In a North Hollywood studio, actor Jack McGee is stripped down to his boxers, his legs duct-taped to a chair in a room draped in plastic sheets. He’s not playing his best-known role of Chief Jerry Reilly in the TV series “Rescue Me” but the unlucky owner of a nightclub, sweating profusely as a mobster and his goons threaten to cut off his legs with a chain saw.

His crime: luring the mobster’s younger brother to perform in drag because the kid couldn’t get other work in California.

The short film, “Ordinary, Average Guys,” a cross between “Goodfellas” and the “Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” doesn’t have a distributor. The cast and crew are working free, and it’s being shot over just three days. And its not-so-comic subtext — that jobs are scarce in California — isn’t likely to warm up studio executives.

That doesn’t faze industry veteran Mike Kehoe, the film’s director and co-producer. Kehoe and his colleagues hope to use the film to promote awareness about the economic consequences of so-called runaway production and build support for stronger incentives to keep filmmaking centered in Southern California. Kehoe and his colleagues hope the 20-minute movie will be featured in a festival they’re planning that would showcase short films that are shot in California and public-service announcements highlighting production flight.

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