My neighbor in high school was an up and coming movie producer and I used to babysit his young kids ever now and then since our families were close. His career exploded since then and he’s been the executive producer for the Fighter, the John wick movies, Vice, and a bunch others, so 2 degrees away from anyone in his movies. Christian Bale even thanked him when he won the golden globe this year.

He was nice enough to get my college roommate a job as a PA on the movie Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead and he invited me to the set one day where I got to stand next next to Sidney Lumet filming a scene with Michael Shannon (who i didn’t know at the time) and Ethan Hawke (who I later chatted with on his cigarette break). That was the first time I saw him working and realized how big he had gotten. He gave me private tours of the set proudly introducing me to everyone and I grabbed some lunch with him and my roommate.

All the extras on set that day were these beautiful 20-30 somethings filming a scene in a nightclub and notice they were very nice to me and seemed curious and kept staring at me. My buddy later explained that they all assumed I was somebody important since my neighbor spent half the day hanging out with some 22 year old.

Nope, just hanging out with my neighbor.