I caught word from a pal that the Saturday Night Live crew was hunting down extras for what has now become (in my humble opinion) one of the most successful SNL Digital Shorts in the history of the franchise, Andy Samberg's skewering of every overpaid DJ in the nation.
I quickly asked permission to take Friday off from my extremely handsome boss* before emailing the Producer the best-looking photo of my face I could find. Five minutes later, I received a text telling me to be at West 28th street at 7 a.m. Game on.
*As a condition on me skipping work he mandated I include this.
Before I got into the business of writing about banging robots, I was a production assistant, so I knew a few industry secrets. I knew I'd be there for a most of the day — but I also knew I’d be fed at least one meal. Under explicit instructions to keep my occupation a secret, I decided I would tell everyone that I was a veteran actor who once appeared in a Swedish tampon commercial.
Our instructions were to dress like we were going to a rave, which apparently now means neon ass-less chaps and highlighter ink.
Upon arriving to the location, I found myself in a concrete cattle call room with what seemed to be a hundred people and almost as many folding tables. No sign of anyone famous… yet. Instead I found a sleepy looking woman holding a clip board.
“SNL?” I asked.
“What?”
“Is this for Saturday Night Live?”
“Yep.”
“I’ll just sit over there.”
“Okay.” She smirked at me.
Because of my production assistant industry expertise, I know about this whole unspoken rule that every underling on a film crew always hates the actors. Except it’s not really unspoken.
To say that I’ve spent my life wanting to be on SNL would be a massive understatement. It’s probably not that surprising that an attention-seeking smartass New York writer would crave a spot on one of the most legendary TV shows in history, but still, dreams are dreams.
Grabbing coffee and a bagel from the Crap Services table (industry joke!) I sat next to friendly-looking dude who immediately asked me if I was straight. I told him I was. He asked if I was a musical theatre major. I told him I wasn’t. He said his name was Clark. We shook hands and surveyed the crowd while I double checked if I was straight.
Every extra I could see was young, very young — definitely still in college, which in hindsight makes perfect sense for an EDM DJ skewering. Our instructions were to dress like we were going to a rave, which apparently now means neon ass-less chaps and highlighter ink. My sexually curious friend Clark asked me why I was taking scribbling this down in my notebook, and I told him to mind his own damn business.
They hand-picked the first batch of extras and herded us to a well-lit club up the street where the sketch would be shot. It was then that I began to feel the effects of the Crap Services (!) coffee rumbling in my stomach, and looked for somewhere to empty the contents of my suffering bowels. To my dismay, I came across a shoddy bathroom that looked like it was ripped straight out of that scene from Trainspotting.
I’d just been cast as a featured extra — all because I had to poop.
I found the nearest person in charge and asked if there was another decent bathroom I could use. She just stood there and looked me up and down. Then she asked me my pants size, a rather prescient question to ask a man who is about to poop his pants. I told her I used to be a 30, but now I'm a 32.
“Great, you’re going to be Paramedic Number Three.”
And that’s how it happened. I’d just been cast as a featured extra — all because I had to poop.
The next six hours were spent dancing. Literally, six straight hours of dancing. If you haven't seen the short yet, it's a pretty faithful recreation of a thumping nightclub, complete with insufferably repetitive loops. By the end of the sixth hour, I felt like my bowels had been run over by a stampede of wild clydesdales.
I clearly wasn't the only one who saw this as their big break into the late night sketch comedy game. Every single person in the room was still stocked with energy at the six hour mark. I might have thought I was living out my dream, but in reality I was just one of many. Also, I was f*cking tired. Five years of smoking put me at a severe disadvantage to the 20-year-olds surrounding me.
The hardest part about dancing for six hours though wasn't the stilted wiggle I kept committing against the neon blonde in front of me; it was the fact that I was doing this in front of my idols. Kenan Thompson, Noel Wells, Sasheer Zamata, and Jay Pharoah all wiggling next to me. All probably silently judging my wiggle. They’d come in, say their one or two lines, judge my wiggle, and leave under the thunderous applause of the equally starstruck extras.
It slowly hit me that my face would really, actually, 100% be on screen for like two seconds.
I found Jay Pharoah to be more in character offscreen than he was when the cameras were on. He’d walk throughout the club, talking to the crowd and hitting on the hot girls. Being a featured extra, I got the royal treatment — he handed me the script and we rapped for a minute while I tried really, really hard not to do his Jay Z impression into his face.
The one star that wasn't in wiggle range was Andy Samberg, A.K.A. DJ DAVVINCII. I tried my best to sneakily take pictures, but kept getting yelled at by the production assistants. The guy looked beat, which I guess is what a career trajectory like his does to you. Every time the director yelled cut, Andy would sulkily pace around the DJ booth, as Akiva Schaffer carefully tweaked the scene from the sidelines.
“Paramedics in costume now!” screamed the director.
I'd been cast as one of the EMT's who'd try to save DJ DAVVINCII's life when he cuts the beat out, which meant I got to go upstairs and wear a paramedics costume. After I changed, I sat down on the nearest couch — across from Beck Bennett, Kyle Mooney, and Bobby Moynihan. They must’ve all seen me staring with an open mouth, because they simultaneously smiled and waved. I closed my mouth and waved back.
The director walked us through the scene and it slowly hit me that my face would really, actually, 100% be on screen for like two seconds. I quickly formulated a backstory for my character to calm my nerves. My backstory: I was a paramedic. Nailed it.
We shot the scene three or four times. I tried my best not to look at the beefy camera dangling directly in front of the DJ booth, and focused on appearing shocked and paramedic-like, which is not as easy as it sounds.
The rest of my time at SNL was spent eating chicken parmesan in the extras holding room, talking to cute girls about their acting reels, and trying my best not to sh*t a hole in my jeans. Seriously, the bathroom situation was abysmal.
I knew that I’d really made it when I received a picture text of a blurry television from my father.
Unsurprisingly, everyone in the room wanted to be famous, everyone wanted to be remembered. It was a bit like being in a room full of struggling actors in close proximity to successful actors. You couldn’t hold a normal conversation with someone without them trying a “bit” on you, or peacocking around the room with the kind of outrageous behavior you’d expect from an art school dorm room.
I was actually drunk at a party in Brooklyn when the show premiered, but I knew that I’d really made it when I received a picture text of a blurry television from my father. I tried my best to remain modest, but told everyone at the party that I was on SNL. I got high fives all around and felt huge. Two seconds of screen time, to me, was an insane success. Not only had I infiltrated Saturday Night Live, I was a featured extra. A featured extra who managed not to poop his pants, no less.
Needless to say my PBR hangover was made far more reasonable the next day by the endless stream of screenshots of my silly mug on my Facebook wall. One week later and I’m still getting texts from people — although my lovely girlfriend has politely asked me to shut the f*ck up about it.
Jeremy Glass is the Vice editor for Supercompressor and never ended up finding that bathroom he so desired... so now he goes in a little plastic baggy.