Something To

It’s hard to be smooth in a green blazer and navel-high trousers, but Daniel S. Jacobs ’05 is up for the challenge. Perched on a bench outside Wellesley College’s Spring Fling dance, he draws a cigarette from his pocket and chats with his date. Two of the young woman’s friends approach the bench; there’s only one proper thing for a gentleman such as himself to do. As dusk falls on the campus, the dashing young Harvard man rises to his feet and escorts the three ladies inside.

Jacobs, along with Michael A. Silverman ’05, served as an extra in Mona Lisa Smile, a Revolution Studios drama which recently wrapped up a week of filming on the Wellesley campus. Billed as a counterpart to the 1989 hit Dead Poets Society, the film stars Julia Roberts as an idealistic postgraduate who arrives at the prestigious women’s college in 1953 to teach art history. While Roberts has received the lion’s share of media attention over the past week (including a large front-page photo in the Boston Herald), her supporting cast is no less impressive, including Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden, HBO’s Dominic West and teen favorites Kirsten Dunst and Julia Stiles. Mike Newell, best known for 1994’s Four Weddings and a Funeral and the 1997 mob flick Donnie Brasco, directs the film.

The film’s Harvard connection, though, began last Wednesday when casting director Kevin Fennessy approached Michael J. Mager ’05 and Mark E. Andrews ’05 outside The Wrap on Mount Auburn Street. While Mager and Andrews were eventually unable to participate in filming, they managed to recruit Jacobs and Silverman for the job.

After signing the necessary paperwork at Fennessy’s Harvard Square office, the pair reported to Wellesley for what Silverman described as a “rushed” costume fitting. He described his wardrobe—double-breasted suits, loose slacks, and old wingtip shoes—as simply “very ’50s clothing.” Jacobs, however, was much more blunt. “I looked as though I had borrowed my clothes from a recently deceased grandfather,” he said.

Nor was Jacobs a fan of the haircut that followed. “They chop your hair really short and try to make you look like a ’50s Harvard prick,” he said, citing his laid-back California sensibilities. “They succeeded.”

Newly retro in their appearances, Jacobs and Silverman proceeded to the Spring Fling set, where the assistant director paired up men and women, giving each couple a precise location and activity to perform. Silverman’s task—offering to pour his date a glass of punch—was relatively simple, while Jacobs’ required him to smoke several herbal cigarettes from the prop department.

After a handful of takes, the extras were done for the night, though they weren’t immediately dismissed. According to Silverman, they spent “about five hours” of down- time mingling, munching on catered Chinese take-out, and watching television. “It seemed like a waste of time,” he said.

And while the movie set was certainly new for the students involved (none had prior acting or movie-extra experience), they were less than enamored with the frantic atmosphere. “These people took their jobs more seriously than you could imagine,” said Mager, who witnessed some of the on-set preparations. “Some of the extras even had agents. It was pretty humorous for us.”

Even catching a glimpse of a celebrity could be strangely disappointing. One starlet, whom Silverman declined to name, “has terrible skin, but you’d never know that if you didn’t see her in person.”

At Wellesley, the filming (which will return in January) capped months of preparation for the college’s first filmed-on-campus motion picture. Revolution Studios initially contacted Wellesley administrators about the project in late April, according to Mary Ann Hill, Director of Public Information and Government Relations. After college administrators reviewed the script and “[agreed] to the portrayal of the institution,” Hill wrote in an e-mail, preparations began to ready the campus for its role as itself circa spring 1953.

“For the spring scenes, spring flowers and plantings were brought in—dogwood blossoms were braided into trees, and azaleas were planted,” she wrote. “Other changes were less obvious...crosswalks and street lines were painted over, fire hydrants were painted black, [and] signs were camouflaged with greens.”

Fennessy also held a casting call at Wellesley, which attracted over 900 students in search of silver-screen magic and an $81 daily stipend. Wellesley sophomore Laura Young, one of the 200 extras chosen, said the experience was authentic to a fault.

“They really went for period outfits...right down to period underwear,” she said of her costume, which included a girdle. “Your waist size went down about two inches.”

Once filming began on September 29, the campus geared up for the logistical challenge of filming a movie during a normal school week. “Physical disruptions included relocated parking, rerouting of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, and noise associated with the setup of the scenes,” Hill wrote. “Given the scale of the filming...and that it occurred during the fall semester...I believe that the filming went very well.”

While Mona Lisa Smile was originally scheduled for a late July 2003 release, recent reports suggest the film will not arrive until the Thanksgiving movie season next year. But whenever the film finally hits theaters, Jacobs and Silverman will certainly be watching. “I plan to...have a glorious glimpse of myself smoking cigarettes and hitting on a date a foot taller than I am,” Jacobs joked. “Film critics will be talking.”