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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