The Real Extras Speak

David J. Fox’s article “If She Looks Strangely Familiar, Don’t Give Her a Dime,” about the making of “Where the Day Takes You,” really angered me (Film Clips, Aug. 4).

Hollywood Boulevard isn’t just “drug dealers, prostitutes, homeless and other assorted street people.” It’s also store owners, business men and women, tourists and hard-working, honest people. And we wonder why the rest of the world preconceives Hollywood the way we project it in the films we make.

But the real topper was Cinetel President Paul Hertzberg’s hiring “hundreds of people from the streets” to work as extras. He went non-union on the extras--there are hundreds of real extras out of work in this city--and he paid real street people a big $40.

It’s because of people like Hertzberg that a lot of extras worry that they might end up on the streets as real homeless.

GENE POE, President, Screen Extras Guild

Los Angeles