I’d like to hear stories from those folks who have been on set and witnessed a scene or scenes from a popular movie or TV show being filmed? What show? What scene? Did you get on film as background? What did you see that may not have made it to film, or was a neat little ‘movie magic’ trick?
Here’s mine:
The movie was Bless the Child starring Kim Basinger. It was the scene where Kim kidnaps the “chosen one” kid, and runs out of the Dentists office with her. She runs out onto the street, runs down the block and back to the car that’s waiting for her. She sticks her head in the open window only to discover the driver has been killed.
I was on set for that scene (well, “on set” is a bit of a stretch, I was gathered with all other passers by behind a roped off area). The kid Kim carried was a doll, and there was no body in the car, I assume that was an insert filmed by the 2nd unit.
I also drove through the set of “Resident Evil 2”. It was being filmed not far from my house, and they had lots of props on set. Blown out police cars, and assorted post-apocalyptic debris. They’re weren’t filming at the time, so I didn’t see any specific scene.
Lastly, I watched a scene from an HBO film that was working-titled “The Yelstin Project”, but I know was renamed by the time it aired. It was made for Tv, so I won’t bother to go into great detail, I’ll just suffice it to say that Jeff Goldblum is really tall IRL.
Most of the flashback scenes in The Way We Were were filmed at Union College while I was a student there. Several people I know worked as extras, I watched them do one or two scenes. The one I watched most closely never made it into the film.
I did mingle a bit with Redford and Streisand, though didn’t speak to them. Redford, BTW isn’t all that tall: he’s about my height 5’9". Stresand is a head shorter.
The college never got an acknowledgement in the credits, either.
They also shot The Age of Innocence not far from where I was working. The scene set in Boston was filmed on N. Pearl St. in Albany (the scenes in New York City were filmed in Troy). I wandered over on my lunch hours and they had filled the street with dirt and had horses ready to go into action for a short scene consisting of a single conversation.
I have discovered that watching films being made is extremely boring. Most of the time, nothing is happening – just people getting things prepared.
I had plans to go to the top of ?Independence Hall? In Philadelphia, but when we got there we found it closed due to filming on “A movie with Brad Pitt.” Turned out to be 12 Monkeys. We weren’t able to go in but the building was all “dressed” for the scene where Bruce Willis emerges from underground and sees a lion roaring from the roof.
Also, I watched the scene that plays under the credits for The Chosen being filmed a block from my house. You know, the guy is walking down the street as the credits roll? He repeatedly stepped out of his shoes, they had to shoot it over and over and over.
Some of the movie Running Brave, staring Robbie Benson, was shot during an Edmonton Eskimos football game. I was in the crowd. They hung banners around the stadium to make it look like the Tokyo Olympics.
It was funny how many times they had to re-shoot the final scene, where the hero comes from way behind to win the race by a nose. People in the stands started yelling ‘fix’.
I was walking across the campus of the University of Kansas when I stumbled onto a scene being shot for Linda Lovelace for President – the “sequel” to Deep Throat. That’s right, an honest to God porn movie (although obvisouly not an X-rated scene) being filmed at a state university.
A scene from the movie Avalon was filmed in the neighborhood where I grew up, and we got to watch from behind a fence.
It was the Fourth of July scene at the swimming pool (in reality the Valley Country Club in Towson, MD), a very quick day and night scene, but they were there for three or four days.
There is a movie called Some Kind of Hero starring Richard Pryor. The movie is about a Vietnam P.O.W. who returns to the States. At one point, his character hooks up with a character played by Margot Kidder. Kidder’s character lives in an apartment. The exterior scenes of this apartment were filmed at the apartment building across the street from where I was living at the time. I was about 14. The crew was really nice and at one point I was even introduced to Margot Kidder, who was very sweet. The scene that was filmed was Pryor’s character, running through the building’s outdoor courtyard, yelling a phone number to someone out of shot behind him. I think his character was memorizing Kidder’s character’s phone number. The crew let me watch the filming. There were about a dozen people standing in the street, watching as well. He did the take about 5 or 6 times, then when he was done he came out to the street, shook everyone’s hand quickly, then jumped in a car that drove away quickly. The thing that got me was that the whole scene took up about 12 seconds of screen time, but it took them all day to set up, shoot, and then pack up and leave.
I saw a scene from the Buck Rogers TV show being filmed at Universal Studios when I was a kid of about 9 or 10. I remember that the robot’s lines were read by some lady under a scaffolding and being disappointed.
For a week in 1987 I was a Production Assistant for the Playboy Channel. I saw them film several segments for a show they had called ‘fantasies’, or something. The best part of the job was a segment where a female cop pulls over a guy in a 'vette and the guy fantasizes they get it on on the car. I got to drive the police car to the filming location.
I recently got to watch some scenes being filmed of the show Nikki. I got to meet most of the cast and crew, a really nice group of people. Very funny people.
When I was about 10, I got to watch some scenes being filmed (or maybe it was a dress rehearsal) of the TV show Alice and met the cast. Also, very nice people, all of them.
I was in the crowd of the parade scene for Born on the Fourth of July. It was bunches of hurry up and wait. I didn’t meet Tom Cruise, but as far as I could tell he seemed perfectly nice when approached. I’m not in the film–at least I’ve never seen myself in that scene. Honestly it wasn’t very much fun, but I’m still glad I did it. Good experience.
