After a fairly lengthy fallow period, southwestern Pennsylvania is once again starting to attract some major film productions. Zack and Miri Make a Porno and the TV series Kill Point shot here last spring. Denzel Washington's latest is filming in and around the area. A Russell Crowe film is on tap for next month. Local casting agents are looking for bit players and extras. The long dry spell seems to be over, and opportunity is once again knocking.

"It’s about time," I'm thinking as I lie on a dirt-covered basement floor, plastic hosing attached to a pump tucked under my now blood-soaked shirt, waiting impatiently for the director to yell "cut." It's three in the morning. It's getting colder, and I'm beginning to understand what it must feel like to have a bladder problem.

I have been on call since one in the afternoon. There was make-up for about ten minutes, followed by what most actors do most of the time on movie sets, waiting. Two and three quarters hours later they were ready for my first scene. "Would they call Russell Crowe over two hours early?" I wonder. Of course this is a student film, and I am not Russell Crowe. On the other hand, I am working for nothing, so the price is right.

We are filming in Monessen, Pennsylvania, a dying steel town on the Monongahela River, now home to the Douglas Education Center and its student film program, The Factory. The movie we are shooting doesn't have a title as yet. But it is a vampire story and vampires are the monster du jour.

I am playing a mysterious elderly man who wanders suspiciously through the film, ominous and threatening. I have just been impaled by our young hero, who has broken into the cellar of a dilapidated house I have rented and discovered a beautiful young woman imprisoned there. As he attempted to set her free, I came down the stairs. Certain that I am an evil vampire, he attacks with the broken handle of an axe; we fight, and here I am, lying in the dirt waiting for the director. I won't give away the end of the tale, just in case the as yet untitled film ever makes it to the big screen, Blu-ray, or just plain DVD.

Article Author: Jack Goodstein

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