We're Ready For Our Close Up Mr. Gilroy

First things first - answers to the FAQS:

Did you get to see Julia Roberts? Yes, very close up as we were in a scene with her. In fact Mark pointed out that he was "close enough to bite her bum." this caused a very serious lecture by Lisa with the theme that we were enjoying the movie experience and did not want to get thrown off of the set by Julia's very scary body guard and spend the day in a Bahamas jail. I think the lecture worked although Mark did make a couple of scary moves in that direction.

What does she look like in person? Lisa thought she was gorgeous. Smaller than expected - she always imagined her as kind of an Amazon women - but she doesn't look that tall and is actually teeny skinny. Lisa also though she was blooming in what is obviously a pregnant body - this may explain the serious PDA exhibited with her hubby. They were making out and obviously madly in love. Mark thought she wasn't that attractive, but then again she isn't his type.

Did you get to see Clive Owen? Yes, very close up, see above. One of the New York extras (a really nice guy named Scott) turned to Lisa right before the scene was shooting and said, "Wow Lisa, Clive Owen is checking you out!" Lisa had noticed and had already done what any married women standing with her husband would do in the same situation... flirted shamelessly. When Clive smiled at her, she smiled right back. Subsequent conversation between Mark and Lisa...

Lisa: "Hey Babe you know those lists that some married people have where you can write down three famous people that you could break your marriage vows for if ever given the opportunity?"

Mark: "Yeah"

Lisa: "Can we have one of those?"

Mark: "No"

Only joking about all of the above of course. Clive is a happily married man and was probably staring at the gorgeous view of the Cloisters behind us and thinking, "why is that crazy extra smiling at me - I'd better keep my eye on her in case she comes any closer."

Were you in the scene? We hope so! At first we were placed way back on the lawn as distant figures but then they needed folks to cross much closer up and we were moved in to the scene. It was the scene where Clive and Julia meet at a party in Dubai. Watch - it'll end up getting cut!

All in all it was a really great experience. The cast and crew were all very, very nice and treated the extras very well. The owner of the Ocean Club was in the scene as an extra and even opened up the Ocean Club bar for free for everyone after the last day of shooting was over. Very nice. The Director Tony Gilroy was amazingly nice. He came and spoke with all the extras prior to the movie starting to thank us for coming and then hung around at the end to chat with people. He definitely did not need to spend time with the "little people", so it showed he had true character and he most certainly earned a great deal of respect from a lot of people over those few days.

Enough talk - here are the pics...

Lisa, in costume, on set.

Mark, in costume, on set. In the background is the Julia Robert's stand-in, a very nice girl who had a chat with Mark when she heard him talk and realized he was Scottish. Turns out her Dad is from Coatbridge. We all had a laugh about how her Scottish relatives react to her job.

Julia - sorry it's the best we could do. Once Julia's body guard saw Mark with a camera he came storming (and we mean storming) over and said, "please don't do that!", he was a pretty scary guy so Mark put the camera away.

Lisa and Tony Gilroy the Director. See - we told you he was a nice guy!!!

Lisa and Mark's all time favorite person of the entire experience the costume director, Albert Wolsky. Great fun to talk to and obviously a really hard-working and talented man. Six Oscar nominations and two Oscars (All That Jazz and Bugsy) and still way to humble to realize that he has his very own Wikipedia entry. In fact Lisa had to explain what Wikipedia was to him when he asked how one could find out so much information on the internet. Albert rules!