BREMERTON — I walk into a room in the Kitsap Conference Center called Glacier Cove 2 with my friend Wade. It’s 9 a.m. on a Thursday and I’m a little groggy from the night before. Wade lives in Cle Elum. We don’t see each other often so we had a few beers and played pool with a group of lesbians at A & C Sports Bar. We won on a technicality.
Glacier Cove is a strange place. About a dozen people do about dozen things. There’s a pair of sailors in blue coveralls with pale faces and dark red circles around their eyes. They look strung-out. There’s a nurse in blue scrubs. She looks healthy. There’s man with blue skin wearing dusty, black wingtip shoes, tight red pants and a black dress shirt. He looks dead.
Or at least half dead.
His name is Keith Allan. Fans of Syfy’s “Z Nation” know him as a smartass antihero named Murphy, humanity’s best hope of surviving the zombie apocalypse due to a government experiment that left him more or less immune to zombie bites.
“It’s a great character for me,” Allan said. “I have a lot of fun playing him.”
Allan, along with 36 other misfits from “Z Nation” are in Bremerton to film a handful of scenes on the USS Turner Joy on Sept. 24.
“It’s cool,” Allan said. “I mean, how many times do you get to film in a destroyer?”
It happened almost by chance. In August, Bremerton City Councilman Dino Davis was touring businesses in Eastern Washington when his group stopped by the “Z Nation” set in Spokane. A producer named Jodi Binstock said the show was in need of a Navy ship and asked if anyone had one.
“I said, ‘I know a guy,’ and we got to talking,” Davis said.
That guy was John Hanson, president of the Bremerton Historic Ships Association. Hanson jumped on the chance to host the show.
“I think this is going to give us a lot of exposure,” Hanson said.
After exchanging a long series of emails, the ships association and “Z Nation” were able to come to terms: the Turner Joy would close its doors to the public for one day so the crew could film in exchange for what Hanson said was fair market value.
While hosting the show was a no-brainer for Hanson, he admits he was hesitant to work with the cast and crew. He imagined they’d be fickle and pompous.
His preconceptions proved to be false.
”It was way more fun than I ever expected,” Hanson said. “(They) turned out to be delightful, kind people who were just a lot of fun.”
Wade and I check-in with Jennifer Gatts, who’s in charge of extras casting. They call her the “Zombie Mama” because she manages all the zombies. Today she only has to wrangle 11 extras, including yours truly.
This is my first time as an extra. All I can think as I stand inside Glacier Cove is “Don’t break anything” and “Try not to look lost.” I think I got one out of two.
Wade isn’t lost. Wade’s worked as a zombie extra on “Z Nation” since it began filming in Spokane a year and a half ago. He’s been stabbed in the head with a backhoe, blown up by a grenade, set on fire, decapitated and shot through the eye.
He figures he’s been killed on-screen at least 10 times, but “Once you’ve died for the fifth time they all kind of blend together.”
Gatts checks us in and then points us over to wardrobe where they’ll turn us into sailors. I slip into a set of navy blue coveralls that fit me like a trash bag.
Next, a makeup artist named Corinne Foster gives me the same pale face and red eye circles as the other sailors. Wade tells me she did Tara Reid’s makeup on “Sharknado,” which explains why she isn’t star struck by a reporter from the Patriot.
When she’s finished, I take a seat by the other extras out of the way of the costumers and makeup artists. It’s about 9:45 a.m. I won’t be taken to the set until 12:15 p.m.
Scientology and “Battleship”
The hard part of shooting on a ship is the space, namely the fact that there isn’t any.
“This is the first time I’ve ever shot anybody on a true naval ship,” said Marc Dahlstrom, production supervisor. He oversees everything that goes on during the three days “Z Nation” is in town. “The trickiest thing has been the tight quarters.”
The ceilings are low and the hallways aren’t much wider than a doorway. They’ve tucked us extras away in the chief petty officer mess until we’re needed.
Allan found some problems of his own.
