If you’ve seen GREASE, starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, then you’ve seen the only movie I’ve been in. I was an extra in the scene where Sid Caesar as coach of the Rydell High football team leads a pep rally for the football team. I am one of the students at the pep rally cheering for good old Rydell High. After the coach’s speech, a bunch of students run in circles around bon fires. I am wearing a white Rydell letterman’s sweater with a big red R on the lapel. If you blink, you’ll miss me.

I often joke that most of my acting career ended up on the cutting room floor. When the movie was in theaters, I could clearly be seen, but when the movie was shortened for the DVD market, most of my precious few seconds were deleted. The movie was filmed in Los Angeles at Huntington Park High School. I had to stay awake all night, two nights in a row, to film the evening pep rally sequence. When Sid Caesar addresses the pep rally, he tells a corny joke and we were instructed to laugh, to cheer wildly and enthusiastically, pumping our fists and jumping in the air. The first few takes, it was easy to appear enthusiastic, but as the takes wore on, it became difficult to muster the energy and the required enthusiasm. As I watched Sid Caesar compose himself each time, and tell the same corny joke again and again with the same energy as the first telling, I realized what was required of great actors and comedians. Many people can tell a joke once or maybe even twice, but to tell the same joke forty times in a row with the exact same energy and enthusiasm is challenging.

John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John were big stars before GREASE. Travolta was popular for his role as Vinnie Barbarino in the television show, Welcome Back Kotter, and he’d been nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever. He was only twenty-four when he was nominated and he is still one of the youngest male actors ever nominated. Olivia Newton-John had already sold millions of records and was one of the world’s most popular artists at the time. Her GREASE single, “You’re the One that I Want” became one of the most popular singles of all time.

During the filming, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John didn’t disappear to their private trailers. They seemed very down to earth to me as they sat in the dining area and ate at the long high school lunch tables with the rest of us. When I was in wardrobe or in makeup, they were often hanging around right next to me.

As I waited on set, in my Rydell High letterman's sweater, fans lined up and stuck pads of paper at me. So many young men and women wanted my autograph. It is still the only time in my life when I was asked for my autograph.

To date, something like $400 million has been paid to see the movie GREASE. I was paid about $300 for my two nights of work, but I loved it so much, I would’ve paid for the privilege.