' ' Cinema Romantico: Shout-Out to the Extra: The Naked Gun Version

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Shout-Out to the Extra: The Naked Gun Version

Shout-Out to the Extra is a sporadic series in which Cinema Romantico shouts out the extras, the background actors, the bit part players, the almost out of your sight line performers who expertly round out our movies with epic blink & you’ll miss it care.

Before we get to the extra we have to first discuss what happens in the lead-up to the extra's appearance. That is to say, the California Angels (1988, y'all) and Seattle Mariners are contesting a do-or-die one game playoff to see who gets into the playoffs. And that do-or-die one game playoff just so happens to be attended by the Queen of England. And it just so happens that chief villain Vincent Ludwig (Ricardo Montalban) plans to have one of the baseball players unwittingly* (*it's complicated) assassinate the Queen of England. And it just so happens that Detective Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielson) catches wind of this nefarious plot and goes undercover as head umpire at the game to try and deduce the assassin's identity. And it just so happens that this leads, as it must, to a massive brawl between both teams when Drebin gets a little too big for britches. But it just so happens that Drebin still manages to stop the assassin in the nick of time. And it just so happens that Ludwig then absconds with Drebin's girlfriend up the aisle, hoping to make a getaway. So. All of this has just happened. A brawl. An assassination attempt. The assassination attempt being thwarted. The Queen of freaking England saved. And now a guy with a gun is fleeing up the aisle with a hostage in tow. And as he does, he charges past a spectator, bumps into the spectator and sends the spectator's popcorn bag tumbling to the ground. It is the popcorn bag of this specator.....

"Hey! Where'd all my popcorn go?!"
It's a bit tough to see, I know, and I apologize for the low grade quality of the still, but still, there it is, our faithful extra with the popcorn bag his character, so to speak, has picked up after having it knocked from his hands, and intensely studying the bag's innards only to realize that, alas, it is now sans popcorn. You would be forgiven for suspecting that a man who has just seen an assassination attempt of the Queen of England thwarted a few seats over and has a madman with a gun and a hostage in tow rush right past him and bump into him might suddenly himself an unconcerned with his popcorn, but that's just not how this extra decided this guy would roll. This guy paid for his popcorn, dammit, probably paid a lot, and now this gun-wielding hostage-taker has gone and sent all his precious popped corn tumbling to the disgusting cement? That's a bummer, man, whatever the context. 

Pour one out for the extra.


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