Felix Otero, a court officer by day, has found work as a featured extra in a movie currently in production in the Bay State. (Photo by Carl E. Hartdegen)
WESTFIELD – Felix Otero is not a criminal but he knows what its like to be wanted.
Otero, a city police commissioner and a court officer working in the Westfield District Court, was on his way home from a side job recently when friends told him that a website he’s a member of had issued an all points bulletin, of sorts, looking not for him but for a look-alike.
A look-alike was needed, he explained, because someone had to stand in for him in a movie he’s in.
Otero has made a hobby of movies but, although he likes watching them, he prefers to make them.
So far he’s only made tiny pieces of several movies and has, more often than not, ended up on the cutting room floor.
He said that he maintains a resume page on bostoncasting.com, a website production companies turn to for extras and bit players when shooting movies in the Boston area.
He said hitherto he has worked as an extra but had a chance for an on- screen speaking part in his latest endeavor, an as-yet-unnamed film directed by David O. Russell and featuring Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner, Bradley Cooper and Michael Pena.
“I went in for an interview for a line (part), didn’t get that part, but they did pick me for a ‘featured’ extra which is why I got this role” he said.
He said that when he was picked he told the producers that, because of a commitment to his full time job, that he couldn’t work on April 3 and was told that was not a problem because he wouldn’t be needed that day.
However, when he finished work on April 2 they said “We’ll see you tomorrow” and he had to remind them that he couldn’t work that day.
So he said, a production staffer came up to him and said “What can we do to get you in here tomorrow because we’ve already started filming your face.”
Otero said that he had documentation showing that they had said they weren’t going to need him and they acknowledged their mistake but persisted, asking what they could do to get him on the set the next day.
Otero said that his said, jokingly, “Well, if you pay me a million and a half (dollars) that’ll cover me the rest of my life (if he lost his day job) and I’ll go any time you want.”
“Or,” he said, “you can get me a sit down dinner date with Amy Adams.”
He said the staffer just looked at him for a minute and then said “I think you’d have a better chance getting the million and a half.”
So, on his way home, Otero said he started getting calls from friends telling him that they were looking for somebody who looked like him to fill in for him on the set.
He said that they found someone who had his size and general features but only filmed him from behind.
He said that he concluded his commitment for his day job before they finished shooting that day and he went directly to the set.
“As soon as I got there they kicked the (look-alike) kid out and put me back in and then they started doing frontal shots for the rest of the night and we filmed until about midnight.”
Otero says that the unnamed movie is based on a real-life story of municipal corruption in a New Jersey town seeking a casino.
He says that he plays a FBI agent posing as a bodyguard for an FBI agent who is posing as an oil-rich sheik to incriminate a corrupt mayor.
He said that his character may be on screen for as much as 15 minutes in the movie and will be him most of the time.
“If you see a (rear) head shot, a shoulder shot, that won’t be me, that’ll be somebody else” he said.
He said that he has had extra roles in about a half a dozen films but never knows if he’ll be in one until it is released.
He said that the last film he worked on, ‘R.I.P.D.’, a movie about a heavenly police department starring Kevin Bacon and Jeff Bridges, is scheduled to be released July 19 and said “That one, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be in for a couple of seconds because I’m standing right next to Kevin Bacon.”
He said that his acting ‘career’ began in 1996 when parts of a move were filmed in Springfield District Court where he was working and the courthouse staff had an opportunity to apply for work as extras.
After that, he said, he was hooked.
He said that he has a blast working on a movie and is thrilled by the opportunity to watch movie actors at work.
