So, the recall to Prison Break made up for the first day on Prison Break.

Instead of sitting around for 10 hours to do 3 takes, we sat around for 1 hour to do 30 takes.

Really, it was more than that, but it was a nice flip.

It was the top of a new episode, and the same pack of Miami Police came back for this new day, and we kicked off the day by running. Up stairs. A lot of them. Several times.

Then we ran up more stairs. Less of them, but still...several times. That second set of stair running took several takes because of the smallish confusion about when we were supposed to start up the stairs. On the first take somebody (me) jumped our cue, and the rest followed, with the result that Dominic Purcell and Wentworth Miller were still standing at the end of the hallway as we passed them. The confusion wasn't really our (my) fault, because nobody had thought to fill us in on what was happening. As we reset to do it again, one or the other of Purcell and Miller said, "So that's it? We get arrested? Series over?" We got it once we actually had a clear understanding of what our cue was supposed to be.

After lunch came the really interesting stuff. The extras were all hovering near the setup of a new shot, waiting to be called in to be placed. Ingrid (a 2nd AD) comes up and says, "Come with me, please."

And not a minute later I find myself on a mark, squared up with Mike and Jesse (didn't get their last names) SAG supporting cast for the episode. Mike was the police captain and Jesse was the hotel manager. Myself and another cop were there to give Mike somebody to talk to...so I had two cameras shooting over my shoulders at the actors with lines.

It gets better.

All this was a setup for a moment where Purcell and Miller take off from a concealed spot and we chase them down the hallway. Four SAG actors, and two extras. Wow. Not to mention that Captain Mike had a live weapon (in the sense that it fired blanks for visual effect) which he fired at Purcell and Miller as the fled down the hall.

We covered it from one direction, then from the other, and then we cover the last bit where the two fugitives bust into a stairwell and we come in after them.

By this time, Captain Mike has started to throw in an ad libbed line as we're just about to entered the stairwell after Miller and Purcell. He looks over his shoulder and goes, "You ready?" to me. So what am I going to do? Stand there like an idiot, and not respond because I'm an extra? Hell no! What did I go to school for 4 years for? We're all huffing and puffing from the sprint down the hall, so I nod briskly and give him a raspy, "Yah."

The significance of this is: It's a SAG show. I don't know the specifics, because I haven't researched it fully yet, but that spoken word has the potential to make me eligible for SAG membership. It might not, too. So I'm not going to cry if it doesn't happen, but I'm sure going to ask.

Penultimate wacky moment of the day...On one of the takes into the stairwell, both Dominic Purcell and Wentworth Miller are standing on the first landing, safely out of the shot, but I've got to act like I'm warily looking up the stairs. Dominic has had a little spritz bottle all day, in order to mist his face to look like he's sweating. As I'm looking up the stairs, and the scene is still going, he starts squirting at me with this bottle, hissing, "Come on! Come on! I'm right here!"
I don't know if I did anything noticeable to the camera, but it was rather difficult to keep from busting out laughing...not so much because what he did was tremendously funny (it was pretty funny) but rather because I was just struck by the absurdity of the whole thing.

I'm in the Long Beach, CA Hyatt hotel, dressed as a cop, holding a fake gun, seven feet from two TV stars, interacting with a 25 year Hollywood vet, very obviously on camera, and this is my 5th day of work. Ri. Di. Cu. Lous.

Last thing of the night. We're shooting something else, and I'm back the background, background, working some background action with Heath (another cop, and a cool guy) and Michael Rapaport is making his entrance in front of us. As the shot is setting up, a tall black man weaves through the hubbub (the hotel is still working, obviously, and we're shooting just inside the main entrance) and there's some interaction between Rapaport and this guy. I hear, "he could throw like a rifle down in Houston," or something to that effect from Rapaport, and I look...

Sure enough. Warren Moon had just walked into the hotel to check in. That definitely added an extra flavor of surreal onto the top of what was already a seven layer dip of surreal.

So who knows if that was just an awesome, hysterically fun day, or an awesome, hysterically fun day that winds up being an awesome help to my career. Either way, I win.

Prison Break, Episodes 19 and 20, sometime in April/May of this year.