Kevin Spacy put his hungry hippo hand exactly next to my ballsack. True story. It happened. It was 1994, the year The Usual Suspects was being shot. I was a greenhorn in the big city. A 23 year old white male on the loose. An athletic kid who came to Los Angeles in the hops of making his dreams of being a genuine working actor aka star, come true. One very significant rite of passage was the acquiring of one’s SAG (Screen Actors Guild) union card. I was an eager beaver in ‘94. Hungry to get after the craft of acting. I loved it. Every piece and part of it. Being an expressive, funny guy I thought it was a shoe in. And I wanted very much to sit in the big chair. But sometimes to get to the big fancy chair you gotta to sit in the little fucked up, uncomfortable chair that only has three legs and old nails coming up through the seat. One way of obtaining your SAG card was to do work as a background actor, otherwise know as an extra. A deeply unglorified, thankless job on a movie set. An oft thought of unpleasant necessity of movie making. Basically you’re treated slightly worse than downer cattle at a Burger King slaughterhouse. And with a certain amount of understandable good reason. Most of the time the extras bullpen is a collection of total fucking weirdos. People of limited talent bouncing from one film to the next, making shit money and feeling like they’re part of something. Basically. So, I arrive somewhere in downtown Los Angeles at 6pm at a rented outdoor parking lot. It was mid November and fairly cool out. I was thoroughly miserable at the prospect of being on lockdown doing extra work for the next twelve hours. Did I not mention that this was a night shoot? Yup. Sundown to sunup. Long haul. As I unpacked my car I noticed that my new roller blades were in the trunk. I had just gotten them. Back then rollerblading was a fairly novel and somewhat high tech activity. I laid out a not insubstantial fist full of cash somewhere in the neighbor of $250.00. They were pricey but fun. The minute I saw them I realized that instead of being stuck with the cast of the Adams Family in the back of this cold, drity downtown parking lot I could rollerblade my time away. As long as I didn’t stray too far from the set I’d be available to step in for whatever background acting need might arise. The main set where the extras would be used was in front of the Los Angele city courthouse. My spirits brightened.
I very shortly found myself laying in some chow at the Craft Service table set which had been set up for the extras Craft service is a generic term for the company hired to make sure that nobody starved during a shoot. Just as I was placing a second miniature Reeses peanut butter cup into my mouth, mixing it with a handful of stale butter flavored popcorn, the call came.
“Listen up you guys we need four on set. Two men, two women. I’ll take you, you, you and you stuffing your face.” I was up. I can do this I thought. One more step toward my SAG card and I was free to become a movie star. And then I never have to do extra work again in my life. I was keen to wear my “blades” during the shoot ‘cause why not. Might look kinda cool in the background. I wondered about asking the production guy if it was ok to “execute” on this “character choice” but the prospect of being told no because it was too different or odd looking put me off so I just simply wore the roller blades like I had been hired to wear them. In reality I had absolutely no business wearing roller blades in the background of this movie. It’s a little ridiculous. Back then it made sense to me looking through the lens of my 23 years. And nobody said a peep about it so I went with it. Around 1am I was fully on set, positioned directly across from the steps of the LA courthouse. Skin tight bike pants, roller blades and a very tight tank top. Freezing my balls off by the way. I think we were deep in November when shooting this scene. As they did a variety of takes they had me positioned directly across the street, roller blading from one spot to another. I wanted so badly to be up in the mix where the action was happening with the real artists so I said “fuck it” and skated over. The director was smoking a huge cigar and had a group of actors and production people around him as they looked into a monitor and reviewed what they had just shot. Being a bit taller than everyone at 6’5” (in roller blades) I had a nice view. The shot looked great and everyone felt like they were pretty close with it. It was my chance to step up. I wanted to let them know that I was no mere extra but a genuine actor just like them. So I chimed in. “Yeah it looks really good. I like the way the light comes off the back part of the courthouse. It’s nice.”
