Thursday, March 26, 2009

Never Heard of the Guy.

If you've been paying attention, you know I'm working on a TV Pilot. It's shooting almost completely in Toronto (yeah, that stuff's happening again), and then we'll do two days of shooting in NY to get some exterior scenes and make you think the whole thing happens here. Well, almost by definition, we're shooting in places that have recognizable landmarks or show off the city somehow.

We'll be spending half a day at a piece of State owned property in Brooklyn with terrific views of the skyline. Their permit isn't particularly onerous to deal with, but they've seemed to me to be a bit overly concerned with the question of which actors would be on location there. It turns out they have a valid concern there because they want to make sure that if there might be crowds of people wild to see the cast and/or Paparazzi there, they'll be prepared to deal with it. (Aside: There are a couple of accepted terms for members of the public who stand around watching us film: "Bandits" and "Lookey-Loos". Now I don't mean any offense to my massive gay audience, but I've always thought the word "Lookey-Loos" was the gayest thing I've ever heard in my life. I'd love to see it replaced with something else, maybe "fungi" or something like that. I'm open to suggestion.)

Anyway, truth be told, I realized today that I had never bothered to ask anyone who, exactly the cast is on this show. I zipped off an email to the producer who sent me back 4 names of the actors who will be in the NY scenes. None of the names rang any bells. I looked them up on IMDB, and, sure enough, I recognized each one of them when I saw a picture. They all have entirely respectable lists of credits, even if there are a lot of single appearances on big shows. But these are not exactly household names, sure to draw throngs of eager celebrity hunters to our set.

Thinking I'd be reassuring my contact with the property, I called and told her who our actors were, assuring her that I didn't think we'd be descended upon by ravening hordes. Instead of being reassured, she sounded disappointed.

"Who?", she asked. "I never heard of any of them".

I hope her disappointment doesn't throw a monkey-wrench into issuing the permit.

1 comment:

mattw said...

Didn't you tell her that you would be there? Your film cred, not to mention your status in the UCF should draw the paparazzi like flies to shit.