Movie Day

My movie day started at 4:30 am. That is the earliest I have gotten up in a long, long time. My call time was 6am at the Tennessee Titans stadium parking lot. Since I don't know the area I wanted to give myself a nice time cushion. Fortunately traffic was light and my brother's GPS kept me right on track. I arrived in the parking lot at 6:03 am. There we loaded a transit bus that took us to the War Memorial Arena. We signed in and sat around the holding area waiting to be taken across the street where filming would take place.
Here is a shot of holding area. Actually this is the stage in front of the holding area where they where doing some makeup on extras. At the bottom of the stage they provided pop tarts, coffee and fruit.
At about 8:30 we were herded across the street to where we would see the action. I was put into a group they dubbed 'The Ramones'. I think they like to give jazzy code names to groups that was easy to remember. Other groups were called 'Thundercats' and 'Devo'. The Ramones were to be in the front two rows. Here is a picture from my seat. Taking pictures was a no-no on set. Many people got caught and had to either leave or the crew would watch them delete the pictures from camera/phone. Hence my pictures are limited and not well framed.
Gwyneth Paltrow played the role of Kelly, a Brittany Spears type country singer, that has just come back from Rehab. Let me tell you this...Gwyneth was fit!! She wore a black mini skirt and her legs were muscular and toned. And she is an incredible actress. It was impressive to see her do take after take, always having to cry at the end. I also got to see Tim McGraw every scene, as he escorts her off stage.
Here is a covert pic from the balcony of the theater. It was taken in between takes. Because of the crying scene at the end, Gwyneth had to have makeup re-applied after each take. You see her Front Center Stage. I spent about 3 hrs 20ft from her but I didn't risk a closeup pic.
This picture is during concert shoot where they put the cameras close to the stage. You can kind of make out Gwyneth/Kelly in the video screen behind her.
I got chosen to wear a concert Tshirt but I had to surrender my Driver's License (which I had just gotten the day before). They really wanted to get this Tshirt back.
During lunch, I met a girl I had noticed earlier. In a room full of attractive people this girl had stood out. Also, she seemed to run into me often...her path was always squeezing past me. She had friendly eyes. So when I found myself standing next to her in the lunch line, we naturally struck up a conversation. She told me that she was from Dallas. She told me she found out about this movie through an agent. She told me she was a model. Something clicked in my mind. A few weeks earlier at my brother's bachelor party, a friend of my brother's was telling me about this girl who broke his heart from Texas. So I ask this girl standing next to me...do you model for Ambercrombie & Fitch? Her reply...she use to. I asked if she recently dated a guy from Nashville. The look on her face was priceless...How do you know him? I explained I just met him. She started putting pieces together...she noticed how I looked like my brother, who she had met and she knew Bethany. In fact she immediately had to send Bethany a text. It is amazing that a girl from Texas and a guy from South Carolina meet at the filming of a movie in Tennessee and actually know the same people. There were 500 extras there, I had conversations with about 6 different strangers and this one I knew just from a 2 minute conversation a month earlier. What are the odds?
Here is a pic of Me and Lindsey
After 13 hours of standing, cheering and applauding the same 5minute scenes I was ready to be crawling into my bed. My hands were sore from clapping, my mind was fuzzy from only getting 3 hours of sleep the night before. When I was walking back to my bus I noticed how the bridge was poetically lit up behind my home.

I had an incredible experience. Now I just have to wait for my check in the mail.