Night as an Extra in a Bollywood Film

Hello all and greetings from Mumbai (Bombay) where I’ve officially accomplished one of my goals by becoming an extra in a Bollywood movie. The first day that I arrived here (Sunday, Nov 29), I went to check into a budget hotel and a woman who coordinates extras for movies asked if I wanted to be an extra. Of course I said yes and met up with about 30 other Westerns that evening at 7 for our bus to the filming location. It took an hour to get to the filming location, which turned out to be a mall. We were dressed up in goofy costumes (we weren’t sure whether that’s what the people thought Europeans wear or whether this was secret revenge or not) I was wearing a plaid dress with chunky jewelry (blue bangles to compliment the red plaid?) and silver heels. and the women got their hair and make up done. We were fed and there was a lot of waiting around. Around 11pm, we were finally signaled to enter the mall (we had been waiting around in like a parking garage before) and did some more waiting inside of the mall. After maybe an hour, we finally began to be put to work. The scene took place at a movie theater and there was some sort of gun battle so we spent the next six hours running in different directions and having people yell at us (all the extras, there were a group of Indians and a group of Nigerians, as well) that we weren’t allowed to laugh because we were suppose to be terrified. The entire process definitely made movies seem less glamorous because there’s just a lot of waiting around and during this entire scene no one had an dialogue. The only famous actor in the movie, which we found out is called ‘No Problem’ and will probably be released around March, is Anil Kapoor who you all probably know because he played the quiz show host in Slumdog Millionaire. Yes, I saw him and he looked grumpy and tired like the rest of us. At the end of the night, we all got paid 500 rupees (about $10) for our work and were driven back to collapse and sleep. Or, in my case, to nap for an hour and get up to go to a theater that’s been playing Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge since it was released in 1995. Unfortunately, this has been my only encounter with Shahrukh Khan in Mumbai and I’ll probably have to settle for that.

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