There was no way was I going to be in a Steven Spielberg movie looking like a bedraggled mess. The makeup artist had other plans. Swiping my face with a moist towelette until it was bare, spattering me with mud and greasing my hair, she sent me back out to join my friends and spend 14 hours running down an ice-slicked street in the dark. My Hollywood debut had arrived.
In the second half of 2004, Spielberg started production on War of the Worlds, the alien movie so influenced by 9/11 that it became one of the darkest films of his career. It turns 10 years old today. I was biding time between college graduation and an impending move to New York City, living in my hometown near Albany, New York. The announcement that Spielberg would be shooting a key War of the Worlds scene in the nearby suburb of Athens sent the capital region into an excited tizzy—everybody wanted to be in the movie.
Armed with a résumé and head shot, my friends Jon Costantini, Mark Pezzula, and I answered the local casting call for extras, and after mere minutes of review from a panel of casting directors, were called back for an overnight shoot in early December. We would be part of a literal cast of thousands.
For reference: it’s the scene that starts about an hour into the film (a helpful Hudson Ferry sign reading “Athens” provides ample warning) where refugees flee down a street during an alien attack, attempting to board a ferry that’s carrying Tom Cruise’s character, Ray Ferrier, his son, Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and his daughter, Rachel (Dakota Fanning). You can watch a very terrible bootleg of it, below.
The production was in town for a week, so we were privy to rumors long before we arrived on set—Jon worked at a local video store at the time, and his customers regaled him with stories about serving as featured extras during close-up scenes shot with Cruise. One said that Spielberg personally instructed extras to look more frightened, explaining that they should turn around and think, “Oh fuck!” (“Mr. Spielberg, isn’t this film rated PG-13?” he claims to have quipped. Spielberg supposedly replied, “PG-13 movie, R-rated director.”) Another bragged that Cruise set his hand on her back for the duration of a scene: “I’m never washing my jacket again!”
With zero understanding of big-budget Hollywood productions, we assumed our night shoot would involve just as much excitement. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh cool, I’m gonna be right next to Tom Cruise doing stunts!’” Mark remembers now. “And yeah, that’s not what happened.”
We were told to arrive on set dressed like refugees who’d been on foot for days—sans makeup, with dirty hair and swathed in dark, logo-free clothing. I willfully disregarded those first two edicts. Of the thousands on set, would they really notice one girl sporting a blowout, bright-pink blush, and four coats of mascara?
Clearly, I underestimated the detail-oriented organizational juggernaut that is a Spielberg set.
After I’d been caught and de-glamorized, I rejoined Jon and Mark for processing in a massive communal picnic-table-lined military warehouse. Groups of 100 were assigned letters “A” through “J,” and when we were given group “H,” our dreams of up-close-and-personal time with the camera were temporarily dashed.
We tromped to set behind our assigned P.A. and halted at the top of a hill, smack dab in the middle of Athens’s shop-lined main street. From our vantage point, we could see train tracks at the bottom, with a small bridge leading to a ferry perched in the water. There were refugee tents erected everywhere (we later realized the production’s video village was among them, disguised as set pieces).
“I remember walking through the set past boards filled with missing-person signs that had photos and names on them—very 9/11-influenced,” says Mark. There were massive H.M.I. lights on cranes everywhere and the street was lined with speakers, fully wired so we could hear the assistant director calling out orders. A smattering of folks in the crowd carried homemade “missing” posters or suitcases provided by the prop department—some even brought their family pets, as requested by the production team. All around us, snow machines pumped out a Styrofoam blizzard.
“[The A.D.] was like, ‘Right! You guys are tired, you’ve been walking for days!’” remembers Jon. “‘You’re hungry! You think you’re gonna get on a ship and go to safety! You’re almost there! And then you hear this noise! You turn and you look and I want you to all look at the light behind you! At first it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen—it’s magical and wonderful and bright and shining! And then you realize it’s going to fucking kill you!’”
We were told the alien ships were called “tripods,” and they would be C.G.I.’d in place of the H.M.I. lights, so we should keep looking over our shoulders at the lights as we ran. We did this for hours—running and screaming and glancing and climbing back to our starting point. Our voices grew hoarse and the descent eventually became perilously icy, because the crew was wetting the streets (a technique commonly used to create lighting contrast, mood, and ensure continuity) and it was below freezing that night.
As dawn neared we’d still had zero Spielberg or Cruise sightings, and we were getting antsy. We gathered around a snack cart (every alley off the main road was outfitted with soup and hot beverages to keep us warm during setups) to plot our defection from group “H.” Other extras had reported that Cruise was on the ferry at the front, so we began slowly testing our limits—hopping one group closer after every take, until we were across the bridge with group “C,” close enough to spot all the action, where stuntmen playing desperate refugees were repeatedly grabbing the ferry ramp, being knocked from it, then rescued from the frigid water by an assistant on a jet ski.
We entertained ourselves with this view (still no Cruise in sight) until the other mythical man himself appeared. Bedecked in a baseball cap and brandishing a loudspeaker, Spielberg quieted the cheering crowd, and—14 glacial hours after we stepped off a bus onto the set—wrapped us for the night. “I remember fairly distinctly what he said, which he probably tells every group of extras he works with,” Jon recalled. “He said, ‘You guys are the best extras I’ve ever worked with, I wish I could take you all back to Hollywood and make all of my movies with you. Thank you so much for everything you’ve put into this. Have a great night, and we can’t wait for you to see this movie!’”
After all that, our portion of the sequence occupies less than two minutes of screen time. Despite our best efforts at freeze-framing and scrutiny, we never did end up spotting ourselves in the final film (I still can’t help but search whenever I come across the movie on cable). But somewhere amongst the boxed-up ephemera in our parents’ basements, our Paramount pay stubs are sporting a 10-year-old layer of dust, serving as proof that we were once extinguished by aliens in a Steven Spielberg movie, and lived to tell the tale.
