Musn't forget the inclusion of the interiors of the Bradbury building and
Union Station in the Los Angeles of _Blade Runner_, (several thumbs up,)
which was integral to the future/retro look of the whole thing. Passing
through several times a couple of years after the movie came out, I never
noticed anything wrong with the station that I could attribute to the
movie. I think the Bradbury Building was pre-restoration when the movie
was filmed-- or else some f/x magic was applied to the placeto make it
look so dumpy. Anyone seen either building lately?
On Sat, 28 Mar 1998, Ken Follett wrote:
> Lawrence Kestenbaum wrote:
>
> > Oh, and in the meantime, Disney/Miramax (?) has been in touch with the Ann
> > Arbor police to arrange on-location filming of some new movie this summer.
> > They want to use that same bus depot I mentioned above.
> >
> > (Possible topic for discussion: the historic preservation implications of
> > filmmaking. I have heard that irreversible changes were made to the
> > historic Toronto train terminal as part of the making of "Silver Streak".
> > True or false?)
>
> They film a lot in NYC, including for movies and TV. I don't know about Toronto.
>
> A scene for a Bruce Willis film was done on 6th Ave., Ladies Mile, in front of
> a 19th c. cast iron building where they blew up a delivery van and it actually
> did blow a hole in the building. I think the repairs were estimated at $6,000,
> which the filmer was supposed to pay for. I'm not sure how it got resolved in
> business, but the building was repaired and now houses what looks like an
> overpriced antique shop.
>
> During renovation of the New Am Theater by Disney a film, Uncle Vania (?) was
> shot in the interior. The place was already in disrepair, so they could hardly
> do worse. At the time there was concern for the plaster sculpture on the ceiling
> of the theater to fall in. Nets had been put in place, still, there was a risk
> involved.
>
> I once lost a day on a job for the filming of a Kojac episode. It was a pain
> because we could only do the work on weekends (I was in the process of buying a
> house and moving at the time which did not help on the management end). We had
> been hired by Historical Arts & Casting to remove the paint from a cast iron
> facade using aggregate blasting (not a landmark building). Nobody had the
> decency, or forethought, ahead of time to tell us that there was an imported
> Japanese glass block wall 5 feet behind the cast-rion facade which had been
> changed to a freestanding curtain. The whole affair turned into a complete
> fiasco and Kojac did not help. The only other time I saw Teli Savalese was in
> the basement videogame room at the Smithtown Sheraton, the guy was a Pac Man
> addict. I like HAC's work a lot, and admire their marketing, but I did not
> think HAC was very well prepared for working on the streets of NYC. They hired a
> local rep that I think was a bit too retentive in character. We all kind of
> ended up with a bad feeling - and resolved to stay friends but not do business
> together. It was a good lesson, due to our glaring failure, in the importance of
> developing healthy relationships on historic restoration projects. The new owner
> of the building made their money in doing catfood commercials.
>
> We are impacted currently in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, our office area, with a swarm
> of new film productions. The problem here is that we keep getting stuck in
> traffic trying to get around, through, or out of the confusion. Almost as bad as
> my once getting stuck in Chinatown in a car on their New Years while trying to
> get back to the office. Last week I had to wait twenty minutes while a legion of
> camoflaged troops with humvees and armored carriers sped around, and around, and
> around the residential block where I got stuck at the light. A bit peeved as I
> had 30 miles to go to get to a meeting.
>
> A church we worked on in Greenpoint received a considerable amount of money for
> letting the filmers of _Sleepers_ use their facility for a staging area (I
> thought the book and movie stunk, all thimbs down). The money went toward the
> restoration fund. The original construction of the church was funded by the
> builder of the Monitor - that metal boat thingy used by the Civil Air Patrol.
> This same church had at one time been host to a theater group which may have
> been a predecessor of the performer's guild, though I'm not confident on
> theatrical history.
>
> In another building we worked on, a fairly large cast iron facade (corner
> building) in the Soho Cast Iron District, I met Bianca Jagger in a back room
> where she was editing a film on Nicaragua. I was introduced to her by the
> documentary film-maker/board president, as the guy that fixes up old buildings.
> The meeting was a walk-through to get to some windows at the rear of the
> building. The board president, Obie Benz, was the producer of "Easy Petting",
> featuring the likes of Alan Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs talking about
> their early sexual experiences. No thumbs. Some time back the building got
> tagged by a group of french graffiti artists who were into 3D graffiti. They
> glued things like Barbi Doll heads, bottle caps, and other dimensional stuff to
> the brick inset panels and then painted what looke to me like little Mad Max TV
> scenes. These folks were sponsored by some sort of French cultural exhange in
> the arts, who refused to pay for the abatement. The tykes sped off onthe
> Concorde not to return. Then the buidling got hit by some Jap students who
> sprayed nasty red words in Japanese all over the place, like th American
> audience would respond. (Which was nothing to the Tony Afrazi gallery getting
> hit by gold paint by a disgruntled artist - and our being called in to do som
> Deconstructionist Art, with patrons throwing flower pots out of the upper floor
> windows at our artistes! It was one hell of a photo op.) Directly inside of the
> building was Foreplay Studios, whom I was informed did most of the set work for
> Woody Allen.
>
> Regarding Woody Allen, I did get up on his balcony on 5th Ave. with a request to
> bid on some work... and had an opportunity to check his view across Central Park
> to Mia's place... this was before the accusations. We did not get the work,
> which is probably as well as maybe his funds were shortly after tied up. Then
> there was the Doctor in the West Village who said he was going to pay to fix his
> facade by renting out his back yard to Woody Allen for a film shoot. The Doctor
> (I think he imagined himself a TV Doctor - one of those guys that gives advice
> at the end of the 6:00 news) was obnoxious and was using the carpenter working
> for him, a young fellow from the provinces who thought he was in heaven fixing
> up the Doctor's digs, and underpaying the kid something terrible. The good Doc
> was his own designer, and wanted me to know something about architectural design
> that I find very boring, the afluent hack.
>
> In the Further Adventures of Remo Williams (thumbs up) they show Remo running
> into the entrance of the Puck Building and then running up the stairs of the
> Cable Building, as if the hybrid were one building. Both buildings are on
> Houston in Manhattan, straddling between Soho and Noho. We have worked on both,
> therefore I know what they look like inside and out.
>
>
> We also have Bette Midler here in NYC who I understand is willing to throw her
> weight onto the streets to stop the developers from demolishing our historic
> heritage.
>
> This topic is one that Christopher Gray should have interesting insights on.
>
> ][<en Follett
>
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