A few years ago, we were doing the tourist bit in Boston – Old Ironsides, the Freedom Trail, etc. and while walking across the Boston Common, we saw what was obviously a TV or movie shoot going on. We watched for a few minutes, and saw an actress swing on a light pole. After the shot was complete, she walked past us to her trailer. It was Melissa Joan Hart, and the swinging on the lampost shot was incorporated into the new credit sequence on Sabrina the Teenage Witch. As my daughter was at that time a big fan, it was a pretty big thrill for her.
In the mid-80s, my wife (at that time my girlfriend) and I were having lunch at the East Annex of the National Gallery in Washington (by the way, this is a very nice and not heavily attended cafeteria – not the one in the underground mall between the two buildings, but actually upstairs in the Annex Building) and we saw a motorcade stop on the side street below us. A few minutes later they drove off, and we thought no more of it. Before long, they came back. This time, people in military dress uniforms got out and wandered around for a few minutes, got back in the limos, and drove off.
We were wondering what that was all about. I could only think that it was a planned hold, to ensure that they got wherever they were going at precisely the right time.
We left the Gallery, and were walking across the mall, when we came on what was obviouly a movie shoot, where a placard announced the movie as Goldie Hawn’s Protocol. A few months later, we saw the movie, and recognized the scene they were shooting as twenty seconds or so of the movies opening.
Frankly, watching the shoot was more entertaining than the movie.
I’ve worked on a couple of things. When we were shooting CSA, I was DP for the day and we were shooting a bunch of women fighting for the right to vote (in 1970 or so).
We were in a public park and a bunch of onlookers were watching the women like “um, you do know that women have the right to vote, don’t you”?
I watched a bit being filmed for the Untouchables series in the early '90s. I was downtown and watched as one guy in a trenchcoat chased another up some steps to the El and grabbed him. There were a few '30s cars parked along the street to add ambiance.
I never watched the show, so I never saw the scene in context. It would have lasted about 2 seconds anyway.
Having lived in Brooklyn Heights and gone to school by the courthouses in downtown Brooklyn, I repeatedly saw scenes from Law & Order being filmed. I also saw a scene filmed from some move (which tanked) starring Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney.
When I lived in Vancouver I was contantly bumping into X-Files, Sliders, Viper, Stargate, etc filming setups. I never stopped to watch as I never had any interest in doing so. Most of the stars shopped in our store anyway.
One day I was walking along in front of the art gallery and a shot rang out. I ducked, along with the rest of the people in my vicinity! I then noticed that the front of the gallery was draped in red, white and blue bunting and surrounded by cameras and the inevitable trailers. Later, when I was watching the premiere episode of Monk, I recognized the scene.
I was an extra in a film but can’t recall the name of it or the name of the actress starring in it. I think it was one of the Party of Five girls.
I lived in Bristol, UK, in the mid 1980s. One night I was walking home with some friends and as we passed the grey stone buildings of Brunel Technical College we were puzzled by the sight of hospital signposts and an ambulance coming out of the gate, lights flashing. We wondered whether we were victims of some sort of mass hallucination: when you’ve lived on a street for several months it is not usual to miss the fact that there is a hospital 100 yards away. It all made sense later in the week when I saw the BBC prop vans driving up and down our street. The rest, as they say, is history. For UK dopers, at least.
Several years later I was living in Oxford, where it was routine to stumble over film crews and prop vans as one was going about one’s daily business. It was usually in the area around the Sheldonian theatre, and although many films have been shot there, it was more often than not the Inspector Morse TV series. The red Jaguar was a dead giveaway.
These days I am living in more exotic climes. The film version of Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Feast of the Goat is being filmed here in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and my husband provided them with the car being used in the assassination scene.
Several years ago (as in more than 10, I think) my family was visiting my aunt who lives in Kansas City. My mother commented on the military cemetary we could see that she didn’t recall seeing before. My aunt informed her that it was made of styrofoam and set up for the filming of Article 99, which takes place almost entirely at a Veteran’s Hospital and thus needed a nice accessible military-style cemetary.
I saw them film part of “The Day After” in Lawrence KS back in 1983 or so. That was kind of cool, seeing a whole block of downtown trashed, with charred overturned cars and whatnot.
My dad was in Louisville KY the day they filmed the scene at the beginning of “Stripes” where Bill Murray gets pissed off and parks his cab on the bridge crossing the Ohio river.
William Goldman in, I think, Adventures in the Screen Trade, has said that the most exciting day of your life is the first day on a movie set. The most boring days of your life are all the rest of the days you spend on a movie set.
Believe it or not, Linda Lovelace for President wasn’t a porn movie. It had a lot of very mainstream actors in it, like Mickey Dolenz, Vaughan Meader, Scatman Crothers and Joe E. Brown. It might even have had an R-rating.
Except for Mickey Dolenz, all the big names in the cast are now dead. Maybe it had a curse?
A surprising number of films get made in DC. I stumbled onto the set of a Steve Winwood video (“Back in the High Life Again,” I think). My sister’s building–and possibly my sister–made it into Enemy of the State with Will Smith. And I was edited out of a student film and replaced with a minor celeb who was born the same day and year as me: Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini!
