Commentary : EXTRA CREDIT ON ‘LAW & ORDER’

I would like to say, “Hope you didn’t miss my appearance� on “Law & Order� the other week. But you almost certainly did.

On the other hand, I did what I set out to do when I served as an extra on this cops-and-lawyers series: I got a little background on what it’s like to be background.

You don’t really see TV extras, and aren’t supposed to. Who, you might ask, would make a practice of such selflessness (and at $99 for an eight-hour day--or one-third that, if you’re not in the Screen Actors Guild)? Some are people who are trying to break in. Others, people trying to stay in. Whether pragmatists, dreamers or simply deluded, they are people who crave kinship, however distant, with that business the song says there’s no business like.

That was part of what I learned one recent Tuesday. At 7 a.m., I reported to Pier 62, the studio facility on the Hudson River in New York, where “Law & Order� films.

Besides my total of eight seconds of face time (spread over three don’t-blink-or-you-miss-them shots), the episode, titled “Humiliation� and which aired Nov. 22 at 10 p.m. on NBC, was distinguished by the fact that Assistant District Attorney Claire Kincaid (Jill Hennessy) got to try her first case.

My shining moment (and “moment� is the operative term) came during a big courtroom scene, in the jury box. That was me in the second row, snickering on cue. For all of three seconds.

Shooting on the courtroom set consumed most of the day, but we “jurors� were needed only when the cameras were pointed in the jury box’s direction.

At 8 a.m., we were ushered in for about an hour of shooting.

At 10, we were needed again for a later scene where the camera pans across the jury box and then fixes on an actress named Jean Richards, who, as the forewoman, wasn’t an extra but a bit player with a couple of lines: She pronounced the verdict.

Not until 4 p.m. were we summoned to complete the earlier scene. That took another hour.

The rest of the 10-hour day we spent hanging around the Extras Holding Room, noshing on bagels and cream cheese, reading and rereading newspapers, swapping accounts of jobs finished or coming up or hoped for, showing off your snapshots taken with stars on other shoots, lining up for the phone to check with your service for news of possible jobs and maybe stretching out across a row of chairs for a nap.

In landing work as an extra, heredity, it seems, is destiny. Of the 20,000 resumes and photos on file with Sylvia Fay Casting, which provides all of “Law & Order’s� extras and bit players, the look (body type, ethnicity, gender, age) is everything.

Donna Leichenko has an Asian look.

“Being an extra is a good way to observe how the business works, without the pressure of performing,� says the recent graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, who moonlights as a sales clerk at Bed, Bath and Beyond. “I just do it, learn what I can, and let it go.�

And then there’s Monty Banks Jr., who at 75 is stooped but still dapper, with a trim, chevron-shaped mustache. He said he originated the role of Alfalfa in the “Our Gang� comedies, co-starred in a picture with Mae West and once knew Marlon Brando, whose Method acting style signaled “the end of what we called the theater.�

Today, Banks’ thespian urges must subsist on roles as extras, and even those are few and far between. His last job, he said, was in February.

“But this is the profession that spawned me, and I want to die in it,� says the grand old trouper in a voice no one needs, another of the extras you wouldn’t have noticed.