Lights, Camera, Action...

[Bob M.]

About two weeks ago, three officials from our local chapter, including yours truly, acted as ‘extras’ for an upcoming episode of “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.” We played, as you might expect, what else…football officials. The plot of the episode is an attack on a child at a private school – Chestnut Academy. The actual setting was Nutley (NJ) High School, the alma mater of two great Americans, Martha Stewart and Robert Blake. Our shot consists of a single play during a high school game. As the down ends, the two stars of the show, Chris Meloni and Mariska Hargitay arrest the coach while the teams, the cheerleaders, the fans, and of course the officials look on in disbelief. The episode is scheduled to appear on January 4th on NBC, 9:00 EST. In the scene, I play the part of the umpire. It wasn’t difficult once I bulked up on a few Snickers Bars. They even paid us (scale) for the appearance, and since we actually are officials, we got a “Special Ability” premium. (A lot of coaches we work for would probably take issue with that!) It took about 2.5 hours to get the scene to the director’s satisfaction. Expect that our scene won’t take more than about 30 seconds. For all we know, we might end up on the cutting room floor. By the way, Meloni has quite an arm. While everyone was getting ready, he was throwing ‘ropes’ about 30-35 yards downfield. Mariska can throw it pretty well herself, but has no directional control. She nearly hit me in the head after which I threw my flag at her!