Extra endurance (3)

No business like show business

A plank bed and a small table are all the furniture you'll find in the small shack that Xu calls home. He rents the space for 260 yuan a month from villagers in Shilihe, C­haoyang district. Last Saturday, he only had 100 yuan in his pocket.

Most extras struggle to make a living. Their payment for showing up in a scene is usually 30 to 40 yuan a day. Those with speaking parts can earn 100 yuan a day, most extras told Metropolitan. But the chances of getting such roles are rare.

"Most of the opportunities are monopolized by the brokers," said Xu, referring to the people who cultivate contacts with both film crews and aspiring extras. Whenever a film script calls for extras to fill out a scene, the brokers round them up. "If you don't have a good relationship with the brokers, you'll hardly ever get a chance to perform," said Xu.

In actuality, films often allocate quite a decent wage for a walk-on role. After deducting for the crews and brokers, however, only a small fraction of the money actually goes to the extra. According to the official media report in the May 3rd edition of the Procuratorial Daily, there are so many people who want to take their cut of the extra's payment that "even if they offered 10,000 yuan per head, the extra will only end up with 40 yuan."

Also, there is usually no official contract between the extra and the crews or brokers, which means extras have no recourse if accidents happen or if brokers break their promises. "Getting nothing in return after a whole day's work is not uncommon. But what can we do?" said Hu.

To survive in Beijing, Xu gets up late. "I wake up at 11 in the morning, so that I can eat one meal to serve as both breakfast and lunch. I usually eat steamed buns, and drink tap water. Then I take a cheap bus from my place to Beijing Film Studio," said Xu.

Hu has taken odd jobs to make ends meet, but often finds himself at the mercy of unscrupulous employers. Once he was told to distribute flyers for a company in Wangfujing; when he got the sheets, he found they were contacts for prostitutes.

"I felt humiliated and threw all that junk into the trash can," he said.

Another time, he was hired as a security guard, but after two days he found that he was working for a black prison that illegally detains petitioners. "The moment I discovered the truth, I quit," he said. "I could not make money by doing that."

Hu scored a walk-on role in the The Assassins, the 2012 historical epic starring Chow Yun-Fat, but he did not go see it at the cinema. "The ticket was too expensive," he said.

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