Was Jim Carrey at Memorial Stadium?

For a lucky few, it was almost as thrilling as a bowl game.

Jim Carrey and Zooey Deschanel cheer during a scene from "Yes Man" shot in the Los Angeles Coliseum. It stood in for Nebraska's Memorial Stadium for some shots of the actors. Thousands of Big Red football fans can now claim to have been in a Jim Carrey movie, if only as tiny red dots in a wide-angle shot at Memorial Stadium.

A select slice of Husker Nation scored bigger. Plucked from among hundreds of extras, they sat next to Carrey in game-day crowd close-ups shot in Los Angeles.

"It was a kick. It was fun," said Dennis Osmondson, a retired Los Angeles police officer who grew up in Omaha. "One time Carrey turns to my wife (Donna) all jumping up and down, grabs her and dances around with her."

Carrey's new comedy, "Yes Man," finds the rubber-faced funnyman at a University of Nebraska football game, painted red and white and wearing three plastic ears of corn.

He and co-star Zooey Deschanel end up in Nebraska when they ask at the airport for tickets on the first flight out of town.

Various Cornhusker flags and other props were at Memorial Stadium during the Oct. 13, 2007, Nebraska-Oklahoma State game when filming for "Yes Man" was done at the stadium. In the movie, which will open Friday, Carrey plays a man in a deep rut who must learn to say yes to opportunity.

Husker fans seized the opportunity, too, though they take up only about 30 seconds of the movie.

Two crews shot footage around Lincoln and at Memorial Stadium on Oct. 13, 2007, a day Nebraska lost to Oklahoma State. Cheering fans, the tunnel walk and other home-game rituals were caught on 35 mm film.

Carrey never visited Nebraska. In some shots, he and Deschanel appear on a Nebraska background through technology.

For some crowd shots, Memorial Stadium had a stand-in: the Los Angeles Coliseum. The stadium may not be the real deal in every shot, but hundreds of fans surrounding Carrey are the genuine article.

David Max gets some credit for that. Max, a native of Tilden, Neb., was acting president of Californians for Nebraska when casting agents called.

"We've got about 500 active members," Max said recently from his home in Irvine, Calif., where he is an emergency-room physician's assistant. Huskerpedia.com, a Web site he created in 1999, told Big Red fans in the Los Angeles area of their chance to be in a movie.

The Osmondsons answered the call.

"Once you're a Cornhusker, you're always a Cornhusker," Dennis said last week from his home north of Los Angeles.

In Phoenix, Omaha natives Kent and Fran Titze got word from a friend.

"We're season ticket holders, and we go back to Lincoln for as many games as possible," Fran Titze said.

About 700 extras, including about 225 rounded up through Max's Huskerpedia, showed up at the coliseum the morning of Jan. 11. They ate a catered breakfast under large tents, and many got costumes from a semitrailer truck filled with Big Red gear.

Real fans, who came in their own costumes, were hand-picked to sit next to Carrey. The Osmondsons wore Husker sweatshirts, had a Huskers blanket, and he had a Husker cap - all in red, of course.

"The way my wife and I were dressed, they pointed at us: 'You two, go sit right there,'" Osmondson said. "So we sat right next to whoever the star is."

Osmondson, who rarely goes to the movies, had never heard of Jim Carrey.

Dave Fitzgibbon, of the university's Office of Communications, said Warner Bros. first contacted him in August 2007.

Of all the college football teams out there, why were the unranked Huskers chosen?

Peyton Reed, who directed "Yes Man," said Nebraska made a nice visual contrast to urban scenes in Los Angeles.

"And it was amazing to get to shoot at a game," Reed said by phone amid a press junket in Beverly Hills last week. "As a director, I'm always looking to find visual opportunities, and we got some great rooftop shots from the top of Memorial Stadium."

He said the Nebraska segment is his favorite in the movie, although it's only about four minutes long. It's also a turning point in the plot, when the characters Carrey and Deschanel play realize they're in love.

Marty Ewing, one of the movie's executive producers, said Nebraska is "known on a grand scale for its football, among other things. There's a degree of quaintness and innocence, too, that suit the love story."

Fitzgibbon was at both locations, making sure trademarked images would not be used in a way that reflects poorly on the university. He recently said no to letting Adam Sandler wear a Nebraska shirt in another movie. The script was too vulgar.

Fitzgibbon said he was amazed at the money and manpower spent on the Nebraska segment.

"They went to such an amazing level of detail," he said of the Los Angeles shoot. State trooper jacket patches, Lincoln police badges, even Valentino's Pizza boxes looked like the real deal.

For the Lincoln shots, the university got a $10,000 location fee, which went into the marketing budget, and something more.

"We get international, free publicity - publicity that would be too expensive to buy, that we could never afford."

The fans got some fun, along with their paychecks.

"It was a great time," Max said. "Carrey was outgoing with us, had some banter going back and forth. And we got to hang around with Nebraska fans for a few hours. That was a lot of fun, too."

Some numbers...
84,334 Fans in Memorial Stadium the day of the Lincoln shoot.
$10,000 Fee paid to the University of Nebraska to film there.
3,400+ Theaters the movie will open in next weekend.
700 Extras in Los Angeles who played Big Red fans.
225 Actual Big Red fans who served as extras.
$65 Approximate pay for each extra. 4 Minutes of the movie that take place in Nebraska.
2 Film crews that shot footage in Lincoln.
0 Minutes Jim Carrey spent filming in Lincoln.

Article courtesy Bob Fischbach of Omaha.com

::The Razzi::