Just like an old friend

Two weeks ago, the name Max Cassell didn’t mean anything to me. But seeing his face brought me back to a time in my life I don’t often think about.

I was on the set of “The Sopranos” last week. We had a huge day. Just about every one of the stars were there.

We had 15 principal actors who all had to go through hair, make-up and wardrobe. They all had to be fed, and every single one of their egos had to be handled with precision. I was helping coordinate all of this.

There are three main types of trailers on set for the actors. The star trailers are huge luxury campers complete with a living room, bedroom, full bathroom and kitchen. They have huge TVs and fancy stereos. The three-bangers are one-room trailers with a bathroom and a couch that pulls out into a bed. They have a microwave and a small television. They are called three-bangers because there is room for three actors in each trailer. Finally, the honeywagon rooms, sometimes called eight-bangers, have one very small room, a tiny bathroom, a bench and a radio. They are extremely uncomfortable.

The trailers are lined up in descending order. The star trailers are right next to the set so the actors staying in them have the shortest distance to walk; they are followed by the three-bangers and the hair-and-make-up trailers, and then finally, all the way at the end of the line, are the honeywagon rooms.

On a day like today, when there are a lot of actors on the set, their walks must be coordinated. None of the actors like to wait for the other ones to get there. So the trick is to get them all to set at the same time. This means that the guys in the honeywagon have to walk first, followed by the guys in the three-bangers and then the stars will be “invited.”

On this particular day I was handling the five guys that we had put in the honeywagon. The word on the walkie came: “start walking them.” I knocked on the first door. The standard procedure is to put a piece of tape on the door with the character’s name on it. This particular door said “Benny.”

I glanced down at my call sheet and found that Benny was being played by a guy named Max Cassell. “We’re ready for you, Max,” I said.

Whenever I see people I recognize it always takes me a long time to place them. Living in New York, it happens more often than you would think. I see people from high school in Honesdale, people I know from my days waiting tables at Dave’s on Main Street, people from my classes at NYU, and it usually takes me a second of thumbing through the files of my brain before I can place someone.

But this time, I immediately recognized the face that popped out of the door. It was a face I knew from my childhood—a face I hadn’t seen in a very long time.

I didn’t expect to recognize any of the guys that were parked this far away from set. I had to resist the urge to scream out, “I know you.”

When I was growing up, I loved the movie “Newsies,” a rip roarin’ musical about a young band of newsies who take on William Randolph Hurst by going on strike after a pay cut. It was made in 1994 and stars a very young Christian Bale.

One of my favorite minor characters is named Racetrack. He speaks in a thick Brooklyn accent and smokes cigars. I probably watched “Newsies” 50 times throughout middle school. I remember watching it for the first time with my mom and dad, and I don’t remember doing much with the three of us together.

The face that popped out of the door was none other than an older Racetrack. He had put on a little weight, but it’s been 15 years. His voice was exactly the same, and I recognized him immediately. He obviously had no idea who I was.

It was a different kind of star struck. My breath was not taken away. But instead Max invoked such a clear childhood memory that I felt like he was an old friend. I wanted to explain all of this to him. But I didn’t. I felt like we should catch up, but we didn’t.

Instead we talked of other things, the weather, the crowds of people and the long walk to set.

The people we passed didn’t blink an eye for Max. They were waiting outside all of the other trailers waiting for the real stars to step out.

I dropped him off at set.

“Thanks, buddy,” he said in his Brooklyn drawl.

“My pleasure,” I answered. I was sad to see that he was on set way earlier than everyone else and was going to have to wait for the stars to get there. But he didn’t seem to mind.

I called my mom immediately. She laughed.