i'm in a movie!

thursday, aug. 4:

today was, i think, the first day that i haven't gotten up for breakfast the entire time i've been here. my alarm went off at 0730 and i started to get up when i realized that i could sleep another hour if i wanted to. it was the best hour ever. i woke up so much more refreshed. of course, the tradeoff is that i was starving. since i've eaten breakfast everyday, it was difficult not to have it. but anyway ... i ate 2 granola bars quick before going over to class, and that held me over for 90 mins.

at the tuck shop i got an apple juice and a muffin, and i can't imagine anything having tasted better. scrumptious! then i went to international econ and was bored out of my mind. seemed like the longest class ever!

after class, we walked out and ran into agnes. i don't think i included agnes in my blog before, so let me digress. on tuesday, she walked onto campus while my friends and i were sitting on the quad and told us she was looking for extras in a movie. we were all excited and said we'd be really interested in it. that's fine, she said, and told us she would come back to give us the details on wed night. as it turned out, we were horse racing but bill, who hadn't gone, waited outside for her and said she'd never come. what a shame! so we had all but forgotten this opportunity when we saw agnes after class. she needed 7 people today for a scene ... and so bill, jenna, sarah, ben, josh, andi, and i all signed up. we had to rush to get ready then because we had to be at the randolph hotel (a 10-15 min walk) at 1300 ... and it was 1230!

we all hurried to get dressed (and we needed to dress up b/c it was a dining scene) and rushed over to the randolph. we really didn't need to hurry, though, because agnes just took us a few blocks away where all the technical people were and we sat around for a while and then ate and then sat around lots more. after what seemed like an eternity, they called us up to makeup and costume. the makeup lady had worked on star wars, so it was pretty cool. after we got done we went over to the hotel so they could start filming the scene. it was a tad before 1500 by now.

the randolph hotel is a sweet old hotel in downtown oxford, and the dining room is awesome. they had me sit at a table with sam, one of agnes's british friends. he was hilarious, and while we were filming it was hard to keep a straight face and be quiet. you see, we were just supposed to be having a conversation over drinks ... so we mouthed words back and forth the whole time and he kept trying to make me laugh. it was fun.

they filmed the scene i think 3 different ways, and i was directly in the background of one of them! i know this because, from a side angle, i was right between the 2 main characters at their table, and the director moved me a tad b/c he liked my tie and wanted to get more of it in there! so that was cool, but then i knew i was right in the background of the scene so i had to pretend to be having a "happy dining day" as he put it without letting my charisma shine through to steal the scene.

the scene itself was rather boring, just 2 people talking. it was probably about 2 mins long ... and we didn't get out of there until after 1830. glad it was over, but also happy i did it. it's a feature film, premiering at the cannes film festival, called cat's paw. it's some sort of mystery, i think, but they didn't give us a whole lot of details. apparently sir ian mckellen (gandalf from lord of the rings and magneto from xmen) is in it, but we definitely didn't see him.

our long movie shoot over, we decided to go to pizza hut (since we'd missed dinner). it was fantastic. as we were leaving, andi picked something up in the street and it was €45!!!!! that's over $50! so that made her day.

when we got back to campus, everyone was studying and we went to the pub downstairs briefly and then off to study and bed. quite an exciting day!

famously,
grant