Accidental movie set
Never saw the movie Accidental Tourist, but I can sure feel it. When you live in a tourist area, you grow accustomed to strange, spontaneous and interesting things happening. Grew up & lived in the Chicago area, then a year in LA, movie mecca of the world, and then the last 4 years in Phoenix (not so much movies, but certainly tourists) and now Florida - and man, one can sure come up with some interesting things.
Heck, my background is in theatre. My personal 6 degrees puts Kevin Bacon to shame. The people I’ve been blessed to work with and meet is amazing. From the first President Bush to a number of actors on Broadway, from an evening working with Bill Bixby (one of my lifetime favorite times!) to working with Michael J. Fox, meeting Henry Winkler, and riding in Robert Wagner’s car, yea, I’ve got some stories.
So this weekend, when I decided to walk around Celebration, Florida, town that Disney built, I wasn’t overly surprised to find a movie crew in town filming. I guess its a smaller indie kind of film with two actors I know I’ve seen somewhere, I just have no clue where - and I’m really good at that stuff.
The waterfront of Celebration turned into a Hollywood movie set. This is when I get lost, but later I’ll be sitting just left of the girl on the steps.
I had some time to kill and when the PA (Production Assistant - or at least by what she was doing, I’m assuming was a PA) asked if I wanted to be an extra - sure, fine, why not. Been there, done that.
They were asking a while lot of people - something I’ll never understand - why some Hollywood types think you’ve got to overload the background - and I ended up being one of like 100 people wondering through a normally very calm area of the Celebration waterfront. In those first shots I’m certain I got lost - no big deal - but it looked crazy and I figured they’d see that later on, when they watched the dailies.
Well, it seems they got it early.
They yelled their cut & print & all those fancy terms the locals & tourists ate up, and let everyone move on. I still had time to kill, so I sat back down on the steps to wait for Assistant Laura to meet up.
And found myself once again in the shot.
A moment of rehearsing where they’ll jump out and run. I ended up just in front of this.
Apparently seeing that it was better with less people, or needing another shot, they reset, and did it again, this time (I couldn’t see what the actors were doing in the other shots) the actors pulled up and jumped out of the yellow golf cart, then ran behind me.
I’m sitting in the center of the area, next to a couple friends of the crew they’d planted there for the shot, and I’m thinking, I ended up pretty much in the shot. Who knows until it comes out, but yea, there I am, on my Blackberry, and in a movie.
Weirdest way I’ve ever gotten into one… but hey, when Hollywood calls!
They finished, Assistant Laura showed up, and we moved on… just another day in Florida.
If you’re looking in the future - the movie, according to what we were told, will be called Homecoming.
