Toasted of the Town: The All-American Rejects "The BeeKeeper's Daughter"

You can say you knew us before we were stars.

Back in mid-January, Jackie invited us all over to the Universal Studios backlot to spend our Sunday as extras on set of The All-American Rejects music video for “Beekeeper’s Daughter.”

We started the day with some takes of us walking down the street…and let’s just say we broke new ground. (As hired professionals, we really explored our characters….What was our motivation? Where were we going?)

We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging around Courthouse Square, just chillin' in front of the clock tower from Back to the Future waiting for Doc Brown to jimmy up the flux capacitor. It is disorienting to spend hours in a "fake" town, kind of like being in the Matrix and not knowing what was real anymore (…can I put my trash in that trash can…or is it a prop?)

After all that walking and standing... we were famished, so onward we went to craft services - the best part of filming anything! Craft services is a hungover and/or menstruating woman's very own Disneyland of food. There is BurritoLand, FajitaPalace, GreaseTown, FriedCity, and of course, the bar. After we properly refueled from our taxing performances, it was time to explore. We changed into our black catsuits and did our best choreographed Pink Panther tip-toe to sneak onto the set next door. There, everyone's favorite syzzurp-drinking asian's Far East Movement were also shooting a video on the wild wild west(ern) set (where Kellie worried aloud “…is this the bad part of town?”)

Everyone knows the sound advice “don’t take rides from strangers” doesn’t apply to golf carts. So when a nice Greg Kinnear-doppleganger invited us onto his for a tour of the backlot, we held tight to our water bottles full of vodka soda and jumped right in! He was especially passionate about us being able to view the Jaws “scene” from the Studio Tour from the street above.

We also drove by Norman Bate’s house from Psycho and popped by Wisteria Lane, but as the picture shows, we could only see it from the vantage of an obstructed dumpster before peeling out in our golf cart to make way for tram full of theme park go-ers. Now that we were stars, we covered our faces and yelled "no photos, PLEASE."

We returned to town square just in time to shoot the video’s finale – a big parade scene a la Ferris Bueller complete with a float, copious amounts of confetti, bands (mariachi and marching), scantily clad devils, showgirls, and Wayne Newton (yes Mr. Las Vegas in the flesh.)