I was in Close Encounters of the Third Kind

I was in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Steven Spielberg's 1977 science-fiction movie was considered a blockbuster and even won an Oscar for best cinematography.

A little more than a year and a half before his movie hit the theaters, Spielberg and his film crew were preparing to greet dozens, maybe hundreds, of Alabamians to his alien invasion story.

My mom, stepdad and three sisters and I were among those he was going to greet. The six of us, along with a cooler full of sandwiches, fruit and water, were wedged into our 1974 blue Chevrolet Vega and on our way to Bay Minette, which was just a half hour north of our home in Mobile, Ala.

It was still dark as we traveled. I was pinched between my two older sisters, who took turns holding our youngest sibling in their laps. Only an hour earlier my stepdad, wearing cut-off jean shorts, a tee-shirt and his Army-green boonie hat, had announced that we were all "going to be in the movies!"

Somehow my parents had learned that a film crew was going to need hundreds of extras to take part in shooting a scene for a movie called, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." I had no idea what the movie was going to be about.

We pulled into Bay Minette and found the parking field for the movie extras. We walked to the movie set, which was the town's single-building, one-room train station. A number of train box cars and passenger cars sat still on the tracks that split the set. For the next three days, Bay Minette would be a rural town in Wyoming.

Hundreds of people sat or stood listening to a man barking out directions through a bullhorn. Had a person not known better, the gathering could have been mistaken for a livestock auction.

According to the man's instructions we were to act like a panic-stricken mob trying to flee the city by train. When we were instructed, we would move — some running, some walking — toward the trains. Some individuals were selected to climb onto the trains. My sisters and I received no specific instructions. For a very small part of three days, this is what we did. Like cattle, we were herded toward the trains. The person with the bullhorn would yell, "Cut!," and we would go back to our places so the camera crew could set up to shoot the same scene from different angles. We were a fleeing mob of hundreds, but we needed to look like a fleeing town of thousands.

The rest of the time we sat, either out in the heavy Alabama heat, or cooled off in the oven-like temperatures of the car. It was early summer, which, in southern Alabama, is like mid-Hell in most other places.

Normally, for an eight-hour day of work, lunch is enough to hold you over until dinner. But for an eight-hour day of waiting and sitting and being bored, eating becomes the only activity worth doing. Most of the time my sisters and I ate our lunch before 11:00. We'd finish our ration of water by noon. In the dirt parking lot, my little sister and I dug down and poured the cooler sand on our arms and legs like a couple of hogs.

Hot, dry, hungry, and coated with dirt that had now mixed with sweat to form gray splotches on our bodies, my sisters and I looked like we might have been extras for "The Grapes of Wrath." To kill time between filming, I walked around the set and observed the other extras, looking at their sweaty red faces and eyes that said they would kill for fried chicken and iced tea.

I wandered into an area where I was awakened from my dehydration-induced stupor by the smell of barbeque. I followed the smoke and scent to an area of tents. The real movie crew -- the cameramen, writers, producers, directors and the real actors -- were there eating and drinking and laughing. Large fans were set up to cool these people. This was Hollywood.

On the third day of shooting my stepdad was chosen to play the part of a Coke vendor. He strapped on a tray and was given two six packs of Coke. Why a Coke vendor would be selling drinks to a mob of people fleeing aliens was a question I could never answer, but who cares? My sisters and I had what so many other extras desperately wanted: cold Coca-Cola.

Dozens of people approached my stepdad and offered him 10 times the cost of a Coke. "I'm sorry," he would say, "These are for the movie." Later he would give me and my sisters two Cokes to split between the four of us. It was Hollywood on an Alabama scale.

Weeks after the movie crews left Bay Minette, we received our $50 checks. The memory of 36 hours of hot, humid hunger had long faded. I still had no idea of what the movie was going to be about, but I knew exactly what I planned to buy with my earnings: the Playskool McDonald's Drive Thru. It cost me less than $15. To this day, I don't know what happened to the other $35.

When the movie was released my family went to see it on the first night it played at the theater. Frankly, the movie was boring and I was even more disappointed that I didn't see myself or anyone else in my family.

A few weeks later, my family loaded up the Vega and a U-Haul truck and moved to Gainsville, Fla. I started the third grade at a school where I knew no one. Back in Mobile my classmates had gotten used to my long, dirty hair and my wearing my sisters' hand-me-downs. A new school brought with it not only the pain and difficulty of being different, but also the embarrassment of looking like a kid who transfered from a school in a Third-world country.

During my first week at the new school, my teacher asked me to tell the class something about myself, I knew exactly what I would say to them that would inspire envy and demand immediate popularity.

I stood up and said, "I was in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." I paused to allow for two things to happen: First, allow my words to sink in with my classmates; second, allow time for their excitement to build to a boil over having a celebrity in their presence. I believe one of those things happened.

A blond, curly-haired boy already known for getting laughs raised his hand and asked, "Were you one of the aliens?" His question brought down the house and propelled a new wave of disregard toward me. That asshole solidified his role as the class clown, while I effortlessly stepped into the role of the class hobo.

None of the kids believed me. I thought about going into more detail about the whole experience, but once I considered my memories of being hot, hungry and thirsty; of sitting around for hours with nothing to do; once I thought about the condition of the other extras, I decided I would never convince my classmates that I was in a movie.

But I really was in a movie. Trouble is, I didn't look the part. I didn't look like the people on the movie set who were eating barbeque at a buffet and drinking soft drinks and tea and having giant fans blowing on them.

At that moment, I had an epiphany. I would lie. I would lie my way to popularity.

I started small, simply saying that I got the autographs of the stars from the movie. "I have them framed and hung on my wall in my room," I claimed. Autographs seemed to have a dumbfounding affect on them. From there on, whenever someone mentioned an actor or musician they liked, I had their autograph. Framed and hung on my wall in my room.

Like the BeeGees? I have their autographs. A fan of Roger Moore? I have his autograph. Like the movie "Star Wars?" Not only do I have Darth Vader's autograph, but I have a helmet just like his.

The lie about the helmet got me into a bit of trouble, as some boys actually wanted me to bring it to school to show them. "It's put away in our attic," I said.

A girl I had a crush on was a fan of Andy Gibb. "I have his autograph," I said. As I said it I noticed something different about the way my voice sounded. I was speaking with a slight British accent.

"Are you from England?" she asked.
"No, but we go there so often, I sometimes pick up the accent."

I couldn't believe how gullible my friends were. And they were now my friends.