It's a little ironic that after living in L.A. for a few years I made my film debut whilst living on Orcas Island, located in your upper-top, lefthandest corner of your map of America.

Like everyone else here we wanted to get away from it all, and like most folk we're excited when a little bit of it comes looking for us.

First I should say this: I don't have a background in cinema or theatre. I was Rudolph in the 6th grade school play, but my right antler fell off as I entered the stage, everyone laughed, and I didn't spend much more time thinking about it.

Like so many other things, it's kind of my wife's fault. She heard the casting director of Practical Magic on the local classic rock radio station say that they needed "guys with long hair" for extras.

Casting was to be in Friday Harbor, next island over, and I thought it might be fun. I'm not going to lie to you: delusions of grandeur danced in my head. I admit that I can't imagine anyone with a lick of sense taking one look at me and not thinking I should be a star. So I went.

There was a big line of people out the door of the high school gym and into the parking lot. I was the only one with a can of Foster's, so I felt somewhat ahead of the game.

We finished up the paper work, and the casting director came out. She explained that she'd be casting for a number of scenes, so everybody had a shot. She said she especially needed guys with long hair for the "hippie wedding scene." She finished with a flourish, looking at me and my circa 1973 Robert Plant coiffure, and said "you're hired."

I was particularly pleased that I'd spent so much time filling out the paperwork thoroughly, noting that my talents, among others, included "speaking with a British accent," and "conversational German."

So I'd been recognized after all. A few weeks later I got a call that the "hippie wedding scene has been killed, but I'm going to use you as a Puritan."

It didn't sound like quite as much fun, but what the hell at least I knew they weren't type-casting me. At my costume fitting I was declared, again, "perfect."

We had to show up at the shoot at 4:45 a.m., so I took the last ferry over and slept in my car, which at the time was a glorious canary yellow '75 Camaro with a 350 and a 4-speed Hurst right where you'd want to lie.

I had the stereo cranked as I pulled into the lot. I have to say that it was one of the most beautiful scenes I am ever going to see. A big red sun was just beginning to rise through the thin clouds beyond the jagged coast. The site was about as picturesque as even these islands (regulars in National Geographic) get, but atypically airy and open without trees. Trucks and tents and the self-important accoutrements of The Industry stretched the length of the plot.

They had orange juice and doughnuts. We got to hear some people that really knew what they were talking about describe the scene in technical terms that we mostly couldn't understand, but it turned out that we were to attend a hanging of a witch.

At the key moment the rope would break thereby proving to all us simple-minded folk that she really was a witch and we would run off in terror.

Sounded reasonable enough and they led us off to put on our costumes. The Puritans, pure of heart though they may have been, knew absolutely nothing about comfortable shoes. They wore these square things with unnecessary buckles and thick unpadded soles.

Not good for running away in.

Another setback was when I was informed by one of the underlings that they'd have to shave my sideburns, as Puritans didn't wear them.

My delusions of immediate insta-Stardom were already wearing a bit thin, and I was in no mood to be ordered about by underlings.

I informed the underling that I wouldn't shave my sideburns, and that I'd be happy to go home instead. She was all pouty and puffed and was about to agree that I go home when the casting director who had declared me "perfect" walked by and told her to build me a beard.

Hooray for aesthetic principals!

It took forever for everyone to get dressed, especially the ladies. The Puritan ladies apparently required a great deal of protection. No culture for quickies in the backseat of a Camaro, they.

It must have been mid-morning by the time we finally got ready to shoot the scene. I was already hungry and the sideburn business was still sticking in my craw. If I hadn't retained some hope of being discovered, no matter how increasingly remote; in other words if I'd had a brain in my head, I'd have gone home right then.

I didn't. They yelled action and all that and the preacher went into the 23rd Psalm about the shadow of death and the rope broke and the witch came right at us...she was pretty scary allright. Actually it was an extra who was willing to put the rope around her neck and jump off the gallows that came at us, and they assured us that in the real movie someone else, someone really scary, would be coming at us.

So we ran. Then they did action, and the 23rd Psalm, and the rope broke and we ran again. The terrain was so rocky but we kept running long after the cameras left us. We all wanted to impress them with our dedication.

Soon we also wanted to impress them with our ability to eat lunch, but the Psalm kept repeating about fearing no evil, then the rope would break and we'd run fearing it. We must have shot the scene, and limped back on now-calloused feet to shoot it seventeen more times before lunch, which finally happened around 3 p.m.

The sprawling catered affair we'd been promised turned out to be macaroni & cheese, Alpo burger, and rotting fruit (the cast and crew ate King Crab in a segregated tent). I was starving and my beard (which the flunky had informed me was "very valuable" and "cost about $500") was in the way.

I decided that at some point you have to have priorities and ate like the kind of animal the food was fit for. It took the flunkies about 40 minutes after lunch to get all the pasta pieces and burger bits out of my honeydew-dripping beard.

Then we went back and did the Psalm and the hanging and fleeing bit again. And again. And again. And again. It must be said that we fled less swiftly now, we'd all gorged on lunch and there was no small amount of grumbling about our treatment. I don't believe that I was the only one expecting a seven-figure deal to result from my involvement.

Finally it was all over, the sun got too far down to shoot anymore. We headed back and got dressed back in our real clothes and waited in line to have our time cards signed. We'd been out there nearly fourteen hours, and stood to make almost a hundred bucks.

They were all there at the end of the line, the casting director, the real director, a couple old guys with sunglasses, the guy in the bomber jacket that kept yelling at us what to do, more flunkies.

"It is without mixed feelings that I announce my retirement from cinema," I declared, "It's been a brief and unambiguous career, unfulfilling and unrewarded. I don't care if the public comes to terms with their loss or not."

The bigwigs laughed, and some Puritans behind me applauded. It was definitely the high point of the day.

Still and all, they did take our pictures and phone numbers. Who knows but what some day some director will see the two four-second pieces of the film I ended up in (unrecognizable in my expensive beard) and think...."THAT'S HIM!" and I'll be a big star.

Until then I'll just rest on my laurels, and the adoration of my mother. She said, "I saw your movie, and I saw you in it! I think it was you..."

show's over folks, throw your popcorn box on the floor and go home