Hollywood Connect E-Newsletter (08-20-09)
The Background
In my first few months in Hollywood, I spent some time in one of the more anticlimactic positions in the entertainment industry, that of the Background Actor. I know you’ve seen them: those seemingly inconsequential people tucked into the corners of film and television scenes, sitting in the coffee shop or walking intently by or engaging in earnest (but silent) conversations or doing whatever it is they’ve been directed to do. In those rare moments you pay any attention to them at all, it’s usually only to wonder, briefly and rather indifferently, what they’re talking about, before you turn your attention back to the lead characters.
Being in the background is not always easy work. Several years ago, the last television scene in which I was as an extra, though shot here in Los Angeles, was set in a New Jersey park in the middle of winter. So the kind folks in the wardrobe department bundled us up in layered clothing and winter coats and sent us out into 90-plus degrees of summer heat. Talk about suffering for one’s art.
It becomes even more difficult as one sits waiting for the grips and gaffers to set up the next shot. Terrifying introspection sets in like an encroaching fog. Did I come here for this? Do I matter at all to this process? Is gracing the background the extent of my calling? While I’ve run into one or two “career” background actors, most actors I know didn’t come to Hollywood with background work as their highest aspiration. Some are even slightly embarrassed to admit they’ve done it, as if it is demeaning to their talent, a selling short of one’s giftings.
So it’s when those times of introspection hit that I try to smile, emotionally hitch up my trousers, and start looking for the deeper truths underlying the situation, those life lessons that help keep it all in perspective and that give me something to do as I stand in my wool overcoat under the unsympathetic sun, sweat trickling down my back.
Nobody wants to be a background actor. We live in a world that elevates the person in the spotlight. The player who is effective at drawing attention to himself is king, and the rest are too often relegated to the background as being of considerably lesser importance. And so, in our search for significance, it is to the point of distraction that we find ourselves striving to escape the obscurity of the background.
It’s easy as modern-day believers to fall into this same mindset: spending a good amount of time, money, and energy trying to draw attention, trying to avoid falling into the background, trying to make certain that we – and our art, our churches, our ministries, our messages – are seen. It’s not that marketing and promotions are necessarily bad. In fact, there’s most certainly a place for it in this information age. But I wonder if the sheer volume of effort that we exert in trying to be noticed is a sign that we’ve missed the abundance of true life to which God calls us.
A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, Jesus said, in reference to us as believers. I wonder if we should focus more on being that city on the hill, rather than worrying about whether it can be seen or not. Because if that city is truly being what it is created to be, it doesn’t have to worry about obscurity – according to Jesus, it can’t be hidden. If the life of Christ is truly being exhibited in us, obscurity will be impossible. Rather than spending our time searching for the spotlight, the light will come from within.
When it comes down to it, our Christian movies, television, music, novels, and most everything else the Christian pop subculture generates to draw people’s interest to Christianity are not really necessary to Christianity. Being a Christian is not primarily about finding a good means of drawing attention to the message of Christ, it is about being the message of Christ.
If I want to step out of the background, it will occur by vigorously being who God created me to be, by living out of the life that He puts inside of me. It is by that direction that each of us escapes the decline into obscurity.
Shun Lee
Director
Hollywood Connect
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