The Xtra, Life and Times of a Nobody

By Larry Wallace

This book is dedicated to all the Nobody's in the world, And you know who you are!
It's about time the nobody's get recognition. Haven't the somebodies grabbed more than their share.
After all, are we not the majority on this planet? We outnumber them in life experiences. The author being a nobody himself, has much knowledge and experience in being nameless. It can be quite comforting amid chaotic world we are now living in.
This book will reveal a lot of Truth Bombs, so be ready to take cover!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Larry Wallace
• Release date: Apr 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005869717

Larry Wallace

I am a retired salesman, now living on a mountain top in Colorado. I am an artist, paintings oil on canvas. I am an actor with Big Fish Talent Agency, CO. doing movies, television, commercials and print. My biggest achievement in life was becoming a Christian as a young adult. I and my twin brother hosted a TV program for two years in San Jose California. I was also a Associate Pastor at Calvary Chapel, also in San Jose. I seek the truth no matter how hard it has been covered up! The days we are now living in, truth is like finding a needle in a hay stack and if needs be I will acquire a pitchfork to locate it! Hopefully many will uncover information in this autobiography that will help them and give them a better understanding of the times we live in..

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

The Xtra

The idea to write this story started when my wife and I were on vacation in Rapid City, South Dakota. We were driving down the highway when we spotted a tourist attraction. It was the original set for the movie, Dances with Wolves. It was the frontier fort that Pvt. Dunbar (Kevin Costner) arrived at to get his commission to take charge of a post in Indian territory. As I walked into the fort, I strolled into the commander’s office where Dunbar stood before his superior’s desk waiting for his instructions. There marked on the floor was the exact place Kevin Costner stood for the filming of the scene. I thought, that was really cool, because I really liked the movie, which was filmed in South Dakota about five years before. As I stood on that mark, I looked out the window and the thought came to me, wouldn’t it be great to get in a movie as an extra. My grandchildren would be able to watch me on the movie screen when I am long departed from this world. Very few people in the world get a chance before they die to have something left behind to let people other than their family know they once resided on planet earth. If my grandchildren watch the movie with their friends they could say, that guy in the background, that’s my grandfather! It would guarantee that even though dead I at least may not be forgotten!

My wife and I came home from our vacation to Longmont, Colorado a week later on a Friday, and as I was reading the newspaper, low and behold I spotted a call for movie extras in Vail, Colorado for a Disney movie called Tall Tales. I thought what a coincidence, I had just thought about this idea on vacation. I called my twin brother and said to him let’s go to Vail and sign up. This eventually began a future mediocre acting career. We get there on Sunday and there were at least a hundred people answering the call. We give them our vital statistics; they took a picture of us and that was it.

It was about a week later I get a call from my sister-in-law asking if I had got a call from the movie people, and I said no. She goes on to tell me my brother Gary was chosen to sign up. I thought, great, I’m the one who finds out about this new adventure and my ugly twin gets an extra role in the Disney film. My sister-in-law tells me, I’ll give them a call back and tell them my brother-in-law was the one who started all this and he wants to be in the movie. To make a short story long, they told her, bring him along.

We get to Minturn, Colorado, the movie’s location, and the casting crew begins choosing the wardrobes for the extras. I got dressed fortunately as a miner which turned out to be a featured extra role, in other words you had a bigger chance of being photographed in the movie because the location was at the old Gilpin gold mine, thus the featured miner parts. My brother was not so lucky, they dressed him as an engineer, which he laughingly said made him look like Elmer Fudd and gave him little exposure time for the cameras. While he was stuck six hours sitting in the set crew’s bus with the rest of the extras waiting to be filmed, I was getting close camera time on the 70mm cameras. I thought wow, I am going to be on the big screen ten feet tall! Visions of grandeur! It was a four or five-day shoot and on the last day of the shoot the movie stars were going to arrive, the high light for us nobody extras. Unfortunately, the night before, four or five of us went out for Mexican food. The next morning because of the spicey food, I got this tremendous headache. I asked those around me if they had Tylenol because I am allergic to aspirin. One of the guys said no, but he had some Ibuprofen and said there was no aspirin in it. I took the medicine and almost immediately I felt my breathing constricted and my nose begin to swell. I was familiar with the symptoms. I found out later Ibuprofen has derivatives of aspirin in the contents. I knew I had but a short time to make it to the ER. The movie crew drove me to the hospital in Vail just in time. Anyway, so much for meeting the stars, one which was to be Patrick Swayze. It didn’t make my twin brother very happy either!

