I was an indie film extra

In which playing an extra in the Cinemalaya teen drama #Y means working as hard as you (pretend to) party.

Like any eight-year-old basic bitch in the late ’90s, I flirted with the idea of becoming an artista. It didn’t seem to be a particularly hard job, anyway. Cry here, throw a tantrum, run to your mommy (who was fighting with your uncle for being your real father)—it seemed like a real trip. Being in the movies almost felt too good to be true. Like, were people actually getting paid to wear new clothes and play pretend? Sign me up and take me to my trailer, ASAP.

Due to a number of strange, inexplicable reasons, I never became one of those girls that talent scouts spotted while walking around Virra Mall for having the kind of face made for movies. I lived many years wandering, and wondering, until I got invited to become an extra in one of Cinemalaya’s  New Breed films for 2014. I saw it as a proverbial sign from the heavens that my path to becoming a certified acteur is not completely lost yet.

Now, I’m not as crazy as I sound, I swear. I know that being an extra is a lot different than being the first name to turn up in the credits. Local indie films like the Vilma Santos-helmed Ekstra and Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay have familiarized us with the funny and sometimes heartbreaking lives of being professional bit players. It’s a lot of sweat with very little credit, but I was about to partake in a Gino Santos/Jeff Stelton collaboration. And from what I’ve seen before, I had very little doubt that it was going to be a real shit show. In the best possible way.

The director/writer’s first undertaking was The Animals in 2009, and was met with a reluctant sort of praise — Variety.com described it as technically rough but lauded its snappy dialogue, thumping original music, and strong acting. It deviates from Philippine indie cinema norm by moving the lens away from stories of grime and poverty, and focusing instead on the lives of the country’s young and rich. The film is a 24-hour window into an open house party gone wrong, where sex, drugs, and booze flow as freely as the money in the partygoers’ pockets.

“I’ve always wanted to do a movie with a great party scene, because when you look at most local movies where people are supposedly ‘partying hard,’ it just doesn’t feel right,” director Gino explains, when I ask him about the recurring theme in his work. He and I are hanging out at the food shack in front of Black Market, the nucleus of Manila’s hipsters, if you will. Gino is getting ready to shoot multiple party sequences in the club for #Y, his sophomore serving with writer Jeff Stelton.

#Y exists in the same universe as The Animals, reinforced by the appearance of some characters from the first film. But according to Jeff, while #Y was just as inspired by Bret Easton Ellis’ writing as his first screenplay, their second film puts more focus on the relevance of social media and darker themes like the prevalence of teenage suicide today. “That’s why there’s a hashtag in the title,” Jeff says. “I think there’s a lot to say about who we are as a generation.”

These all sound like noble intentions, but people such as myself have to wonder if Gino and Jeff, two well-off young men, are making it seem like they’ve discovered Atlantis when they’re really just playing in the kiddie pool. Is filming a movie that makes Skins look like Dora the Explorer some kind of revelatory statement or just another excuse for rich kids to party? I hold back my questions and go inside Black Market’s cavernous warehouse, ready to be called for the massive party scene I was to be an extra in.

Two tables away, I spot Elmo Magalona lounging on a bar couch. Elmo takes the lead in #Y, playing a troubled, somehow naive young man who gets mixed in a crowd of kids with questionable intentions. In real life, drinking booze and grinding with scantily clad strangers are worlds away from Elmo’s teeny bopper matinee idol persona. Beside him is Showtime co-host Coleen Garcia, whose sweet face is in stark contrast to the intrigues she’s been in recently. Former Pinoy Big Brother housemate Kit Thompson, who was infamously busted for marijuana possession at a local music festival, chugs down drinks and cheats on his girlfriend as the film’s proverbial bad boy.

Whatever rep they may have, it’s clear even from the first take that Gino and Jeff have assembled an arrestingly strong cast. They hold their own scenes pretty well, and I don’t hear a peep of complaint despite having to shoot one scene repetitively for hours. Even the extras — mostly college students and some of the films’ interns — patiently wait for their turn to pass by in the background, and say nothing when their three seconds are over.

This surprises me, because I spent most of the day sitting down or waiting up for the massive party scene that I’m not sure I could even be seen in. The bottles of beer they handed out as props were only filled with some kind of warm, yellow liquid. (Don’t ask.) It was all so weird and contrived, but once the camera started rolling, everyone flipped their switches and went crazy.

The party scene went on and on until they could get that one shot of Elmo coming in just right, so in between takes I ask one of the extras, a college junior in a Privé-approved attire, if she was getting tired. “Oh, no,” she tells me vehemently. “I’ve always wanted to be in a movie.”

Ten grueling hours later, the cast and crew have finally managed to finish two whole scenes. It’s almost midnight, and they’re ready to shoot the next. In empty chairs and benches, I see crew members taking naps with makeshift pillows, but Gino and Jeff are huddled over the script, eager to perfect their next scene. Later on, Jeff tells me that he got home in the wee hours of the morning, just in time to make it to his day job in advertising.

It’s not so easy to be in the movies, it turns out. With the sort of determination and commitment it requires, I realize that this isn’t just a job for playing pretend. I go home, dead beat and somehow thankful that those talent scouts never discovered me in Virra Mall all those years ago.