A Sandwich to Remember

My name does not appear on the rolls of the Screen Actors Guild. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences remains blissfully unaware of my existence, much less inclined to shower me with nominations, though a man can dream. And if you go looking for me on the Internet Movie Database, prepare for disappointment. Still, your every-other-weekend Manhattan Mercury columnist has, in fact, managed to flicker across the silver screen.

Three times. In one year.

At 20, I was enrolled in a Minneapolis technical school, learning the arts and sciences of broadcasting, though Hollywood would soon reveal my more marketable skill: standing upright and occupying space. In 1978, for casting directors in search of warm bodies for movies shooting around the Twin Cities, the tech school became prime hunting ground for extras.

“Foolin’ Around” was a screwball comedy starring Gary Busey and Annette O’Toole, with Tony Randall, Cloris Leachman and Eddie Albert providing the grown-up credentials. Busey arrived with heat, fresh off “The Buddy Holly Story,” which would soon earn him a Best Actor Oscar nomination. O’Toole was an up-and-comer with movie star trajectory. I was there to blend into the background and not trip over any cables.

My big scene came at the film’s pivotal moment, when Busey’s Oklahoma rube crashes Annette O’Toole’s upper-crust engagement party and causes her to reconsider her future with a properly-bred preppie from her own tax bracket. Clad in tennis whites, I was tasked with the kind of nuanced screen work that somehow escaped Academy notice: pretending to chat with another extra and occasionally taking a few phantom backhand cuts.

For this tour-de-force, I earned $25 and one meticulously timed craft-services pass, just as O’Toole approached the buffet. Balancing a ham-and-swiss on whole wheat, I flipped back my feathered hair, introduced myself and fell in love somewhere between the chips and the pickle tray.

Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, in the time it takes to spread Grey Poupon on a sandwich.

Next up: “Ice Castles.” Lexie Winston, played by Lynn-Holly Johnson, loses her sight in a tragic accident and, by all rights, her figure skating career. But thanks to Robby Benson and assorted do-gooder hangers-on, she skates blind, reminding us that in the cinema, courage and love conquer all.

Cue Melissa Manchester’s “Through the Eyes of Love.”

My role was to stand among a sea of make-believe fans, cheering Lexie’s post-accident comeback. No sandwich, no pleasantries exchanged with a Hollywood starlet. Another 25 bucks and don’t let the door hit you in the polyester on the way out.

My feature-film pièce de résistance came in the low-budget schlock thriller “Attack of the Burger Pods,” in which rogue burger containers terrorize the innocent. My actor’s motivation demanded nothing less than heroic panic: running hither and yon, in and out of frame, in a desperate attempt to avoid a polystyrene-fueled demise.

Compensation for my art in “Burger Pods” came strictly in the currency of cinematic glory. The film itself? Probably never saw daylight, though rumor (and some online sleuthing) hints that its raw footage was sliced, marinated, and smashed into a now long-forgotten Minnesota public-broadcasting series.

I packed a lot of life into 1978. As it turned out, my year in the Twin Cities was the only time I lived away from Kansas. These days when I encounter Dijon mustard, my mind wanders to Minnesota, a movie set and Annette O’Toole.

Boy gets girl back again.

Fade to black and roll credits.

Mike Matson’s column appears every other weekend in The Mercury, and he hosts ‘Within Reason,’ Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 9 a.m. on NewsRadio KMAN.