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My TV and film career was as it should have been. No dialogue and lots of donuts. The town of Mendocino, thick with vintage Victorian Gingerbread real estate was used for the set of 'Cabot Cove' Maine on the popular TV detective show "Murder She Wrote". Mendo town had been the backdrop for dozens of Hollywood flicks going back decades. James Dean himself wandered the ghostly streets in East of Eden. Dozens of locals were regularly hired as extras, including myself. Everyone was excited at the prospect of seeing themselves on television, but the sorry reality was that 90% of the shots were scrapped in the editing room. My 'biggest' scene that made it to the tube has me strolling down a skinny floating marina dock as Angela Lansbury walks toward me. I nod my head politely and we pass each other very carefully so she doesn't fall into the water. Well, someone had to do it. You can tell it's me because my hair is so long. Actually I had the longest hair on the set (male dept.). I was always the token hippie looking guy. My buddy on the set was the prop master. He had a huge truck brimming with all the fake accoutrements of Cops and Killers. Blank firing machine guns, replica pistols, shotguns, rifles, walls of knives, swords, cheezy fake Maine license plates, smoke bombs, uniforms, you name it. It was off-limits but he let me in to see it all for a few minutes one day. What a trip! It looked like Osama's Winnebago in there. So what's Angela Lansbury like? Just like on TV. Friendly and gracious and unpretentious. The coolest actor I got to hang around was Charles Durning. He always had very funny anecdotes and jokes for everyone. It was always fun because the "stars" and the extras would always mix it up a lot more that you'd ever see on a studio lot. Most extras were actors, artists and musicians anyway, so things were pretty loose on the social level. The most mind blowing all-out presence I had the fortune to be near was Audrey Hepburn. What a smile (gulp-she smiled at me), and she still looked like that girl in "Breakfast at Tiffany's". And Tom Bosley? Sorta like Grumpy in the 7 Dwarfs. A bit gruff on the outside, a pussycat underneath. He did crack a smile when I said "Good -morning Mr. C." at 5 a.m. by the coffee machine. I was the Fonz in my own mind for a moment.

RACING WITH THE SEAN The first feature film I ever worked as an 'extra' on was "Racing With the Moon" with Sean Penn and Nicholas Cage. I did a scene in a fake 'hospital' they built at the Fort Bragg High School. The director was Richard Benjamin, and he was always funny and personable. One day I was leaving the set in Mendocino Village, just cruising home in a leisurely fashion, when a little red sports car passed me at a high rate of speed on a notoriously nasty curve on the edge of a notoriously nasty cliff that dropped straight into the sea below. I won't say I had road rage, but I was perturbed. I sped up enough to see him turn into the Albion Community Center road. I turned too, but he was nowhere to be seen. I knew the Community Center was being used in the film for a scene. I also knew the only place that red car could hide was a small dirt road a bit past the Center. I crawled up the road, and there was the car and it's driver was sitting on a rock looking very nervous. It was Sean Penn. I didn't know what to say so to avoid a confrontation I played dumb and just mumbled "Are you with the movie?" He looked relieved and shook his head no. I just left. Later I found out from friends that Penn had just received a death threat from some crazed stalker that had been harassing him for months. The nutjob had gotten through to his room in the Mendocino Hotel through some ruse. Penn freaked and just hauled-ass down the highway to the only other place he knew. I don't blame him. I also remember that a good friend of mine, Rock drummer Chris Fox, was offered a job by Nicky Cage in L.A. as an assistant. Of course he had no idea that either Penn or Cage would someday be Cinema Superstars, and he stayed in Mendocino. Funny stuff happens in Movieland, that's for sure.

