Father's Day in Sacramento

“My Name is Khan” on Father’s Day in Sacramento: There were a lot of American flags and banners, at least 16 men in black suits, white shirts, and ties portraying security detail, a few realistically suited SWAT team members, hard core armed guards, sentries in front of the Capitol building, police, and perhaps 350 extras, all sweltering in the 85-degree sun. I was one of them. It’s Monday evening and my face, which I had lathered with a solid high SPF sunblock, is still burning 24 hours later. My feet sting from 10 hours of standing, following that shorter day of standing in Novato Saturday, and my mind continues to reel at the mix of people this social experiment called Extra work allows me to experience.

Screaming and swooning East Indian teen-age girls across the street from the designated lawn/building/set confirmed everything I have read about the pull of movie star Sharkhur Khan. India’s top star has made 56 films. Surprisingly to Westerners, he is a 40-something small-boned, short man with pointy features, gelled black hair, and a humble demeanor. A seriously shorter umbrella man with strong arms must follow him, and another one follows Kajol, wherever they go under the sun. I saw Khan up close, from afar, and during action shots. I’m in an applause scene right next to him. I heard him deliver lines. I viscerally understood and connected to the Asperger’s man he portrays, which seemed somewhat modeled on Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man” and, I’m told, Khan seriously researched. It looks well done. Did he pull it off?

As the day wore on and the regimented ebb and flow the first AD and his two assistants had expected of the extras began to fall away, people drifted back into themselves, their lives, their needs. Couples played the mating game, clothes were peeled off, women’s bellies, boys’ hips, mens’ underwear, denim low riders, naked torsos, conversations about real lives of violence and disappointment in the ghetto, all began to emerge in loud and louder conversations against the backdrop of this minimum-wage shoot on a dry, hot day an hour and a half north of San Francisco. Tiny bottles of toxic-tasting water from Costco were distributed - heat stroke and fainting spells averted, we’re so glad. I gave in to the foul liquid after 4 hours. The warm city water fountain was a tiny bit too far.

Hydrating too much worked to add a bit of drama to N.’s gray hijab-framed face in a crowd scene. “I know I looked totally moved to tears during that speech, all because I was dying to pee!” she said. What a great “Gotta go! Gotta go!" commercial this would make …

Occasionally, the parched and exhausted (from inactivity, mainly) extras would be allowed to rest under the trees, in the shade, between takes. Some took that liberty on their own. Each time I snuck away and sat on the grass, took off my shoes, and massaged my feet, the AD would call us back, only a minute later. But continue to stand like the good soldier, and nothing ever seemed to happen. Lighting was reset, conversations took place…Director Karan Joha, this time in Tom Daschle red-framed sunglasses, his hair streaked with worry gray, his body looking a bit slack and tired under a shiny black bomber jacket, occasionally moved in to take control, a death grip on his large paper coffee cup.

There we would be, waiting, standing, ready to be supercharged to react to the speech of this Obama character (“Yes, we can!” Or, should it have been, “Yes we Kahn!”?), played by a solid even-toned actor whose role it was to anoint lead character Rizwan Khan. So long was this day, so frequently the scenes repeated, that by 11:30 PM, the actress who drove me home was able to recite the faux president’s lines verbatim in the car.

“Obama would never say, ‘But what I don’t want,’” we agreed. He is a positivist. There is something about exhaustion that allows understanding of information to penetrate.

It took three hours to drive back to the East Bay from Sacramento after a 12-hour day. The production had the expectation that folks would want to come back for yet another day of torture. No, we can’t! Proof came in the agency’s desperate recruitment memos that flooded my inbox all day long Monday. Would it have been that difficult to throw in a bonus or incentive to get people to come back on Monday, once word was out about the day before?

Here's to Nancy, Jamall, Lois, Sukanya, Zak, and all the other cool folks I met. Bravo! May all your dreams come true!