Sketchy Doings 2 : Cinderella Man

As a follow up to my previous post featuring sketches from my life and their related stories, I thought I would share with you some more sketches and stories, from my time working as a movie extra, on the set of Cinderella Man in Toronto during the summer of 2004.

As mentioned before, most of the shoot took place in the location of Maple Leaf Gardens as a stand in for Madison Square Gardens. There were several hundred people, all dressed up in period garb. Processing each morning took the better part of an hour, and then we would stay in a holding area to wait to be called out to the set. It got pretty hot in that area, what with the crowds and collective body heat. Added to that the heavy woollen clothing we all had to wear, and I found myself reflecting on the culture of the past, with it's focus on enduring discomfort for the sake of maintaining decorum. The production people placed giant fans in the area, but it was quite an itchy scratchy situation all around.

Once we were out on the set, everybody got into character, with the men tipping their hats to the ladies and so forth. It was nice to see folks acting so classy. Of course as the shoot went on and the heat started to get to everyone that behaviour began to fray somewhat, but it was good while it lasted…

Here are a few of the Production assistants AKA crowd wranglers. Once on the set we would be herded into various positions around the ring and back in the crowd - one interesting aspect of this was the "doll crew". They would place these dolls throughout the crowd, further back from the camera's main depth of field. The dolls were basically stuffed cloth torsos with arms and pillows for heads, dressed up in jackets and hats, with the final touch of these creepily realistic face masks attached to their heads. I wish I had thought to sketch one of those things but they kind of freaked me out.

Those of us back in the audience would be placed in between the dolls intermittently and encouraged to jump and wave our arms, creating movement to fill out the crowd. And so, in between shots, a lot of the extras started to "bond" with the dolls - posing with the dolls to take pictures with their phones, arm around shoulders, lifting up their hats… After a while the leader of the crew, whom everybody called the "doll man", got on the microphone and asked everyone to stop playing with the dolls because it ruined continuity and his crew couldn't keep up with fixing the disruptions.

There was another thing certain individuals did with the dolls… As I mentioned, these dolls were simply torsos; nothing from the waist down. And so these guys would place the dolls in their laps and mimic copulation while their friends looked on laughed. Eventually the doll man had to get on the mic and ask everyone to please stop humping his dolls.


Here are a few pictures of Russell Crowe. One day I was up in the bleachers and sketching him between shots. He seemed to notice me, and went over to a P.A. and mentioned something in his ear, and they both discretely glanced up in my direction. So I just kept drawing away, and a few minutes later I noticed over my shoulder another P.A. standing in the aisle behind me. By then I'd switched to sketching people in the crowd, and when I looked back at the ring, Crowe was leaning forward on the ropes, staring directly up at me.

I raised up my sketchbook - a little 4x3" notebook - towards the P.A. so that he could see that I was drawing pictures. The P.A. took a look, then turned to Crowe, miming a sketching motion with his hand, and mouthed something like "he's drawing". I turned the notebook back to Crowe so that he could see that it was a drawing, and he nodded his head and went back to his business.

That night when I got home, I went on the internet and found out the reason for his concern. You will notice that in one of those drawings, Crowe is smoking a cigarette while wearing his gloves.

The news story I saw that night was about how Crowe needed an assistant to put a cigarette in his mouth and light it for him, due to the time it takes to lace up a pair of boxing gloves. This was treated as an example of an elitist movie star making his own rules.

Somebody in that crowd was taking notes of some kind, either on paper or in their heads, and sold the information to a news org. But it wasn't me, and so my sketch was no part of the story, which suited me just fine.

There was something like three different fights shot there, and so I found myself sometimes placed back in the crowd and sometimes closer to the ring. Here are some of the people near the ring, including Angelo Dundee, real life boxing trainer legend, who was in Crowes' (Braddock's) corner. Also shown is Art Binkowski, who played Corn Griffin - he is a real boxer who grew up in Mississauga. There were also a few local Canadian actors placed around the ring, playing different roles.

There were guys playing old school cameramen in the crowd. I asked this gentleman if his camera shot real film, because I thought that would be a really interesting promo idea. But no film, just acting. And he was pretty convincing. There was a lot of stylish accoutrements around the place, little touches… I often would find myself feeling transported back in time, until someone would say "yo" or something.

While wandering near the ring I was checking out some of the period equipment, microphones and radios and typewriters, but if I stayed too long I was shooed away by somebody, so no chance to get a decent sketch. When near the typewriter I checked the paper and saw that someone had written some kind of anti Bush screed on it, with all sorts of colourful descriptions, let's just say…

All in all it was a most interesting experience. We also did an outdoor shoot for the shanty town scenes, but I didn't bring my sketchbook for that, which was dumb because it was an all nighter. Also the shanties were very picturesque and would have made great drawings. Then again, it wouldn't have been long before the light was no good.



One notable event back at the Gardens was when Russell Crowe led the crowd in singing "Oh Canada", the Canadian National Anthem. Now a lot of people bitched about him making us wait while he played basketball or something, or about his temper on the set, but to me this was a solid move on his part. We were the last people to sing our National Anthem in Maple Leaf Gardens, and politics aside, that to me is a little bit of history and I was glad to have been there for it.