On August 18, 2007 I did Cold Case again, this time while in the middle of filming The Happening. Once again there were multiple episodes to be shot and once again my car was going to be needed. Unlike the first time I had a lot more experience, and was better prepared for the wardrobe demands that a several episode day would entail. One thing that I didn’t expect was something that Diane Heery told me I wasn’t going to do that I wound up doing anyway, which turned out to be the most interesting thing that I did all day.
I got into Philly in the fastest time I’ve ever made it in. I parked directly outside the Masonic Hall just north of City Hall in 40 minutes flat (this included going around City Hall itself, normally a very slow going affair). The parking spot was perfect, because my car was to be used as a big prop during one scene to be shot there. Lori Martini was there, direct from Brooklyn, her car’s license plate supporting a Mets logo (yea!). There were some of the usual faces in the room, including Tom & Helen McNutt, and Anthony, the extras wrangler who was also working on Our Lady of Victory. I got into my three-piece suit, had some breakfast and waited for the day to begin.
We started at the fountain at Logan Square, shooting a scene where John Finn and Danny Pino were talking while walking past the fountain. The sky was a clear, bright blue and a very nice breeze was blowing through the area. The fountain was turned on, and I killed some time watching the water play over the sculptures in the fountain. I did a bit of foreground walking while John & Danny talked to each other. A couple of times the breeze kicked up so much that the actors and the gear got wet. This was bad for the gear and good for us, since we SAG types get paid extra if we get wet. The base pay for an extra is not wonderful, but if you factor in overtime, wardrobe changes, props you bring (like my car and my briefcase) and wet pay, it adds up.
From Logan Square we went to City Hall, once again crossing in front of the camera while the leads are talking. Helen McNutt introduced me to Thom Barry, which was a thrill (it always amazes me how many people in the business Helen knows. Being on the SAG National Board helps. So does working as much as she does). I was walking along with Brian Lacey, a guy who towers over me and is a fun ad libber. My car could be seen next to a hot dog stand that Greg Pronko got to work in. He’s kinda tall and there wasn’t much room in the cart, but he did OK. No problems with this sequence either, except when I was in this one group getting ready to work and I was standing next to someone I had never seen on set before. I asked him where he was from and he said, “Minnesota.” You came form Minnesota to work on this? “No, we’re heading for Zurich tonight. I’m just passing through.” “ANTHONY!” I yelled. “HE’S A CIVILIAN!” Poor Anthony was just so overworked that he accidentally put a non-actor in with the rest of us. Good catch, he told me. And so it was.
While we were at lunch, Anthony asks, “Is there anybody here who’s a size 44?” Meekly, I hold up my hand. Anthony sees me and says, “OK, you’re a cop!” This after Diane Heery told me I wasn’t going to be playing a cop. Off I go to wardrobe to be fitted for my cop shirt, cop pants and cop hat. My Rockport shoes look like the kind of shoes that a cop would wear, so those were ok. There were only two problems: one, that my hair was a bit long for a cop, so I tucked as much of it in under my hat as I could, and two, the belt that they had for me with all my cop gear on it wasn’t exactly in my size. As they were putting it on I felt a bit like Vivian Leigh in Gone With The Wind: Suck it in! I felt that the other guys looked more like cops than I did. I looked like a security guard for a community college. There was an amateur photographer taking pictures of us that day, and he sent me some copies of his work. You can judge the results for yourself.
I was very surprised to see Tom Upton there. He’s a Stedicam operator, and he was doing some work for the TV Guide Channel, filming interviews with the cast. When he saw me in the cop suit, he blinked like a Little Rascal would. We got caught up, and he said that he’d try to get me in shot when he was filming the interviews. I spent the bulk of my time watching where Tom was and trying to be in the shot no matter how far back I was.
I say that this was the most interesting part of the day because so much was going on. Aside form the actual shooting (which didn’t take long), my fellow imposters and I got a lot of attention by being dressed as cops. One white, blonde woman asked us for directions to Independence Hall, and when all eight of us gave her eight different answers, she looked at us and said, “You guys aren’t cops, are you?” One rather obese black woman, after finding out that we were actors, asked, “Do you wanna arrest me?” My reply was “Not particularly.” After a while your patience gets a little thin, particularly when we had to delay shooting a scene when the cast was coming up some stairs to street level because a was homeless woman was urinating in front of everyone. So I blew off some steam goofing off for that local photog. I didn’t delay production, so I guess it was ok.