“Yeah, yeah it looks good,” the director responded.”
Then Kevin Spacey came up to the director.
“We get it?”
“Looks really good, maybe just do one or two more times.”
“Hey Mr. Spacey I’m a big fan.”
I had his attention...and then some I would later come to find.
“Thank you.”
“You know a buddy of mine told me that Al Pacino busted you doing impressions of him on the set of Glengarry Glen Ross.”
“That’s true,” he said in a genuinely quizzical manner. “Not a lot of people know about that. How did you find out?”
“I don’t know, that’s what my buddy told me. Somebody that he knows told him that you were totally embarrassed but that Pacino thought it was really funny.”
At that moment the first AD (assistant director) yelled out with the full command and presence of that drill sergeant in the movie Full Metal Jacket, “Back to one!” Everybody, cast, crew, director, stray dogs, whoever the fuck, hot-footed it back to their starting positions. I continued with my thing, bringing a reality, or lack there of, rollerblading my way through the downtown streets of Los Angeles... in the middle of the night. Wearing a tight, low slung tank top and even tighter biking shorts. Which nobody seemed to find odd. If this were an episode of Bay Watch I would’ve fit right in. The Usual Suspects on the other hand, not so sure. Although I took this character choice as a personal victory toward artistic expression and commitment. A couple takes later they wrapped out on the shot and I was told to hang tight. I skated over to a city bench and chilled out. A couple hours later the sun was creeping up over the over the Los Angeles skyline. I was freezing my ass off and happy that we would be let go shortly. Kevin, Mr. Spacey strolled up and sat down next to me. Just as interested and inquisitive as ever. I was pretty stoked to talk about acting. He was pretty fucking horny after a long nights shoot and made an indication as such by putting his hand deep up my leg. Just at the edge of my cock and balls which were securely anchored and displayed within my black lycra shorts. He gazed or rather penetrated me, so to speak, with his eyes and just the tiniest hint of a whispy smile. More than slightly ironic. LIke a lion which has captured it prey and is just enjoying the moment before the kill. The second his hand set itself upon my leg I freaked out. I went turbo, talking nonstop. I was a conglomeration of Woody Allen, Gomer Pyle and Elmer Fudd. Crazy super nervous jabber jaw, yammering on about anything and everything, all the while desperately wanting to escape the hand beset upon my leg. A few crew members on their way to the parking lot bid him goodbye and nice shoot and the like. You have to understand that at the time I had just come straight out of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and knew nothing about the gay people or gay lifestyle let alone the verbal and nonverbal cues being picked up. Kevin, in retrospect, very clearly communicated that he was hungry for my dick. Unfortunately for him my dick and I were both decidedly straight. Somewhere through the nervous storytelling of me coming to LA and growing up on the East coast and my foot jack-rabbiting up and down with turbo boosted “get me the fuck outta here” adrenaline, I was able to extricate myself from the tentacles of this movie star Kraken. Fortunately one of the production people off in the distance yelled something about the parking lot being closed and if anyone had a car there they got five minutes to get it out or it would be towed. That was my life raft off this Titanic of uncomfortable encounters. Women, children, babies get the fuck out of my way! I’m exiting this sinking ship stage left. In that moment I shifted gears, mocking up the perfect storm of sheer panic about my car and how my parents would absolutely kill me if it was towed again.
“I’ll be right back,” I said as I bolted up and skated off, one hand firmly placed over my balls the other out for balance. Bullitt dodged. Holy shit I was free. I got in my car and sped off toward the land of heterosexuality. Did Mr. Spacey do anything wrong? No. He was aggressive but that was about it. A sexual predator? Not with me. No. But I must say I am glad there were people around and that we were in a public place. It’s no crime to be forward as long as you understand that no means no. Period. And I also learned that wearing really tight lycra shorts on a movie set accompanied by a similarly fitted tank top would attract both wanted and unwanted eyeballs alike. In other words, dressing like a gay man will pull in gay action.