You can pay to play ... an extra

Attention, well-heeled amateur actors: Remember the best and worst times you ever spent as part of a theater audience -- and prepare to emote.

The producers of the new movie “The Producers,” based on Mel Brooks’ Tony-winning Broadway musical, are looking for several hundred people willing to pay big bucks to charity for the possibility of a smidgen of screen time. They’ll play theatergoers registering “applause, disgust, surprise, anger, laughter and other emotions” as they supposedly watch “Springtime for Hitler,” the horrifying, hilarious musical-within-the-musical.

Participants will pay from $250 to $2,000 to benefit the New York charity FoodChange -- though larger payments won’t buy more prominent places in the audience, a spokeswoman says.

The extras will spend a long day March 14 at Broadway’s St. James Theater, home of the stage version of “The Producers.” They won’t get to see that show, however: It’s dark Mondays, and the stage will be occupied by movie equipment. However, they probably will get to see the movie’s stars, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.

In recognition of union contracts, a number of paid union extras will be sprinkled among the unpaid amateurs.

The idea for the benefit was hatched by FoodChange executive director Richard Murphy, who brought it to a colleague from the L.A. nonprofit world, LA’s BEST President Carla Sanger -- the wife of “Producers” producer Jonathan Sanger.

On the project’s website, www.producersmovieevent.org, and its links, potential extras are given notes on how to dress and groom as if it were 1959 (“Cover up those tribal tattoos and lay off the Botox so we can see the real you!”). Men might be required to submit to a shave and a haircut if they show up with 21st century beards and hairdos.