C.S.I.

A fellow extra once told me he had completed most of the goals he had set for himself when he started doing background. I know it sounds lame, but I'd always thought it would be cool to work on a strip joint set and it finally happened.

Our scene was shot at the Universal Studios lot and most of the time, shows will give you a walk away lunch when they are shot on a studio lot. However, CSI has been around so long, they've got enough money to feed you breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The one thing that was stressed heavily was that the girls on stage were not strippers - they were actors. But the funny thing was, we found out that one of the girls was a real stripper. Ironically, she was the one with the smallest boobs. The other girls were beautiful, but one of them actually had some gut that was very unflattering.

As a treat, our director was William Friedkin, known for directing The Exorcist and The French Connection. He had a humongous gut and his pants wrapped around his waist like that of a cartoon character. At first, I didn't know who he was. He just seemed like a director on a mission. He was very determined to get what he wanted and wasn't afraid to demand it. Then the PA told us who he was and since most of the guys were all very young, they didn't really know who he was or very much cared.

There was a lot of smoke on set and I actually got some juice spilled on me when a guy moved the wobbly table around too much and spilled the drinks. Friedkin said, "don't worry, I took one for the team earlier when one of the girls did the same thing to me." All I could think was, "yeah, but you're not getting paid non-union rates."

While we were outside, I did a lot of waving to the trams that drove by. I never get tired of it for some reason.