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Feature

One from the mailbag: A True Lies extra gets in touch

Movie Feature

Matt Looker

28th May 2015

I honestly have no idea how he got hold of my email address.

Ever since our super-amazing screening of True Lies, I sometimes feel like I have taken on a one-man mission to remind people that this often overlooked film is awesome. Forgetting the obligatory tie-in features I wrote here at the time of the screening, I also did a piece about it for both Virgin Media and Total Film. Apparently, I really, really like this film. You seen it? It's great.

Anyway, then something amazing happened. I received a badly-written-yet-entertaining email from a mysterious stranger claiming to have read my feature (I have no idea which one, nor how he knew how to get in touch with me) and wishing to tell me stories about his time as an extra on set.

So, to add to my collection of True Lies articles, here is his email in full, partly illustrated where possible with screengrabs of what might possibly be him. To be honest, I studied every frame and I still can't tell which extra he is.

DISCLAIMER: Please consider all spelling and punctuation as [sic]

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I was in True Lies and am one of the two guards in the opening Tango scene. I remember clearly James Cameron explaining to the crew that he wanted it to reflect "keystone cops", in other words we guards were clueless bafoons looking for them in all the wrong places - all the while they're dancing the tango right in front of it. It does seem like an awkward edit though.


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Shooting was from around 3or4pm until well after midnight most nights. The shoot took about a week and ironically the Beginning of the film was shot on the last day of shooting. On the very last day, Arnold "fired off" all the extra ammo from a machine gun into the air while the entire cast and crew cheered and clapped. At this point most of the 200 extras had left and there was only about 50 of us left.


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If you look EXTREMEMLY closely I am in several other shots (continuity) From the beginning of the movie to the best of my memory, I appear...














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Keep in mind this was the week of Brendan Lee getting killed by a prop gun which made me kind of nervous when he was shooting behind me.


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Let's see.. the "Ice" at the beginning was made of wax.


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And yes it was freezing as ever and many of us were severely underdressed, although the snow was mostly fake. The food in the kitchen was all rotted and stunk terribly. At one point, someone took a photo and Arnold personally relieved them of their camera.


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Oh one of the cameramen named Jim with long blonde hair who has worked with Cameron before said the most interesting shoot was on the back of a covered wagon on Dances with Wolves.

I could go on, after all I was there for a whole week. Somehow I managed to sneak a numbered call sheet out of there, but it's in terrible shape. Great memories.

The "Code Name" under which we were booked at the hotel was "OMEGA SECTOR", which was the name of Arnold's clandestine organization in the movie. Hope you get something out of this. Enjoy & thanks for a great site!
Thank you, Mr. Extra, sir Here's hoping the great site you like is this one!

More:  True Lies  Arnold Schwarzenegger  James Cameron
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