Saturday, March 13, 2010

born 13 March 1970

Andrew Saxe, Austin, Texas, location scout

Denise George, state of Massachusetts, actress

Eric Fox Hays, Alton, Illinois, assistant director

Gabriel Heads, Cuernavaca, Mexico, producer

Jeff Winkler, Bridgeport, Connecticut, production manager

Jorge Fabregas, Miami, Florida, major league catcher

Karin Justman, Morristown, New Jersey, stuntwoman

Kristine Kreska, Detroit, Michigan, producer

Lisa Lutz, state of California, writer

Martin L. O’Neal, Gulfport, Mississippi, producer

Miles Malone, birthplace unspecified, American porn star

Nina Jurna, Arnheim, The Netherlands, journalist

Noah Beggs, Los Angeles, California, actor

Spencer Emmons, birthplace unspecified, American stage manager

Tim Story, Los Angeles, California, director



What a great job “location scout” sounds like. You go around and look at places, and take pictures, and take notes. What could be more fun?


I’m trying to recall some of my favorite tri-state area locations from the pictures Today’s Winner has been involved with. From Amateur, there is the hazy boundary where SoHo ends and TriBeCa begins, including that one picturesque alley I can never quite find. From Cop Land, there are all those dumpy dead end streets that end in cliffs looking back toward Manhattan from West New York and Weehawken.


At the posh end of things, from Birth, there’s the very specific social and architectural microclimate of Central Park South, plus its adjacent pathways and playgrounds. Also there’s the downtown ATM that requires the blood and sinew of fresh kittens for dessert in American Psycho. And out on a lesser wavelength of the social spectrum, there’s that wonderful neighborhood where the proles live like trolls in the shadow of the Bayonne Bridge, and Jersey Tom Cruise tries and fails to repel and alien invasion, in Spielberg’s War of The Worlds.


Most vividly, to my memory, from Little Odessa, there are all those wonderful grotty storefronts and vacant lots in Brighton Beach and Coney Island. Not to mention the curve of the Broadway/Lafayette platform, where I once plucked my own wallet back from a pickpocket.


So, well-done Andrew Saxe. Like Pale Male the Central Park hawk, you have a keen eye for the urban landscape.


To the folks who may read this, I invite your comments in two areas:


A) What’s your favorite use of New York City as a movie backdrop?


B) Are there any locations, in your hometown or elsewhere, that haven’t been put to use in a movie yet (that you know of), but should be?



2 comments:

  1. I'll get the ball rolling...so many favorite New York locations, places I can't pass without recalling the movies they inspired. I'm especially obsessed with

    - The rump end of Smith Street, where De Niro may or may not be trying to lure Lorraine Bracco to her death at the end of GoodFellas

    - The block of Seventh Avenue that includes the ravishing tracking shot at the end of Broadway Danny Rose...I saw it again recently, on a standard-def TV no less, and it literally did ravish me, whatever that means

    - The way they set up an eerily empty Fifth Avenue at the start of Breakfast at Tiffany's is completely beyond reproach, unlike some other aspects of that film

    - The grief-stricken children on the steps of the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument in Fort Greene Park in Crooklyn; I can choke myself up just thinking about them

    I could go on. Man, could I ever go on. Your turn, though.

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  2. I'll be looking forward to seeing the Keanu Reeves movie (yes, I said it) Henry's Crime, perhaps only to see if the scenes shot at the Freeport Recreation Center made the cut. It's written by Sasha Gervasi, by the way.

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