The Day I Worked In A Movie by Javier Vanegas

It was a sunny day in New York City. I was walking by the Hudson River Greenway with my best friend Omar. We were taking pictures with Jersey City in the background, and also to the One World Trade Center (a very huge and emblematic building recently finished.) Suddenly an old man with a colorful t-shirt approached us and started talking. The guy offered us a one day job in an HBO movie that was being filmed in the City those days. The only condition was that we had to dress up 80’s style clothing and we had to pretend be dancing in a club.

Filming day was very exciting for me. I had searched online information of the movie, “The Normal Heart”, by the way, and i realized that Julia Roberts, Mark Ruffalo and Jim Parsons were in the cast. They are three of my favorite actors.

We arrived to the 94 pier at 10:00 a.m. There was already a bunch of people working. A very gentle man guided us all the time. He was one of the Director’s assistants. He told us that the filming was delayed and we had to wait for about an hour to begin.

At 11:30 a.m. the time was becoming endless. Even when we could eat whatever we want from a buffet, we were just sitting with a group of “extras” doing nothing but chatting. The director’s assistant hadn’t said anything else to us since we arrived there. Finally he appeared and told us to go to another place. The entire group walked two blocks to the filming set.

The set was organized inside an empty warehouse. It represented a night club. The scene was about a celebration to raise money for one of the pro-AIDS groups in the 80’s. At first all the “Extras” had to wait in the second floor. The actors were doing something we couldn’t understand. Maybe they were rehearsing. The rest of the staff were organizing and doing their jobs.

Around one hour later they called us to go downstairs, marked our places and gave us a few directions of what we had to do in the scene.  We had to dance all the time. The most exciting moment for me was when I saw Mark Ruffalo just a few inches near me. I really admire him.

Finally we started recording.  There was a crane in the middle of the set that had a video-camera in its top. A blond actor, we didn’t recognize, was the main character in the scene. He was on stage and asked the D.J. to stop the music. Then he called Mark Ruffalo and they both announced to the people in the disco that they had collected 53 thousand dollars. After the shout of celebration they called Jim Parsons, Matt Bomer and the other actors to the stage. They were all hugging each other, laughing and jumping. At last they let the party continued.

We had to repeat that single scene over and over again during almost 6 hours, from different angles and planes. Although I was pretty tired, i felt really excited and happy because movies are my passion and I had the opportunity to be a part of one.

P.S. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, but during a break I asked Jim Parsons to take a picture with me.