Excitement on Tuesday. That’s my building in the background.
5:45am: The sound of beeping starts.
5:55am: Still the sound of beeping.
5:59am: Sound of beeping stops, sound of men yelling down the street begins.
6:07am: Caterer truck begins to fry up food, from breakfast meat to strawberries. All in the same pan.
6:15am: Producer starts yelling at parking PAs for failing to hold a spot in front of set for his rented luxury SUV. Producer is staying in a hotel two blocks away.
6:22am: Men being to throw thousands of dollars worth of equipment around like it was cheap rigging material.
6:23: Men start yelling how much they hate carrying around thousands of dollars worth of equipment, all while making roughly the same salery as a small town physician.
6:30am to 1pm: All the trappings of a small demolition crew, the production unit descends on another Manhattan neighborhood like vampire bats.
1pm to 1:45pm: Packed up filming equipment gives the eerie impression of a gold-mining ghost town. A lone set PA is charged with watching over blocks and blocks of equipment. Begins to pace back and forth like a demented lion at the Zoo, looking for both distraction and a way out.
1:45pm to 10pm: Movie magic. At at the expense of the neighborhood, and the mental heath of the crew members.
10:10pm: “That’s a wrap!”
10:11pm: Screaming.
10:14pm: Still screaming.
10:15pm: Screaming seems to revolve around the theme of getting out of location at an appropriate time. The word ‘fuck’ is used in its many forms. Mention of Over Time, Meal Penalties, and other location fees cause the Producers to turn into a pack of wild hyenas.
10:45pm: Still wrapping out.
10:55pm: Still wrapping out.
10:59pm: In a last ditch effort, all gear is rounded up and thrown haphazardly into trucks. Breakage is imminent. Most trash has been piled up in one central, rather inconvenient location. This is not counting the small scraps of gel, bits of rope, copious amounts of cigarette butts. There are small, 6oz water bottles emptied and strewn in the gutters. The randomness of bits of trash could cause a sensible person to go into a fit of epilepsy.
11pm: New York is a little more dead inside.
