Extra Extra

Seated at her desk near a giant “Brady Bunch” movie poster, Michelle Durbin takes a swig of mountain-spring water, adjusts the black scarf tied around her neck, then speaks carefully into her telephone headset. “Hello, guys,” she intones, planting a recorded message on the Cenex Casting hotline. “I’m booking ‘Melrose Place’ for Monday. I need all-ethnicity guys to be ad agency employees looking 25 to 40 years old. I also need a hospital patient. You must have your own pajamas, robe and slippers.”

From its headquarters in a pink-and-white office building on Burbank Boulevard, Cenex places nonunion extras--at rates starting at $41.20 per day--in the background of TV shows and movies. This afternoon, Durbin and nine other casting directors are working to fill the orders: “ER” needs about 40 extras, “Melrose Place” more than a dozen. Thousands of actors registered with the agency dial the hotline daily. I made the same calls not long ago--I signed up after I saw an extra stumble past the camera on “Seinfeld” (Hey, I could do that), but the best Cenex could muster was a role as a squatter on “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” complete with full facial dirt. As I baked in a wool cowboy suit under a punishing sun, I abandoned any aspirations of background stardom.

Durbin punches a string of buttons on her jumbo desk phone. She speaks to each caller with the mildly sympathetic air of a well-adjusted 911 operator. “What’s your Social?” she says, bypassing any pleasantries. She types the extra’s Social Security number into a keyboard and watches as the caller’s photograph appears on her monitor. Extras on “Melrose Place” require a special look, even if they only dart past Heather Locklear. Durbin describes it thus, pausing after each word as though revealing a timeless casting truth: “Upscale. Short hair. Cleanshaven.” She likes the look of a young Mel Gibson type with cropped hair and a blue-collared shirt. She anoints him an office worker on “Melrose,” then transfers him to a recording with directions to the set.

By late afternoon, Durbin’s “Melrose” order is almost complete. She punches another man’s Social into the keyboard only to see a gaunt, pale face with long, stringy hair appear. She puts the caller on hold and shakes her head. “See,” she says, pointing to the hair. “That’s just not going to work on ‘Melrose.’ ” She taps a button on the phone. “Sorry,” she says into her headset. “I can’t use you today.” Durbin leans back in her chair and sighs. Then she looks at me. “Now you,” she says, “you would be perfect . . . .”