Friday August 19, 2011
Booked
On the way home, I received a call from my Calling Service that I was booked for Monday to work CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, again, my third time on the show, this time, as with my first time, playing a homeless person (even clarifying I would be a Homeless Junkie). "More recently," my second time on the series, I was a college professor so for that I was all suited up.
I was given Sande's info recording line to call on Sunday afternoon.

Sunday August 21, 2010
Location, calltime
With most of my "homeless" wardrobe in storage, I hastened down to a local Goodwill and got two "new" shirts for less than ten bucks that would pass for homeless, if worn open, over one of my olive-green t-shirts and a hoodie (though I'd be bringing my camo jacket as well, as an Option). I called the line at 2pm as instructed, and got my 7am calltime and the Los Angeles Washington Boulevard crew-parking location (though it seemed more like the Boyle Heights area).
Occasionally names of those booked are listed on the information line; I heard my friend Rhoda Pell mentioned so I was pleased I'd be working with her again, knowing her from as far back as Santa Croce to as recent as The Films of Avi Krum.

Monday August 22, 2011
Short but thankfully shaded day
Dawn rose at about 6:40am as I approached base camp for my 7am calltime at Washington near Alameda. I got a nice breakfast, and our vouchers were distributed. Of the wardrobe choices I brought, all they did was add a different jacket. Once we were all set, we were shuttled to the location, where holding was at where they bottle Tropical jam on 15th, beneath the on-ramp for Route 10.
Those of us playing homeless were brought around to a section beyond a cyclone fence; the action of finding a dead body being far in the foreground. Thankfully, we were consistently below the highway above, and a simple breeze kept us relatively cool throughout the morning shoot.
We were not sure if the body in the episode's context is to be nude; from our vantage point he was wearing what appeared to be underwear, and his legs so clearly sun burn red that one of our group joking was calling him Red Legs McGee.
Rhoda and I spoke at length, and it seemed that strangely, her owed credit for Santa Croce had never been entered. I assured her I could enter her information on my returning home after the shoot, which I did.
Essentially the lot of us are being "questioned" as well as "contained" by a few Las Vegas policemen, ours being one making as many jokes as the rest of us. Our PA (whose name he never really provided to us), conveyed how visible we'd be and when, and did his best to set up the shot that our actions would be on screen. While he did not know the name of the episode, claiming he thought it was called Sinful Chocolates or some sort (notwithstanding his having a Call Sheet temptingly sticking right in his shorts pocket to which he could have referred), later on my own I discovered it was episode 1203, titled Bittersweet.
We were brought back to holding for a while as they reversed the angle for the scene, and as they prepared to shoot inside the factory with the background done up as factory workers therein, we were wrapped. We were shuttled back to the base camp, those of us with wardrobe clothing returned same, thus retrieving our respective vouchers with which to be signed out at 12:30pm. I didn't have any sign-out issues as with an earlier production (that didn't understand law), as my information was/is On File with the production company's same payroll company.
As my blue bag was filled and it was so blazingly hot, I headed right back to where I'd been staying, choosing to wait until the subsequent day to go to my rental box, what with knowing that Sherman Oak would be far hotter than this shoot's location.