Lights! Camera! Me!

I spent a few heady minutes under the bright lights on Thursday as a featured extra on the set of “Lucky,” the dark comedy being shot in Council Bluffs and Omaha by Ten/Four Pictures.

As the driver brought me from the parking lot down to Base Camp, where all the stars’ trailers are, I joked, “Which trailer is mine?”

“That one,” he said, pointing to a very long trailer.

I laughed. I thought he was joking. But it was my trailer all right. Sort of. Actually, it was the honey wagon, the bathroom trailer, which has a number of small dressing room/bathroom compartments, each about the size of the starting gate at a horse track.

I began to wait, gazing out the door now and then until I saw Kathy Wozniak coming toward me.

“Are you my husband?” she called out as she approached.

“I am! I am your husband!” I answered. “But don’t let my wife know!”

Kathy and I were to play the grieving parents of a kidnap victim who appear on a television screen in the background of a scene.

Our call time was 11:30. Hours would pass before they were ready for our brief scene. As I waited, I remembered what Alex Zakrzewski, director of this summer’s production of “Vipers in the Grass,” told me about moviemaking: “You want to know how movies are made? Wait-wait-wait-wait—shoot. Wait-wait-wait-wait-wait-wait—shoot . . .”

And, boy, was he right. What do you do while you’re waiting five hours for your scene? You get nervous, you practice crying in the full-length mirror, you read a murder mystery, you snack, you nap, you stroll around the trailers hoping for a glimpse of Ann-Margret (one of the stars of the movie, pictured above), you rehearse a little with your co-star, you snack some more. Then Adam, the production assistant comes, and you think it's time. But no. It's only time to eat.

He takes you to Pauli's Bar, where the caterer has set up a lavish meal for cast and crew. And just as you're thinking you'll never see a star, there's Jeffrey Tambor of "Arrested Development," "The Larry Sanders Show," and the Hellboy movies, eating at a table by himself. Stay cool. Must be professional. After all, you're an actor, too. Kind of. You nod politely and sit at a different table with your movie wife and Adam. But as you eat, you glance around hoping to get a glimpse of the movie's other stars: Colin Hanks, Ari Graynor, and of course, the divine Ann-Margret.

Finally, after a full five hours, Adam knocked again. This time the director was ready for us, and the driver whisked us to the set, a barricaded city block in the UNMC neighborhood lined with semis overflowing with cables, c-stands, lighting equipment, and much more. The sidewalks were lined with more cables, racks of costumes, lights, and crew members, all of them busily doing their part to make the movie happen.

Adam led Kathy and me to the house that was being used as the home of the Colin Hanks character. Several crew members and a fireman were using a snow machine to cover the front yard with snow and covering the curbs with cotton batting. Part of the story takes place in winter, you see.

Then there was Gil Cates, Jr., the director, shaking our hands as if we were the most important people on the set. He took us past the snow-bound house and put us in front of the camera with a bank of lights in our faces. We huddled, clutching the photo of our kidnapped daughter. We were to imagine that a TV news reporter was filming us as we pleaded for her return. Our scene will play silently in the background during one of the movie’s scenes, but Kathy and I had both worked out lines of dialogue to make our moment feel more real, at least to us.

Before the director was ready for us, Kathy looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “You’re a good father.” I looked down at the photo of our imaginary daughter and felt my own eyes fill with tears. “And you’re a good mother,” I said. “She’ll come home. She will.”

When the director called action, we turned our tear-streaked faces to the camera and pleaded with the kidnaper to let our girl go. Two minutes and two takes later, we were finished. A flurry of handshakes, thank-you’s, and congratulations, and we were suddenly whisked back to real life, still weepy and exhausted from our pretend grief.

A five-hour wait for two minutes on camera. Was it worth it? Oh yeah. It was a real kick to be part of a big-time Hollywood movie, even if that part was tiny.

As Adam took us back to Base Camp, we thanked him for taking such good care of us. “You made us feel like stars,” I said.

“You are stars,” he said.

I have to admit that made me feel pretty darn good. I guess now all I need is an entourage!

For more info: "Lights! Camera! Action! (Omaha World-Herald, "Council Bluffs Gets Lucky"