Business editor plays lobbyist for feature film
By John Temple Ligon temple@thecolumbiastar.com

Photo by Emzee Hilliard One day on the set by one actor...John Temple Ligon starts his acting career on the set of Nailed.

The movie being filmed in Columbia, Nailed, is a $25 million feature with Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Biel. Gyllenhaal plays a newcomer Congressman from Indiana, and Biel is the "nailed" waitress storming Washington for improved healthcare delivery. Biel's waitress gets hit by a nail gun, and the penetration in her skull causes a peculiar sex drive, which Gyllenhaal much appreciates.

The call went out weeks ago from the extras casting director, Columbia- based Tona Dahlquist. She wanted people of all shapes and sizes to assume any number of roles. Interested actor wannabes were to send a résumé, a recent photograph, and contact information.

I did, and I got a call Friday afternoon, May 2, to show up on the set of the Statehouse grounds Monday morning, May 6. I was told I should plan on acting as a lobbyist, and I should dress as a lobbyist. I was also instructed to call a certain phone number before showing up Monday morning. The number would tell me where and when to show up.

Photo by John Temple Ligon And all that money...movie trailers line Sumter Street during taping.

I left my place Saturday morning at 3:30 to take a trip to see the Jasper Johns exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Since I was to be a Hollywood actor on Monday, I felt obligated to stay at The Plaza the Saturday before. I even sat through a movie at the Paris Theater behind The Plaza on 58th Street just to stay close to the theme.

I got back around one o'clock Monday morning, and I set the alarm for 7:30 to get an early start on the set.

The phone rang around seven Monday morning to ask me where I was and to urge me to come on down to the set on the Statehouse grounds. I then heard I should have called over the weekend. They wanted me at 6:30 Monday morning.

I dressed in my tan poplin suit - suitable for a Southern lobbyist - blue button- down Oxford shirt, and a patterned red silk tie.

I arrived by eight o'clock and stood before Tona Dahlquist in her casting tent in the Statehouse's backyard. She said I did look the part of a lobbyist, and she walked me over to see the assistant director who then led me to the props table for my black leather briefcase. My costume was complete.

My job description was also complete. I was to hide behind the west side columns in the south portico of the Statehouse until I saw the signal to walk out from the columns and down the steps to the halfway landing, whereupon I turned to greet the rising Gyllenhaal and Biel and their entourage. Together we walked to the top of the steps while I tried to explain the better points of my bill in order to hustle Gyllenhaal, just like a lobbyist.

I thought the first try was a sure success, and I couldn't understand why we had to do it again, and again, and again, and more times than I could count. We even took a lunch break at one o'clock so we could return to repeatedly walk the steps in that scene for the balance of the afternoon.

For us newcomers, the most impressive sight on the set was the expensive equipment, and the gargantuan scale of that equipment, and all the people necessary to operate it. After the first hour of filming, the informed nail sunk into my skull with estimates of what all this production could cost.

How much of this money was being spent in South Carolina? For the day, most of it, including my extra's fee.

The South Carolina Legislature has recently returned to an attractive incentives package to lure big- budget film production into the state to throw around lots of money among us resident South Carolinians.

From what I saw in my one day of impersonating my lobbyist buddies, film production is grossly inefficient. They take all day for one scene with a huge population of local extras, tons of expensive equipment, and ample supplies delivered by local services.

Then if the movie makes it, people from all over the world buy tickets, talk about the movie and its setting, and the production companies come back to South Carolina for another run. And over the long haul of the slow decentralization of the American film industry, maybe production studios and other permanent film making fixtures get built in South Carolina. It has already happened elsewhere outside of Los Angeles and New York City. So why not here?

The system works.