Wednesday, October 22, 2003: On the Set of
The Great Director on the set!
On October 22nd, I got together with my friends Kel, Chriswife, and Keeffie to venture into NYC to watch a day's filming on David's House of D set. Thanks to good friends with good information, we thought we knew exactly where to go.
The catering signs were our very first tipoff that we were on the right track...
...followed by the cheerful catering guys handing out the goods!
They told us that burgers and hot dogs were going to be the lunch du jour. Those are the makeup, wardrobe, and other trailers in the background on the left.
Turning around toward the next block, we saw the first telltale To Set sign.
Following it, we got closer...
... and there they were! Movie sets!
There were several circa-1971 storefronts, including a thrift shop and this barbershop.
This is me, Kel, and Chriswife posing on the set!
Next to the barbershop was a wall of circa-1971 billboards and posters, including these vintage Texas Chainsaw Massacre posters.
This old-fashioned phone booth was on the corner. It took us a minute to realize it was a prop, but then it dawned on us that there aren't actual phone booths in NYC anymore!
Across the street from the sets, there were several old cars parked, with age-appropriate license plates and HoD info sheets on the dashboards.
This was an info sheet on the windshield of a van around the corner. Because there were several more copies inside on the dashboard, I tried to make off with this one, but alas -- a sharp-eyed security guard came out and took it back.
Suitably mortified, I went on my way. Chriswife phoned home and told her family to set bail if we were arrested...
This was some of the lighting equipment that came out of the big red Panavision truck.
As the crew appeared on the set, they began to transform the street -- to take it back in time. Old-fashioned street signs were put up to camoflage the modern ones, and a plastic covering was peeled off what we had taken to be an air-conditioning vent on the side of the Armory building to reveal a plaque reading Women's House of Detention.
Suddenly, The Man Himself appeared on the set.
He was immediately surrounded by people with clipboards who were apparently full of questions, and spent nearly the next hour holding forth while the details of set decor were being finished off.
The first Hair Look of the morning was dampish and slicked-back.
At one point he spent several minutes apparently in an animated description of something he wanted to happen in the filming, while the clipboard-bearers listened attentively.
Orlando Jones appeared on set in the Screaming Day-Glo Orange Sneakers of Death. "Ooohhh, nice shoes!" David shouted as Orlando approached.
Orlando passed us a few times during the day, but he always had an air of Going Somewhere, so I didn't try to stop him for a pic. Maybe I should have anyway -- he was terribly cute. Once when he went by, I said, 'Those shoes are killing me!" and he nodded and smiled said "Thank you!" very brightly.
It was a chilly morning, and before long the fuzzy gloves came out.
Kel calls this a pic of the gloves. Yeah. Right...
David looked completely at home at the hub of all the activity.
When Orlando reappeared a little later, he was wearing a snazzy suit, a long multicolored patchwork leather coat, and a green Panama hat with a big red feather in it. The Sneakers of Death were nowhere to be seen.
They rehearsed the scene several times, David and Orlando conferring between takes and measuring and remeasuring the distance between Orlando and the second-story window where an actress inside grasped the bars with her hands.
That camera crane is really something. I think even the cameraman operating it was on the ground. It looks like while the camera's flying around on the end of that crane, the director and his cronies get to sit in this little tent thingie and see exactly how the shot looks on the monitor.
The security guys were very concerned with keeping the crowd of onlookers from standing still and blocking the sidewalks, so we all milled around the edges of the set, going from corner to corner on the block. I struck up a conversation with a very nice guy who had brought one of the vintage cars to the set, and he even tipped us off to the restrooms downstairs in the Armory, so we didn't have to scout the neighborhood for others...
...so we can even say that as part of our adventure, we got to use the official movie-set ladies' room! :-)
Eventually we wandered across the street to have lunch at the pizza place on the corner. We made sure to pick the corner table where we could keep an eye on the goings-on across the way. We were just coming out when we saw David going off around the block toward the trailers and catering, and we lamented that we were on the wrong side of the street at that moment. But we went across the street and loitered by the steps of the Armory in the middle of the block on general principle, figuring he might come back the same way.
Only a few minutes after Chriswife's hubby had come to pick her up and Keeffie had stepped out to take a second look at that movie-set ladies' room, Kel and I looked up and saw David coming back down the block toward us. We didn't even think twice -- she whipped out the camera, and I walked up the block to meet him. "David, do you have a second for a picture?" I asked him.
"Well, yeah, if we can make it quick," he answered, so we did.
Of course, not being a person who can leave well enough alone, while Kel was aiming the camera, I looked at David and said 'I don't know if you remember -- I was on Howard Stern, with the rubber chicken...?' and then he took a second, better look at me, and said 'Hey!' with that sort of laughing, drawn-out he-e-ey tone, like oh yeah! and asked 'How've you been?' Not in a let-me-just-say-yes-and-pacify-this-crazy-woman way, but in a regular way. I mean, I think. He is an actor. But, you know how it is... I want to believe. ;-)
We got the pic, we thanked him, and he went on his way.
Keeffie came back and found Kel and me sprawled on the steps of the Armory, squealing.
At least we waited till David was out of earshot before we started that!
When we got our wits back we made our way back to the corner.
The shot being made involved something going on down in the kind of moat between the railing and the building.
It wasn't too much longer before they got the shot they wanted and then began to break things down to go inside and get some interior shots. We decided the gods had been kind enough to us for one day, and we packed it up and headed for home as well.
I hear there has been some speculation as to whether the grey in the beard is the real thing. It looked real to me -- and, for whatever reason, incredibly hot too. ;-) And while he is certainly svelte, he looks fine -- like he is working hard, but eating up every minute of it. Maybe he's svelte because he just doesn't stand still! Even when he was standing still he would put one foot up onto the curb and stretch one leg, or on level ground he'd kind of 'weave,' constantly shifting his weight from one foot to the other -- it didn't look stressful, but just like there was so much energy it was hard to contain.
Thanks to my compadres in adventure, Kel, Chriswife, and Keeffie!
