GREENVILLE, S.C. — Bobby BROOKSHIRE already was planning to open a gym here before Hollywood came to town -- it wasn't like the ex-Marine was starting it just to get George Clooney and Renee Zellweger in there. But it wouldn't hurt to have photos of celebrities like that working out, you know? So off he went last year to the Expo Center, where representatives of "Leatherheads" had set up shop to find extras for the film about early pro football, telling them the stars could use his gym, anytime, "for free, no tipping."
Well, that plot never quite worked, though Brookshire still was trying to pass his invite to the actors last week, when they came back to promote their romantic comedy, which hits theaters Friday. But a lot had transpired in a year, and he had more on his plate now than giving stars free workouts.
He had 300-plus fellow extras to worry about, and their big event, a premiere complete with red carpet, searchlights and limo rides for the locals intent on extending their brush with Hollywood a little bit longer.
rom Hollywood's perspective, "Leatherheads" may be most significant for marking Clooney's return to directing, his first time back in that chair since "Good Night, and Good Luck," the Edward R. Murrow biopic set amid the McCarthy-era anti-Communist witch hunts. But his movie about pro football circa 1925 arguably is a higher-risk venture. Featuring two Oscar winners, Clooney himself and Zellweger, "Leatherheads" aspires to a different sort of high calling -- pure entertainment -- and Clooney sets a formidable standard with references to the classic farces of Preston Sturgess and Billy Wilder, the repartee of "The Front Page" and the period flavor of "The Sting."
There's an old-fashioned love triangle too, involving Clooney as the aging footballer, "The Office's" John Krasinski as the college hotshot and war hero Carter "The Bullet" Rutherford, who promises to give the pro game the boost it needs, and Zellweger as a Chicago newspaper reporter assigned to "chop down his cherry tree" (expose the truth about how "The Bullet" got dozens of Germans to surrender in WWI).
All that counted to Bobby Brookshire, however, was that thetale set in the Midwest would be filmed in the Carolinas. The 43-year-old is one of this area's enterprising characters, having promoted tough-man contests (the "Baddest of the Bad") and beauty pageants and operating a businessflying banners over Myrtle Beach, NASCAR tracks and football stadiums.
It seemed like providence, then, that after he decided to open his Fountain of Youth Personal Training Gym, the Hollywood people set up shop here and told him the best way to forward his offer of free training was to write it on the bottom of the forms they were giving would-be extras..
That's how Brookshire wound up wearing vintage '20s garb while playing a peanut vendor, then a sideline official, in scenes filmed on school gridirons here and in surrounding cities.
PERHAPS location shoots are an everyday thing, even an annoyance, in L.A. or New York. But they inspire fascination, and study, in places like this. Brookshire could tell you on which floor of the Westin Poinsett hotel "George" was staying, where they went drinking, where "Renee" got coffee, and which extras got a wink on the set -- or a plum assignment.
As Brookshire saw it, the least fortunate were those stuck in the stands as spectators. A notch up were people like him or Rick Arboscello, a financial planner who was a defensive back in college and hoped to be cast as a football player only to be told he was, at 37, too old. But he hustled his way onto the sidelines, holding a yardage chain post.
They got $75 for eight-hour shifts -- not quite a finance guy's pay -- but Arboscello saw benefits to the hours spent in the extras tent during breaks. "It was a networking opportunity," he said, and Brookshire used it the same way. "Picked up two clients," declared the new gym owner. Still, they had to be a little jealous of 12-year-old Luke Moody, who was picked to double for the film's waterboy. He was given a third of a trailer to stay in, right with the real crew, and shared a tutor with the young Chicago actor Nicholas Bourdages, making his debut as Bug.
The film became a family affair for Moody -- his brothers were regular extras, and their dad, Mark, worked as an electrical contractor on sets. It astounded Mark how the movie people insisted that light switches in a press box look like real ones from the '20s. It surprised him too when Luke got back to his school and did not tell classmates why he'd been away until they asked why his hair had been dyed blond. "Then he told one girl he was going to be in the movie. She said, `Sure you are.' Not many people around here have been in a movie," Mark Moody noted.
That's what made Randy Farmer's experience extraordinary -- the waste water treatment worker wound up in a speaking part.