CHAPTER 2

In the Front or in the back

All in all, I ended up signing up in Denver with a talent agency because one of the extras was signed up with an agency called Looks, and recommended I go for an interview. I must have had the Look as I was signed up, but what I really had was the look of a sheep ready to be sheared! The first thing you learn with many agencies, thank God not all, my agency Big Fish Talent in Denver excluded, they take advantage of egos and hang you for the cost of lesson after lessons, much like when two young girl I worked with many years ago convinced me to join Scientology. You literally had to take a second mortgage on your house to afford their hypnotizing sessions. A little side about the founder of Scientology, E. Ron Hubbard was a friend of Jack Parsons, founder of Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Both were followers of Satanist and high-ranking Freemason, Alister Crowley, where they practiced Black Magic Sex rituals. Scientology should be renamed ignorant ology where you learn how to have your pockets relieved of all the money you have, making contributions to a billionaire Sex magician! Back to the subject on hand. When you finally do get work at some of these talent agencies, it’s usually as an extra on a movie set, where you end up being nothing more than a human prop or not even used in the film, which is what happened to me in "Tall Tales, a Disney movie which was a major box office flop! Instead of being ten feet tall on the screen I ended up being a two inch by two-inch piece of film on the cutting room floor! Such is the life of a nobody.

Why am I saying all this? Because you have two choices in life, as in the movie business, as in life, you can be in the front or you can be in the back, the place where I have spent most of my life. Unfortunately, I have always skirted responsibility and chose to sit in the back. Am I complaining? No, because I have learned a person is not valued on how much they have or what they do, or have in their bank account, it’s how much they have in their heart account! And I feel pretty confident I can write a few open checks with what I have placed in that account. I have always loved people, maybe because of my American Indian heritage on both sides of my family, Cherokee, Choctaw and Chickasaw, a very poor ancestry on both side of the Underwood and Wallace’s. Because my Indian ancestors survived the Trail of Tears in the early 1800’s, those many miles while suffering at the hands of the globalists, Yes, they have existed since time immemorial, just different in name and form, I am here today! I’ll also mention for kicks and giggles, I had a great, great uncle, Edward Underwood, that was a Deputy Sheriff for Hanging Judge Parker in Ft. Smith Arkansas. My mother received a letter from an Underwood relative many years ago, that the Underwoods were also related to the Dalton gang. Since two of the Dalton brothers were also Deputy Sheriffs under Parker, I guess it could be true, I would have to put them in the nobody/somebody classification.

Talking about being an extra in the movies, when I watch a movie, I always look at the extras in the background wondering who they are, or if they are thinking; this is going to be great to show my friends, or, soon I’ll be off to Hollywood, hope I am not on the cutting room floor! I like to think of them, as just common folk, and I am sure most of them are, as I think of myself, the salt of the earth. There is a scripture in the Bible that says: You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its savor what good is it? Meaning, we being the salted people, whether in poverty, a plain common ancestry, maybe not quite beautiful, but, when possible, make a contribution to mankind to help alleviate those who suffer more than ourselves. We are all made in the image of God, rich or poor. (Genesis 1:27) Which brings me to another scripture in the Bible that gives me great comfort: God is no respecter of persons. (Acts 10:34) Every man, no matter his station in life, has to put his pants on, one leg at a time! So, whoever looks down their nose at you, they are looking down their nose at one of the images of God! Also, the word Nobody is not in the Bible, it’s a manmade word. In God’s eyes we will always be a Somebody.

CHAPTER 3

Poor Beginnings

I have always envied people who knew from the minute they took breath, exactly what they wanted to do in life. I am in my old age now and as is common of the old, less remembered, and still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up! But nevertheless, I have always felt that I have had a purpose in life, probably because of certain incidences that have occurred in my life and family, of which a few I will explain.

I will start with the birth of my father, Junior Paul Wallace who was born in 1921 in Panama, Oklahoma, Indian territory, who when moving to California in 1948, got to be called the prestigious name, Oakie! As I stated earlier, under very poor conditions. At birth, and I am only going by the source I received of our history from my great Aunt Maggie, my Dad weighed only a pound and a half. He was given the comfort of incubation by being put under the heating lamps that was used for raising chickens.

My Dad was a bastard child, his mother being only 14 or 15 years old was, according to dear Aunt Maggie, her sister, was raped by a distant relative while spending the night at a family gathering. To this day my father now deceased, nor I, knows who his father or my grandfather was. That being said, he took on the name of his grandfather who raised him, William Wallace, giving my brother and sister and me a most famous name, thanks to the movie, Braveheart for which I am obviously very proud, not so with the Daltons. My brother and I were most fortunate to have had our picture taken with Randall Wallace, the writer of Braveheart, at the Scottish festival in Estes Park Colorado in 2014. Oddly enough, we resembled Randall and could have passed for his brothers, picture included, sorry, just tossing out one of the highlights of my nobody life, pictured with a somebody! I have also included a picture of my Great Grandfather William Wallace taken in 1900. I did so because of a mysterious face that I discovered that appeared in the backdrop. It looks like a man with long hair and face paint. I have no idea who it could be and how a face could appear in a studio backdrop. The ghost of freedom fighter William Wallace?

By the way, I use the spelling of Xtra in