05/ 25/ 2006
by Sandy Siegel
Joe Biggins hangs out with some real dolls--though some might call them dummies. But Biggins isn't fazed. After all, these dolls are the core of his one-of-a-kind business, the Inflatable Crowd Company, which supplies plastic mannequins for crowd scenes in movies like "Million Dollar Baby," "Cinderella Man" and "The Phantom of the Opera."
When Biggins moved to Los Angeles in the late 1990s, film production, not "crowd control," was his goal. He started as a production assistant but ended up doing odd jobs—things no one else wanted to do. "The most interesting project I ever got was trying to find an economical way to fill the crowds for the movie 'Seabiscuit,'" says Biggins, then an assistant to the movie's line producer. Working with a manufacturer in China, Biggins designed a mannequin made of inflatable plastic that could provide the dimension missing from the traditionally used cardboard cutouts, yet still could be shipped flat. Ultimately, 7,000 of his creations joined the real extras in the racetrack scenes.
By the time "Seabiscuit" hit theaters in 2003, Biggins had a growing business. His unique solution to an age-old Hollywood dilemma landed him more work—and a front-page story in the Los Angeles Times. "The media attention all of a sudden let everybody know about it at the same time, and that was kind of how we blew up," he says, laughing at his unintentional pun.
With about 40 films to his credit, Biggins works from a 6,000-square-foot warehouse filled with 30,000 inflatable torsos, along with clothing, accessories and face masks. His staff of six trains the workers who are hired on location to help inflate and set up the mannequins. In an hour, a crew of four or five can have more than a hundred dolls blown up, dressed and camera-ready.
Biggins knows his "extras" someday could be replaced by digital technology. But he's not worried. "I've gotten to meet a lot of great people in the film industry," he says, "and hopefully we'll come up with something else." After all, the guy's no dummy.
