Monday, July 16, 2007

True Employment Tales!

As I have written before I worked as an extra on this movie. I worked for two days on it in the sweltering August heat in Knoxville, TN. I would have worked a third and possibly fourth day but I came down with one of those wicked ass summer time colds and the Mercury Monarch that I owned at the time was about to break down for good.

Anyway, they paid me minimum wage for being an extra, I was one of the guys in the work crew that John Turturro was the head of in the movie, and they had to keep telling me to keep my mouth shut while the cameras rolled.

They did not pay us right away, instead they sent us a check a few weeks later.

Also during this time I was unemployed. So I had a lot of time on my hands and one day I was driving around the University of Tennessee campus and I decided to go into a video store I had read about that carried all sort of crazy hard to find videos. I parked my Monarch and went in.
Unfortunately for me I had parked in a private parking lot and when I walked back out some ass was hooking my car up to his tow truck. I shouted at him to stop and put my car down he shook his head no. He said that since I was in a private lot that once he hooked my car, it was his to tow. I cursed like fifteen sailors and called a friend of mine to give me a ride home.

When I got home my check for working on Box of Moonlight was in my mailbox.

I called the tow company and they told me that it would be $95 to get my car back.

I opened the envelope and looked at the check. It was worth $97. I offered to buy my friend $2 in gas if he would take me to get my car. He said, "Sure, but you can keep your money."

I ended up buying him a soda and I got a pack of smokes with all my leftover Hollywood money.

7 comments:

Splotchy said...

Wonderful story!

It encapsulates the terms "movie magic" perfectly!

I have to ask -- were you wearing a fez in the movie?

Dr. Monkey Von Monkerstein said...

Nope. I only donned the fez when I took up blogging. In the movie I wore a hard hat.

kelsi said...

remember when 2 bucks could get a pack of cigarettes?
ah, those were the days...
i mean, back when i was a smoker. yeah. those were the days.

Dr. Monkey Von Monkerstein said...

Kelsi-Those were the days indeed. But you know what? When I started smoking cigs were only fifty cents a pack.

Katie Schwartz said...

that is one hell of a yarn, buttons. hot damn.

Dr. Monkey Von Monkerstein said...

Jewgirl-It's all true I swear!

Johnny Yen said...

When I started my first job as a clerk/stockperson at Walgreen's, smokes could be purchased for as little as 37 cents a pack-- the unfiltered regulars. It now costs approximately twice what a carton was those days for a single pack. I'm glad I never started. And that Trader Joe's stocks my personal vice, red wine, for $3.99 a bottle.