BEIJING — When you have a movie calling for 700 eunuchs, it’s good to live in a country with a potential pool of more than 1 billion “extras.” And this is the place to find them: at the gates of a compound called the Beijing Film Studio.
Just after 6 a.m., a crowd swarms the entrance to the studio, which has become a mecca for wannabe actors across China. Most are migrant workers, but they hunger for a bit of celluloid to counteract a tough, often dull, existence.
By some estimates, 100,000 people land in front of these gates each year looking for infinitesimal roles as policemen, soldiers, pedestrians. The odds don’t favor wallflowers, which prompt many to toot their own horns.
“My skill as a master of oral instruments sets me apart,” says Han Shixi, 43, a farmer, emitting a sound somewhere between a trumpet and a Bronx cheer from his pursed lips.
Others sport court jester hats, sequined blouses and cowboy hats in a bid to stand out when casting crews show up looking for bodies to populate the country’s steady diet of action films and period dramas.
In the case of director Zhang Yimou’s “Curse of the Golden Flower,” more than 4,000 extras, including 700 “specialists,” or eunuchs, were required, presumably castrated only in the filmmaker’s imagination.
Han won’t win any beauty contests. But his etched face is an asset in landing minor gangster parts in crime dramas.
“The first time a director saw me, he said, ‘I want you to play a thief, flirt with the woman, then sexually assault her,’ ” Han says, before launching into a few of his old lines: “This time we go to a cargo station, see? We don’t make any mistakes, see?”
Others say their emotional depth helps them land roles, even if most amount to little more than breathing, or not even that: Some play corpses.
After a couple of hours, casting agent Meng Ying arrives at the gate, choosing four people at random from the crowd.
“We’re looking for foreigners for commercials,” he says after noticing an overseas reporter. “You free?”
A source of inspiration is Wang Baoqiang, a Hebei village boy who haunted these same gates in 2004 before catapulting to fame. In August 2008, Wang was voted the most popular TV actor in China.
At his studio, Wang, 24, now surrounded by publicists, producers and hangers-on, reflects on the dream he embodies for many extras.
“I know many see their hope in me,” he says. “As an extra, I lived in a shabby room and earned a few dollars a day. Now, I’m supporting my parents. I feel like I’m living the dream.”
Some say extras need to be realistic.
“It doesn’t happen very often that you pick somebody,” says director Feng Xiaogang, who discovered Wang. “I don’t want to waste my time teaching them.”
