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My Bollywood Close-UpWorking as an extra in Mumbai's Film City.

By David SegalPosted Thursday, Jan. 8, 2009, at 12:54 PM ET

My big Bollywood break came while I was walking down a side street in Mumbai, talking on a cell phone to a man named Imran.

"How many people with you?" he asked.
"Just me."
"No problem. You got long hair, short hair?"
"No hair," I said.
"No problem. You how old?
"Forty-four."

"No problem. OK, meet tomorrow at the Bandra train station, west ticket counter. Eight a.m., work till 8 p.m. Give you food, makeup, costume, transport. Pay 500 rupees. Put you in Bollywood movie, OK?"

You could call Imran a freelance talent scout for the film industry of India, except—as our interview suggests—he's not looking for talent. He's looking for white people. Bollywood requires a few dozen Western extras every day, to add vérité to crowd scenes in ostensibly exotic locales. Imran's job is to find foreigners and chaperon them to Film City, an expansive badlands of rocks and shrubs at the northern edge of this megalopolis, where most of India's movies are made. I got his phone number through a reporter in Delhi, but usually he finds you, trolling local tourist sites.

Slate V: Escape From Bollywood

Until recently, Imran had an easy job. He and his underlings could meet and enlist as many as 50 extras with a day's notice, no problem. But that was before Nov. 26, when a group of heavily armed men went on a sadistic, three-day rampage that ended with 163 dead. Since then, the tourism business all across India has essentially flat-lined. During a recent three-week trip through the country, I saw way more armed guards than Europeans and scarcely any Americans. Every large and pricey hotel now has a private security detail, and you can't get near the front door until the undercarriage of your car has been checked for bombs and all your luggage has been wanded. The creepy part is that once you're waved through, it's often just you and the staff in a huge and empty lobby.

Every corner of the tourist economy is suffering, Imran's included. "It's the worst I've ever seen it," he told me.

So, good news, all you laid-off American workers: Bollywood is hiring. If Plans B, C, and D don't work out here in the United States, remember, there's a guy in Mumbai who can use you tomorrow. And the day after that, and the day after that. There are, of course, easier ways to earn what amounts to $10.50 for a day's work. But none of those jobs involves tacky outfits or close proximity to celebrities you've never heard of. And it's hard to imagine another job that ends with a grown man pouring bottled water on your head and sternly instructing, "Just walk normal!" as the camera begins to roll.

The day started at Bandra Station, where I was immediately spotted by a lanky 24-year-old employee of Imran's named Sikander. He bought me a ticket and we both jumped onto a northbound train that seemed to come straight out of Slumdog Millionaire and which, even on a Saturday morning, was packed with commuters. We got off a few miles north, at Goregaon Station, then hopped in a tiny auto-rickshaw, which took us the last few miles, over a bumpy dirt road. When we reached the entrance to Film City, I was expecting something show-bizzy—some lights, a few signs, anything. Bollywood produces more than 900 movies a year, grossing billions of dollars, and this is the creative epicenter of the business, the home of nearly every back lot. But there's just two desultory guards and a gate, which was raised without any check of ID's.

Everything about Bollywood, it turns out, is ramshackle and improvised. The area around the set looked like some bargain lover's idea of summer camp—a dirt road, a bunch of wood buildings with tin roofs. I was promptly delivered to the costume department, where men speaking Hindi started draping me with a variety of dress shirts, ties, and dated-looking business suits. I'd been pegged immediately as "middle-aged business dork" and ended up in a pink striped shirt, a thin black tie, and a tight suit of green and blue fabric that looked like industrial carpeting. I assumed from my outfit—wrongly, as it happens—that the movie was set in the '70s.

The only other Westerner to show up was a 26-year-old from Buenos Aires named Maia, whom they put in a colorful frumpy dress with a big red rose in the middle of the neckline. "I look like a clown!" she shouted. "Why do they want me to look like a clown?"