Behind The Curtain (18 August, 2023)
Accessible Audio for this week’s Behind The Curtain will be available soon!
That Time I Played a Dead Russian Soldier in Saint-Jerôme
Just after 6am on a random Tuesday in the spring of 2014, I exited the first Orange Line Metro of the day at De la Concorde Station in Laval. It didn’t take long to find who I was looking for. No one was there except for the people hanging around the multi-seat van. Once everyone had arrived, we boarded and headed to Saint-Jerôme, or rather just outside of Saint-Jerôme. I’m not really sure, to be honest. It was nine years ago, and I’m not an expert on the 450. In fact I only figured out they had driven us to the Saint-Jerôme area when doing research for this article.
We pulled up to a makeshift lot with a bunch of trailers and Craft Services tables. This is where I would spend most of the day, until finally getting called up to the rather impressive set made out of dirt. I was an extra on 14 - Diaries of the Great War, a World War I documentary drama series produced by teams in France, Germany, and Canada. For the Canadian leg, they had re-created WW1 trenches, and most of the team I had rode up with were hunkered down in them most of the day playing Austrian soldiers, passing around pipes, loading weapons, and talking (with no audio being recorded, obviously), as squibs in the dirt went off just above them to simulate the conditions of trench warfare. I knew this because they had screens back at the Craft Services table.
Photo Courtesy of WikiMedia Commons
I was supposed to have been with them, but none of the Austrian uniforms they had fit me. A Russian one did, so I put it on, got my makeup done, and waited. There was a lot of waiting. Before most of our group went to the trenches, I was going to snap a photo of myself in costume, but one of my temporary colleagues warned against it, saying he was an extra on X-Men: Days of Future Past, which was also shooting in and around Montreal that year, and he saw another extra get ejected from the set and sent home on the spot for snapping a selfie. While I thought that it was extremely unlikely this production would have the same security precautions as a massive, star-studded Hollywood franchise film set, I knew for certain that I had no way of getting home without the lift back to the metro, so I played it safe. It’s not like I’d ever be writing about this experience years later, you know.
Let’s go back in time a bit, and learn what brought me here. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, I decided to try professional acting for the first time in my life. By professional acting, I mean taking acting gigs with an associated paycheque, but without needing to feel any passion for the project. This doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy the work. Sometimes, when possible, I even contributed creatively. I was in a training video for new Costco employees playing both the upset customer who got bad service, and the happy customer who came in for photocopy paper, but left with a bunch more stuff because of the helpful and polite service he received. I had the idea that the happy customer should also leave with a canoe, and leave with a canoe he did, on top of a cart full of random items. I have yet to see the final product, and even considered trying to get hired at Costco just so I could get into the training and see it, but then realized that would just be awkward and time-consuming, and who knows if Costo still uses it, or ever did.
Eventually, this road led me to extra work. I was in a bar scene for a FOX Network cop show that probably got canceled, if it ever got picked up. I was in a group meeting scene for something shot for a prison guard union. I also appeared in what was apparently a popular comedy on TV in a few Arabic-speaking countries. They had some of the characters live in Montreal for a season. I was in two scenes, one in a jail cell, and one at a garden party shot in Raimbault Park in Cartierville. For some reason, I missed the part about formal dress, so I wasn’t in the Mayor’s entourage (given my previous prison scene, that would have tracked with post-Tremblay Montreal politics), but I was at the party, and in the show. Also, the Mayor of Montreal was an anglophone. You know, fiction.
That was my last extra gig, or at least my last one to date. I thought I would continue, but it’s not the easiest thing to do when you have a day job with set hours. Also, the whole commercial acting thing fell to the wayside. I mean I still do get paid for acting. That’s what the ghost tours I host are. Plus I will still take paid projects (and unpaid ones friends are doing) I am offered that I connect with creatively/ Plus I try to get money into projects I co-created, and perform in. I still consider myself a professional actor, and a damn good one to boot, despite not being on the hunt for roles, or following the traditional route. At least, not right now. (If you're not like me, and are looking to land some roles, our Creative Director Andrew Jamieson can help you. Whether you’re interested in learning how to act, or sharpening some skills before an upcoming audition, Andrew offers lessons and coaching, and much more(!), at incredibly reasonable and flexible rates. Reach out through his Instagram!) But who knows. There is still plenty of extra work in Montreal…well, maybe not this summer (solidarity with the SAG-AFTRA strike!), but there was in the past, and will be again in the future. But back on that Tuesday in 2014, after trying to avoid having too many free sandwiches, I eventually got called to the set for the last shots of the day. I played a dead Russian soldier, lying in the hot sun, with a crew member holding an umbrella over me during takes. Squibs exploded all around me, but I had to remain motionless, because the scene started with a closeup of my face. It wasn’t easy, but I think I nailed it. At the end of the day, I got the same $200 that the guys in the trench, and the other guy they never used for anything, and they drove us all back to the metro at around 6pm.
I don’t have copies, nor have I seen, come to think of it, any of the professional acting work I did during this period. For the most part, I’m okay with that (aside for the occasional curiosity). While I’m sure most actors would want this stuff for their reel, I’m content treating it instead like some would treat a former porn career. My “reel” is JC Sunshine, some politically-minded parody videos, and other theatre stunts caught on camera. And I’m okay with that. When it comes to 14 - Diaries of the Great War, though, I would really like to at least see my scene. According to Wikipedia, it’s available in German, French, English, and Russian, and was called Great War Diaries when it aired on the BBC. So I was on the BBC maybe? Cool! But also a good place to start. I’m going to renew my search to finally see it, and I’ll tell you the results, just as I told you about that time I played a dead Russian soldier in Saint-Jerôme.
Notes This Week
You’re The Meta Now
Meta’s blockade of Canadian news sites, and sites it considers news for no explicable reason (like us) continues, as Federal Bill C-18 remains on the books. With no deal in sight, we turn to you, dear readers, to effectively become our social media presence. You could throw us a few bucks by “buying us a coffee” so we can pay for new ways to promote, or you can share our articles (like this one). Links to our site are not currently blocked, despite our pages on Facebook and Instagram being, so every bit helps. You can even do both! Please note that you can also take the place of Twitter/X by sharing there, or even on Linkedin, though that would be a bit weird, no?
More Housing
Up to 200 affordable apartments, mainly aimed at students, could go up in the McGill Ghetto (in the Plateau Mont Royal Borough) by 2027. The Unité de travail pour l'implantation de logement étudiant (UTILE) and Centraide reached an agreement to purchase a parking lot for the project. Meanwhile, the City of Montreal is protecting more low-cost housing, this time a 22-resident rooming house in Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. Good to see that some are still fighting back against the housing crisis.
Before I leave you, I’d like to mention that all Star Trek content, including the new stuff, is leaving Crave in Canada, and instead will be streaming on the new Paramount Plus Canada service. I don’t know about you, but given the SAG-Aftra Strike, this doesn’t seem like a good time to be taking out a new streaming subscription. Hmmmm…. Regardless, I’ll see you next week.
FTB Founder Jason C. McLean returns every Friday for another installment in his series, Behind The Curtain.