A section of the movie about John Belushi, "Wired", was filmed in Mendocino. I guess it was cheaper than going to Cape Cod. At the time I had just finished a screenplay, 'Love Street', about California in the late 60's, some of which wound up in NBC's mini-series "The Sixties". The director of Wired was Larry Peerce, who won an Oscar for 'Goodbye Columbus'. The big money scene was Belushi's burial, set on the Mendocino headlands overlooking the ocean. The temperature was about 90, a very unusual condition even in the summer. The extras at the burial scene had to stand in this heat for what seemed an eternity. Among the styrofoam tombstones scattered about, dozens of sweaty, uncomfortable human mannequins were beginning to grumble a little. It was taking forever to get this scene together. There was no drinking water to be had anywhere. No ocean breeze either. They wasted a huge amount of time (and money) trying to co-ordinate the dozens of Limousines winding their way along the cliffs. Meanwhile back at the gravesite, people are soaking wet with sweat and starting to make snide remarks. Just then a small procession carrying the coffin approaches. In the box, sitting up, is actor Michael Chiklis (in his first flick) wearing full death makeup. His face is as white as snow. He looks like low-rent ghoul, like something out of an Ed Wood flick. He's smiling at all of us and we're all grinning at him because it's so damned bizarre and he has a crazy contagious smile and everyone's drippy and crabby and bored all at once. Our relief at seeing the star arrive soon turned into even more frustration as even more delays kept halting production. I'm talking 2 hours of standing in the hot sun. Michael Chiklis had to stand there with the rest of us too, as puddles of sweaty makeup oozed down his face. He was soon grumbling along with the rest of us. Then Larry Peerce finally decided to set up the scene. He surveyed the assembled mourners, then he points at me and says: "You there! Your hair looks terrible!" I'm thinking, whaaat? At least I have hair you ... So I tie my hair back so no one thinks John Belushi actually had long haired friends. The hair thing was the last straw for my friend Charlie Remer, a well-known Blues musician. He was a quiet sort of guy, not given to outbursts. He suddenly piped up for all to hear: "This is the biggest bunch of BULLSHIT I've ever seen in my life!" "We're all standing out here forever in this blazing heat and there's not even any WATER!!!" "We're being treated like ANIMALS!" "No one here knows what the hell they're doing. This set is the biggest joke I've ever seen !!" He was raving mad and almost freaking out. "I QUIT! F+++ THIS!" He stormed off the suddenly silent set. All eyes turned toward the Director who looked rather sheepish. They never did finish that scene and that's why the only burial episode in the film is a short shot of all these Limos trying to figure out where to go. Mr. Peerce did accept a copy of my screenplay, and actually sent me back a nice review. "Wired" bombed big time. 'OVERBOARD': " I'M READY MR. DEMILLE " Kurt Russel and Goldie Hawn popped up for a few weeks to film 'Overboard' in Mendocino. With Garry Marshall directing and Roddy McDowall producing, it promised to be a big budget production, lucrative for the town's 'extras'. We were filming a scene one afternoon with about 100 'background' people. I wound up near the front of the crowd just by accident, but a friend of mine kept needling me about 'cutting' in front of him. He thought, in his weird paranoia, that I was somehow trying to sabotage his big moment in film history. I turned around several times, and being friendly, tried to chill him out. But he was really on a roll and started calling me names. It was getting embarrassing, and people were beginning to trip out. I noticed Goldie Hawn watching us. After the scene was done, she made an announcement that all the extras in the just completed shot would also be used in the next scene. She directed all 100 of us to move along to the next set-up. But she then pointed her finger directly at my insecure protaganist and loudly said "Except YOU!" All eyes turned to drink in the sorry expression on his face. I was vindicated of being a camera hog and he reaped his karmic 'most embarrassing moment ever'. Later on they used me for a shot where I'm supposed to 'check out her butt' as she enters a barroom. Now checking out Goldie Hawn's butt may seem like a dream gig, but when her old man is sitting right there in front of you, well, it all takes on a rather humorous dimension. I just kept cracking up. So did she. So did Kurt Russell. There was a huge Panaflex camera right in my face like I was a movie star. "I'm ready for my close-up Mr. DeMille". It was one of those unreal moments in life. Of course I blew three takes in a row and they got someone else to do it. He ended up on the cutting room floor too. There was another bar scene where they handed out 'prop' beer to everyone. We weren't supposed to open them at all. I guess they figured we might get too drunk to work. Anyway, Kurt Russell sits down at my table and opens his beer and starts chugging. That was the signal. Soon everyone was drinking their beer and the stale, sweaty bar scene began to loosen up. Garry Marshall even started to jam on a drumkit that was on the stage. Kurt and Goldie and "Overboard" was the best time I ever had making movies in Mendocino. Plus I got to meet and talk with screen legend Roddy McDowall, who was producing the film. Things like that would have never happened in Hollywood.