When I asked my friend Tim why he wasn't going to the casting call for the new Scorsese flick, he gave a good reason.

"It just couldn't get better" he said.
And for Tim, it really couldn't. When we signed on to be extras in "The Departed" a few years ago, we were both assigned to be in the Red Line subway car with Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Sheen. Tim was tapped to stand next to Sheen, and when "Departed" came out in 2006, he was delighted to see a 30-foot version of his face in the right-hand margin of the screen.
Nothing could possibly satisfy his dormant narcissistic impulses more. Since the only part of me in "Departed" is a sliver of my left ear, I wanted to try again.

So, earlier this year, I went to a BU administrative building and stood in a four-hour line with my wife and three of our friends, waiting for a casting agency to snap our photos and consider each of us for a walk-on.
All we knew about the film at the time was that it was based on a Dennis Lehane book called "Shutter Island," and was to begin filming under the working title, "Ashecliffe." It would also star DiCaprio.

They were casting for two scenes; a World War II flashback, and one based in a psych ward in the '50s.
The five of us kept busy determining who in the herd was trying to be a serious actor and who was there as a lark. As for us, we were somewhere between the student who had nothing else going on that day and the well-groomed guy with expensive head shots. We couldn't determine where to place the woman dressed in a period-appropriate nurse costume.
When we filled out our paperwork for the casting agency, I was the only one who checked the box saying I'd be willing to dye my hair or shave my head.

I was the only one to receive a phone call two weeks later.