My Hollywood Moment With

Al Pacino.

You cant live in Los Angeles and not have a moment with someone of a celebrity status. The entertainment industry is too pervasive. During my nine-plus years living in the area, I had a few run-ins with the big names which dont really matter for anything, but they made for some interesting moments. Like what? Getting on the elevator with the big guy from Lost. Standing behind the woman who plays the housekeeper on Two and a Half Men. Being on -set at Sunset Gower Studios for Chipmunks 2 and getting hit in the mouth by Jason Lee (purely an accident, maybe Ill explain that one later). Little encounters like that. ******* So how did I meet Al Pacino? Simple. We appeared in a movie together. Okay, yea. Technically, I didnt appear in the movie, because the camera never caught my image--or if it did, then finding me would require a wall-sized TV, HD and a damned good pause button. The whole sequence that I participated in involved camera sweeps and sharp edits, and pretty much left the non-principal actors in a pleasant, unfocused blur. Heres what happened. I got cast for a day of shooting on Oceans Thirteen by Central Casting; Id been doing background for several years, but opportunities for the big movies didnt come my way very often due to my size (Size 12, not the preferred Hollywood industry standard of a Size 2). The location shoot took place out in Woodland Hills or something. Way up the 101. The building used to be some religious worship place, from what I understand, maybe the former property of the Latter-Day

Saints or Scientologists. It had been designed as a theater-in-the-round, and on the day I showed up with several hundred other extras, the production crew of Oceans Thirteen had transformed it into the sumo ring of a fictional Las Vegas hotel. Lots of red. I sat around the upper tier of seats, where not a heck of a lot of action took place, scene-wise. The cameras had all centered on the sumo action--which, for the most part, consisted of overweight white guys in bad wigs, and only a couple of actual sumo wrestlers. Several big names had turned up that day, including George Clooney. But its Al Pacino that got my attention, because at one point, I glanced to my right and saw him standing by one of the makeup department women. After he got touched up for the camera, he looked to his right--and our gazes locked. He gave me what can only be described as a look of recognition, even though wed never met and would never meet. And I knew what he saw when he looked in my direction: a chubby, pale Puerto Rican face stuck in the middle of a crowd of skinny tanned California beauties. Maybe he mistook me for Italian, as some people do, but Im pretty sure that a guy like him knows the difference. My face didnt fit, and when hed casually looked to his right, hed found himself looking at an East Coast face smack in the middle of sunny Southern California. And its worth noting that I did not see an aging actor with bleached/colored hair and glasses. No, the dark eyes that met my gaze shocked me because I found myself staring at Serpico. At the Godfather himself. Age did not come into it at all. Sheer persona swept across that room in my direction. I could feel myself looking at him a bit too long, and I slowly inhaled and looked away from his eyes. His eyes, man! In those brief seconds, the intensity of his gaze made me feel as if Id challenged him in some way, and those dark eyes of his cut across that room and into me like you wouldnt believe. Anyway, the sumo scenes went on and Pacino went down and hobnobbed with Clooney, who won everyones heart during the wave. (The P.A.s started the wave around the circular seating area, and when it came to an abrupt end prior to the shooting of a scene, Clooney jumped up and threw his hands up in the air, then gave a baffled look to the crowd. Like hed missed the memo. Laughter all around.) There is one more moment worth noting. For almost the entire day, Pacino had gone up and down the carpeted stairs to my far right, some sixty feet away. But only other time did he up the stairway near my left, where he passed me in a casual, loping manner. Singing softly to himself. And weve got nothin to be guilty of