A report from Joe O'Connell (1998)
A two-day shoot in a topless bar officially ended when "Varsity Blues" director Brian Robbins asked the stunning, almost-naked blonde on stage to repeat her gyrations one last time for the film's cast and crew.
The cameras sat idly by as teen heartthrob James van der Beek and Scott Caan (yes, that's James Caan's boy) hooted and clapped along with nameless extras and weary technicians. The scene was so real it could have been in, well, a movie.
And elsewhere around Austin this same broiling summer day other cameras were busy. Directors Robert Rodriguez and Mike Judge were filming "The Faculty" and "Office Space" respectively. As summer burned into fall and fall cooled into winter, these film sets were replaced by ones for Sundance-bound "A Slipping-Down Life," Tom Arnold star vehicle "Just Sue Me," "Texas Funeral" and on and on.
The bottom line is, if you're always wanted to see your face lighting up the big screen, but don't have training, a sparkling smile or an agent, you can still leap into film heaven, Texas extra style and make about $50 for your trouble. The process is simple. Call the Texas Film Commission's production hotline (512-463-7799), send in a photograph and wait by the telephone like an anxious teenager.
Both "Varsity Blues" and "The Faculty" shot all-night crowd scenes in high school football stadiums, so most extra hopefuls didn't have to wait long this past summer for "the call."
But the about 50 extras who showed up at 7 a.m. at the Landing Strip topless bar for the "Varsity Blues" shoot knew their chances were much better for the ultimate payoff--actual, though likely fuzzy, face time on screen.
The trade off is tedium mixed with a heavy dose of sweat. Filming proves a process of hurry up and wait, and when the cameras do roll, the air conditioner is turned off to extinguish unnecessary noise.
Since "Varsity Blues" is an MTV production, many on the crew, including those in extras casting, came straight from "Austin Stories," the network's aborted attempt at a sitcom. Other crew members knew each other from the sets of such other recent films as "The Newton Boys."
In this scene, high school football players go to a topless bar and catch their attractive English teacher moonlighting on stage.
Female extras are dancers and waitresses, while males are assigned seats around the stage as club patrons. The confusion comes in separating reality from make-believe. Many of the women portraying dancers are experienced performers from area strip clubs, one works in the mortgage field.
A menacing bouncer dressed in black with his long hair slicked back suddenly ejects one of the rowdy football players from the stage. Other extras shy away from him when the camera isn't rolling, but this is a carefully planned look for a Dallas actor trying to break into the big time.
At their tables, extras pretend to drink from empty beer bottles as a machine called a Lightning Flash pumps 40,000 watts of strobe light at them and at mirrors that ring the stage. They are told looking at the lights could be dangerous, but find completely avoiding the flashes impossible.
Machines cloud the air with insubstantial, almost odorless smoke meant to represent the output of hundred of cigarettes. Crew members don white masks, but extras are left to tough it out and whoop it up again and again for the dancers on stage.
By mid-afternoon, the heat in the nightclub, which features the cockpit of an airplane "crashing" through the wall into the bar, is unbearable. Between shots the air conditioner comes back on, but barely makes a dent in the smoky blaze. Caan and van der Beek retreat to the only cool area of the building--the restrooms.
Meanwhile, extras spent breaks lolling around the Landing Strip ticket booth, behind which were posted Polaroids of people who have been banned for the topless bar for life. The reasons were sadly scrawled underneath each photo: “exposed self” said one, “went home with a customer,” said a shot of a dancer. I was entranced by a shot of an obviously drunk and angry tree trunk of a man being forcibly posed for a photo with the aid of two beefy men. Underneath, the obvious: “Started fight.”
Back on the set, the same scene is shot again and again from different angles. Late in the day the camera is turned toward a pair of thirtyish men in business suits at a table to the right of the stage. One is taking a day off from his life in real estate but confesses a burning desire to write screenplays. The other is between temporary jobs.
When the assistant director signals the cameras to roll (Robbins, best known as Eric on television's "Head of the Class," watches through a monitor in the next room), the men break into wide grins and clink their bottles together before taking big swigs of imaginary beer. On stage the blonde dancer swings from a pole as the strobe lights flash. For this one moment, they are all stars.
This free-lance article originally appeared in the San Antonio Express-News. All rights retained by the author.
