As a film extra, I surrendered my device and discovered the extraordinary connections I miss while staring at my screen<\/p>\n
A few Thursdays ago was a wrap. For my brief acting career, that is. One of the benefits of having a writer\u2019s schedule in a city like Paris is the ability to say yes to the flurry of random opportunities that pop up. When an announcement flashed across a WhatsApp group that a Hollywood comedy-thriller <\/em>with an all-star cast and a wacky plot was looking for extras<\/a>, I thought why not \u2013 and sent in a few headshots. (I wish I could reveal more details, but I am, alas, bound by a non-disclosure clause that the production company declined to release me from.)<\/p>\n I had little idea of exactly what to expect. But I certainly wasn\u2019t thinking that one of the biggest takeaways would be spending hours with other people without access to our phones.<\/p>\n Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe<\/a> columnist<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a film extra, I surrendered my device and discovered the extraordinary connections I miss while staring at my screen A few Thursdays ago was a wrap. For my brief acting career, that is. One of the benefits of having a writer\u2019s schedule in a city like Paris is the ability to say yes to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}