“I keep getting lost,” he said chuckling at the thought of the ship’s ins and outs. “It does make you claustrophobic.”
The extras are divided into three roles for two scenes: two Navy SEALs and five sailors who’ll be running through a hallway, and four sailors who’ll be in the ship’s bridge. I’m with the bridge group. Wade’s the only extra who’s been on the show before and ends up in both scenes.
The other guys in my group are Leif Layman, a 19-year-old actor and bioengineering student at the University of Washington, Zach Archuleta, a 20-something actor/student/bartender/massage therapist from Seattle and Joshua Hamilton, a 30-year-old actor with an undergraduate degree in theatre from Eastern Michigan University and a master’s degree in theatre from the University of Florida.
We spend hours in the chief’s mess; my group won’t be called to set until 5 p.m.
One of the SEALs announces that this — the waiting — is what the military is like and, as a former Marine, I’d have to agree. Both offer a never ending supply of “hurry up and wait.”
I spend much of the afternoon listening to a few guys debate Scientology and the merits of “Battleship,” a 2012 Navy vs. aliens flick with a 34 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
We break for pizza at Boston’s Pizza at 2 p.m. Outside the Turner Joy are a few fans hoping to see the actors. Hanson tells me one of them waited seven hours to see Allan and Nat Zang, who plays 10K, a young sniper with thousands of zombie kills.
“It’s always nice to be pleasantly surprised by the fans that show up,” Allan said.
“Z Nation” is far and away the most popular project Allan, 41, has starred in. Most of his film career has come in the way of one-off roles on TV shows. Fandom is a new sensation for the guy who used to sell blenders at the Puyallup State Fair to make ends meet.
“I actually love it,” Allan said. “To have people who are excited about the show and to meet you — there’s nothing bad about it.”
Looking into the Matrix
Allan steps behind me. I don’t see him, but I know he’s there. I’m sitting in the bridge before a glowing, green screen called a range azimuth indicator.
“What does this even do?” Allan asks, pointing over my shoulder to the screen. He’s 6 feet 2 inches tall, but his long arms and legs make him seem bigger.
I tell Allan I can see Matrix code in the screen. The only person I hear laugh is Wade. I’m still not sure if that was with me or at me.
For most of the scene, Allan is standing two feet behind me. A couple times he’d turn back to me after a take and comment on another gizmo in front of me.
But that’s one thing I notice about Allan: he’s engaging and people enjoy being around him.
Allan and I — and about 10 other people more important than me — have crammed ourselves into the bridge. It’s where the higher-ups plot the ship’s course and strategize maneuvers.
My jobs is to act like I know what I’m doing while maintaining an empty, expressionless look on my face. It’s the role I was born to play.
The other extras — Layman, Archuleta and Hamilton — have the same instructions: stare at your screens and turn knobs. They sit side-by-side on the other side of the bridge. Wade sits behind me near the door where the actors will enter the scene. He’ll have his face buried in some complicated-looking contraption.
When someone calls “Action!” I start turning knobs like I’m playing with an Etch A Sketch and not a radar system used during the Vietnam War.
Allan and his counterparts (I’d tell you who, but I’ve been sworn to secrecy) exchange a tense dialogue for a few minutes. His voice is deep and smoky, as if his vocal cords were aged in a barrel of Jack Daniels.
This goes on for two hours. The director, John Hyams, and the cinematographer pick a camera angle, shoot the scene a few times, pick a new angle and repeat.
The seat I’m in is killing my back, but I’m afraid to stand. There are lights and equipment placed throughout the bridge and it all looks fragile and expensive. I figure moving about would jeopardize my original goal of not breaking anything.
In all, the scene takes about three hours to shoot for what I’m guessing will be 2-3 minutes of screen time. If that. It’s the final scene for the sailors, so we’re sent packing.
Wade and I turn in our costumes and thank the “Zombie Mama” for her help. We head back to my place to catch-up on the latest episode of “South Park.” Along the way, we swing by Safeway and pick up a few beers.
ABOVE: Bremerton Patriot reporter Peter O’Cain on set.
