‘Avengers’ call on Westlakers for help

Mel Maurer gets the Hollywood treatment before his appearance as an extra in the movie, "The Avengers."
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The spotlight may be on the Hollywood actors and production crew that have taken over downtown Cleveland to film “The Avengers,” but a couple of Westlake folks have made their mark as well.

Mel Maurer was recently cast as an extra in the film, after passing by the set on his way to meet a friend. He stopped at the check-in table and was given a role as a guest at a cocktail party. The Westlake resident was matched with a “wife” – another extra – for the scene set inside a German museum. All told, the experience lasted roughly 13 hours, beginning at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 29, and wrapping up at 5:30 a.m. the next morning.

“Really next experience but next time I want my own trailer,” Maurer joked.

While Maurer was posing in front of the cameras, Kathy Schriner was busy behind the scenes. The owner of Kathy’s Kolacke and Pastry Shop on Detroit Road in Westlake was contacted by a publicist for the movie, who wanted to give a taste of Cleveland to the cast and crew.

“We were very excited about bringing [treats] down to the filming,” Schriner said. “We wanted them to know how much we appreciated them coming to our great city, and to show them a bit of our ethnicity.”

Over the next four days, Schriner and her staff got to work mixing, filling, baking and frosting – hundreds of kolackes of all varieties and A-shaped butter cookies topped with silver frosting and black sugar, the “Avengers” color scheme.

On Monday, Sept. 5, the last day of filming, the bakers took their goodies down to W. 3rd Street and Lakeside Avenue. The hard work was worth it when they revealed their trunk full of cookies and kolackes to an impressed “Avengers” crew.