Book Excerpt:

You Can’t Handle the Mud

Hollywood Milieu

By Denny Dormody

I’ve always wanted to act with Tom Cruise. I’ve always wanted to work with Steven Spielberg. Tonight, I’m working with both. This is War of the Worlds. Cruise. Spielberg. Me. Soon for the movie multi-plex nearest you.

War of the Worlds will hit theatres about June 29 and gain box office momentum over the July 4^th weekend. This is what Daily Variety calls a tent-pole popcorn movie. This will be bigger than big. Domestic ticket sales. Foreign ticket sales. Broadcast rights. Action figures. DVD sales.

Cruise is being paid gazillions. My fee as a non-speaking movie extra is slightly less.  Three all-nighters. I’m game. I can use the bucks. I’m moonlighting till the suits buy one of my comedy screenplays. It’s time to focus. My call time is 4:00 p.m. I need to be professional. I need to be on time.

I’m 15 minutes early. I drive into the LAX-sized parking lot at Magic Mountain. No one is riding the rides. It’s winter. The February LA monsoon raindrops hang on the skeleton of the roller coaster rides, like the icy sweat on a cold bottle of Rolling Rock. This is Magic Mountain, 20 minutes north of Los Angeles. Every two minutes another couple of cars pull into the rain-drenched parking lot. A long line of extras leads towards a white circus tent. On the edge of the tent is an armada of empty buses waiting to take us to the Promised Land. So to speak.

A Goth production assistant with hot and cold running tattoos checks my name off a casting laundry list. She hands me a pay voucher. I find myself in the back of the bus. Actors and actresses are text messaging. Some are sleeping. We’re all silently praying for stamina. The stamina to get through the next three cold long nights. Ahead of us is rain. Rain and mud. And more mud. In a hurry? In a worry? Go home. Go back to your day job. Give up your dream. Are you game? Stay. Learn. Prevail. Welcome to Hollywood.

A Wardrobe lady okays my makeshift home-hewed costume:  my Aussie duster raincoat, ragged jeans, Timberland boots and an 8 Mile homeless-style beanie. Another Make-up goddess adds some Fullers Earth dirt to my face. A sunburn is sprayed on. Somebody muddies my raincoat. I’m almost ready to act. Two chilidogs. Some lemonade. Now, I’m ready to act. I’m ready for my close up, Mr. Spielberg.

We patiently wait inside a white circus tent about the size of the Super Bowl.  We are bull-horned to the set. The set is a one-horse town played realistically by Piru, California, a real-life one-horse town. I’m handed a battered Samonsite mud-splattered suitcase. We extras form a biblical Ellis island-like chain of rain drenched homeless slogging through the rain. Lights are lit. Rehearsals. More rehearsals. Cruise arrives.

Spielberg arrives. Adam arrives. I smile. Adam was the assistant director when I worked 21 days on Seabiscuit. It’s great to hear his Cockney accent. What a trouper. The truth is, it’s time to go to work.

The East Coast. The Apocalypse is upon us. Tom Cruise and daughter Dakota Fanning escape in their SUV. We the dispossessed homeless, mob around their vehicle. A phony Boston Globe newspaper rack is almost crushed by the crowd. It starts to rain.

Not movie rain. Real rain. Cut. Reset. The real raindrops are too small. All eleven hundred of us extras wait in the real rain. We wait as the water trucks arrive. The movie rain is sprayed onto the crowd. Take one. Take twelve. Spielberg, watching a Panavision monitor from inside a white van, likes the phony rain. Tom Cruise hugs little Dakota.

Cruise is an icon. A modern-day Tom Sawyer. Everybody wants a brother or a husband like Tom Cruise. He lights up the set with his boyish smile. Take after take he professionally endures and carries little Dakota first in his arms and then piggyback amidst the rain machines. The way he cuddles Dakota; I think he’s a great dad. He shakes hands with some of the extras. I, we, are honored to be working with Mr. Cruise.

Dakota, a little schoolgirl in real life, legally must be wrapped by midnight. We work on.  The dawn morning light finally wraps us. I’m heading home. Two hours of sleep and off to my day job.

Night two. All the same shots. Again. This time I’m working inches from Cruise’s SUV. As we refugees surge like a human tsunami, we press again the side windows, screaming at him. Mother Nature’s rain pelts down. Spielberg’s rain pelts down. Night three.

We wrap Saturday morning at 6:00 a.m. I’m driving back down to LA. I’m yawning. I’ve played my part as a fleeing refugee.