My Movie Career

May 7, 2026 by DickH Posted in Uncategorized Leave a Comment

My “Movie Career”

By Leo Racicot

I was foundering in Las Vegas, couldn’t find suitable work to save myself. One afternoon, I was idling in the lobby of The Riviera Hotel when I spied a vending table manned by an attractive gal. Her name tag read: Frankie. Frankie was recruiting people to work as movie extras (in those days referred to as background talent). Throughout the 1990s, Las Vegas was a popular venue for movie productions, much less cheaper to film there than in other locales, and – it offered ready-made sets: casinos, mountain vistas, lots of neon and wide boulevards. I don’t know where I found the courage but I marched over to Frankie and said I was interested. Much to my surprise, she signed me up on-the-spot.

Our first assignment as extras was for a movie called Top of the World with Dennis Hopper, Tia Carrere and Peter Weller (Robocop). Extras were asked to report to Hoover Dam, at sunup. Aunt Helen, who’d always been starstruck and confessed to me and Cookie that her dream when she was a girl was to be a Radio City Rockette, got more excited than I did and told all her friends, “My nephew, Leo’s going to be in the movies!” She kindly let me borrow Marie’s Buick Skylark so I could get to the movie sets. Waking up for an early morning call wasn’t my idea of fun but working on a movie set was exciting, seeing the cameramen, the lights, the director, the actors assembling for the day’s work was something new, something intrinsically thrilling, helped, I know, at a much-needed time to invigorate my flagging reactions to living in difficult Las Vegas, made me see the city and my presence there in a new light. When I saw the faces of familiar actors walking around not three feet away from me, seeing how a scene is filmed, watching how even the greatest of actors (Dennis Hopper) are told over and over to “do it again, Dennis!”, I came to life. One day, I spied Hopper standing by himself nearby. I sidled over, extended my hand and told him how much I liked his work, the anthemic Easy Rider and especially Wim Wenders’ The American Friend, based on Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mister Ripley, one of my all-time favorite movies. I maybe gushed a little bit too much because Hopper looked me over, head-to-foot and said, “Fuck off, buddy!” Oh….kay….

But Tia Carrere was fun to be around, just ‘one of the gang’, talked and joked with us all, as did Peter Weller, just regular-seeming folks. I didn’t much care for the long waits between scene set-ups, the director’s ordering of one take after another. Oy! I remember shooting a scene repeatedly in the 117 degree Vegas sun — the Hoover Dam interior doubled for a prison yard — the crew racing over to each of us handing out endless bottles of water; one fellow passed out from all the walking we were asked to do. I found it tiring but so interesting. Not interesting was the next day’s shoot when we were asked to drive out to Pahrump, Nevada, to shoot a car-chase scene not outside but inside Terrible’s Roadside Casino. Dressed as cops, we were made to run after a red Miata at least 30 times before the director finally yelled “Cut’. When I got home that night, I had a hard time getting my pants off; my left leg was the size of The Hindenburg, and a deep purple. I was so swollen and sore, I had to miss the next week’s shooting schedule and didn’t mind; Who in their right mind wants to chase a tiny red automobile buzzing like a mosquito for hours?!! This show biz nonsense sucks, I thought to myself. But I persevered with my burgeoning “movie career” and had unforgettable fun times. I got to see and kibitz with major stars: Nicolas Cage, Danny Aiello, Darryl Hannah, Kathleen Turner, Joe Mantegna (I almost died when Mantegna sat down next to me one day at the lunch canteen and was talking with me as naturally as you please until out-of-nowhere, he bellowed, “This pizza tastes like fucking cardboard, sent a slice sailing into the air like a frisbee and stormed off.) We all on the set were agog the day JFK Jr. visited his girlfriend, Darryl Hannah, on the set. I’d never seen such a handsome man. I’m afraid I stared at him a little too long and got a dirty look back. This was outside The Jockey Club on The Strip where The Last Don was being filmed. I also, thanks to the extras work, got to meet and chat with guys who’d been working the extras circuit for many years, got to hear their stories about all the actors they’d worked with. I remember chewing the fat with Yul Yazquez, stuntmen Hal Needham and Buddy Hart (who liked to reminisce about his days playing Beaver Cleaver’s pal on Leave It To Beaver), and John Bowman who knew entertainer, Barbara McNair and took us all to meet her for a late night meal at The Sahara. McNair was beautiful, had a great throaty laugh and even laughed at all our jokes.

Thanks to my “movie career”, I got to see local places I’d never have the chance to see: Hoover Dam, Pahrump, Nevada, the interior of the exclusive Jockey Club. I, who had always thought I’d like a career in entertainment, sure learned my let go of that starry-eyed goal; the long hours on sets, rowdy foul-mouthed sets (where I heard words and expressions I’d never heard, saw things I’d never seen before or since), the disappointments (if you blink, you miss completely my three seconds of fame as “Officer Manly” chasing a buzzy Miata — it looks like the thing is chasing me!) — all contributed to killing my Hollywood ambitions (better stick to writing kid). I remember though, most fondly, a fellow extra, Chase Kennedy, who’d quit his job as a Michigan high school coach, to come West to pursue his life long dream of stardom. He was, in truth, a very good actor; he brought me to watch him perform in a drama/comedy at The University of Nevada’s Black Box Theater where Chase really impressed. For some reason, he took a shine to me, even developing a film project and script about the life of Tiny Tim and wanted me to play the lead. That was when Marie’s Buick decided to buy the farm at Rainbow Cinemas and I wasn’t able to make it to future project conferences at Chase’s Henderson, Nevada home. I heard he moved back to his native Michigan, back to his football coaching, his movie career dream left behind on the flypaper-strewn streets of Sin City. It was good fun seeing firsthand the workings on a movie set: the people, the cameras, the lights but I don’t think chasing a car around for hours in a dark casino ever leads to international superstardom.

****