his face in real life, and those were digitally edited to the bright whites ones you see in the movie. I was in the background and you can't see me in the final movie version at all.

And if you look at my powerful work on Friday Night Lights, you can see my profile is definitely my best feature.

Austin is a magical place. I've been on 5 or 6 movie sets in my life and my total screen time is about 3 seconds.