The winner of this item will receive David Watkinson’s original 4″ x 9″ 2002 INVITATION to the PRIVATE CAST AND CREW SCREENING of COLLATERAL DAMAGE with a signed copy of his autobiography MY NORMAL PARANORMAL LIFE: Radicals, Angels, Aliens and Hollywood.
Collateral Damage is a fictional movie about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character fighting terrorists from Columbia.
David Watkinson’s autobiography contains the following anecdote about working on the movie:
“2002 — After working with one of the friendliest actors in Hollywood Jeff Bridges on the movie K-PAX, I got to work again with one of the most unique actors, Arnold Schwarzenegger in Collateral Damage. I’ll get to something funny concerning a scene with Arnold, but first I need to describe the situation. I had a lot of graphics to do for an FBI computer screen that someone would be operating. The director Andrew Davis told me that since I would be working on graphics between scenes, I might as well be the FBI agent operating the computer.
So wardrobe dressed me and I took my place at the computer next to the actress Jane Lynch. I thought of it as essentially being an extra. A crew member thought I was an actual extra. He saw that I was working in Photoshop and said to me, “Good for you, you’re learning Photoshop.” I had only paid attention to the graphics description in the script and not the characters, so I didn’t realize that I was playing a character that actors would be addressing.
Throughout the scene, actor Miguel Sandoval and another actor said things to me like, “All right, David, let’s get ready. Here we go, David. Can you zoom in on that, David,” etc. At first, I thought they were ad libbing and considered responding until I realized it was scripted. The scene ended with Schwarzenegger running into the room, grabbing a hidden bomb and throwing it through the window as it exploded. After Arnold saved us, I went outside the sound stage to have a cigarette where a production assistant was entertaining a few other crew members. He did an hilarious imitation of Arnold pounding on the door saying, “Open dee dour! Ders a bomp in dare!! Many years later I saw the guy on the Conan O’brien show recounting the incident, when he was a PA working for Arnold. It was the great SNL comedian Bill Hader!”
