It's a city of 8.5 million people. It's got
over 700 miles of subway track and an infrastructure so complex
that its details have never been fully mapped. It's a place where
whole city blocks are routinely torn down and rebuilt, where the
jackhammer might sometimes be taken for the state bird. It's hard
enough to find a parking place or a restroom, so how in the world
does a director lock down locations for a Gotham production? The
task isn't as daunting as it might sound. He or she simply hires
an experienced New York City location scout.
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When Joseph Zolfo, who happens to be one of these,
was working on the Barry Levinson film Sleepers, his job was to
transform the working class neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn
into 1965 Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen. And when the production designer
was concerned that air conditioners in apartment building windows
were threatening that illusion, Zolfo had to canvas the community
and see if he could have them taken out. So just before shooting,
during the hottest part of a New York summer, he knocked on every
door in a six block square radius and made the request.
Greenpoint is a primarily Polish and Spanish-speaking community
along the East River. Many people living there speak no English
at all. So Zolfo enlisted the help of a bilingual 10-year-old Polish
girl and a young man fluent in both Spanish and English. It wasn't
long before approximately 200 air conditioners had been removed
from windows facing the street. "It was my business,"
Zolfo said, "to become friendly with everyone in the neighborhood.
I explained to them the situation and asked them to work with us.
And 99 percent of them did."
Sound antithetical to the image of the cold, quick-tempered New
Yorker? Well, talk to most location people who spend a lot of time
getting to know the city's neighborhoods and they will probably
be the first to refute that stereotype. "I've had people I've
known for five minutes say, 'oh, I have to go out, but if you want
to show the director the apartment, here's the keys,'" said
Lys Hopper, a seasoned location manager. And you hear stories like
this over and over.
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Hopper was recently scouting a designer dress
store in fashionable Soho with director Tony Goldwyn for his film
Animal Husbandry. Looking around with the production designer, Goldwyn
suddenly had the idea to shoot a dream sequence where Ashley Judd
would walk around the corner and see a beautiful display with cows
wearing designer dresses. "So while we were standing in the
store negotiating shooting a movie at all," Hopper remembers,
laughing, "suddenly the idea of cows came up."
She gently broached the subject with the store owner. "I said,
'I know they're thinking about using your dresses, but now they
also have this idea about [pause] cows'. And of course she's thinking
that we would bring in models of cows. And I said 'no, no, real
cows.' And that's what's just amazing about New York. You'd think
they'd say, 'well thank you very much and see you later.' But she
said, 'well maybe you ought to talk to my husband about it.' And
I did, and we worked it out."
Things don't always move along so smoothly when it comes to finding
and securing locations in New York City. Even with experienced professionals
on the job, the place can be complicated and unpredictable. "All
of us have stories of prepping a location that you picked six months
ago," Laurie Pitcus, another veteran location manager, said.
"You watch three seasons go by, you've been watching the building,
no one's done any painting. And the night before shooting, Con Ed
[New York's power company] comes in and tears up the whole street."
Problem solving is a major part of being a location manager. Scouting
for Joel Schumacher's film, Flawless, Pitcus was pleased to find
some vacant storefronts in the East Village that were perfect for
the bombed-out late-'80s look she sought - a look that was disappearing
due to the gentrification of this historical - if sketchy - neighborhood.
She wanted to build specific sets in these particular storefronts
that were written into the script. When she returned a few months
later, some of the shops were occupied. One was a bakery that Pitcus
wanted to rent and turn into the pizza parlor.
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"This bakery had coffee in a pot that had
been sitting there for three months and it was fairly apparent to
us that the owners weren't really selling baked goods or coffee,"
Pitcus recalls. "They had their own business going on the side
and we actually had to negotiate with them to move for a brief amount
of time - which they did - once we explained that lots of police
officers and official people work alongside film crews. They decided
to move, given a payment which was probably a drop in the bucket
compared to what they were really making."
With all the complications of finding suitable locations in New
York, the Mayor's Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting is there
to help production companies.
"We have a very unique package of resources that no other municipality
offers in the United States," Julianne Cho, director of the
office's Department of Publicity and Special Events told me. "And
that consists of free permits, free locations and free police assistance
when necessary."
This means that you can basically shoot on any public street in
New York City without cost, providing you have insurance and obtain
a permit. The office also will act as a liaison to city agencies.
These contacts open up opportunities that can assist moviemakers
facilitate their demanding requests.
But many location managers say that the location game is getting
more difficult in New York because of skyrocketing rents. Especially
hard pressed are low budget movies. "In the old days,"
Pitcus says, "a holding area - which is just a support area
and restroom for extras and background actors when they're not working
- used to go for $250 to $500 a day. Now I think all of us always
budget at least $1000 to $2000 just for that."
Enormous demolition and construction projects in all five boroughs
have also been a problem for productions - especially period films.
"Everywhere you go," Hopper, observes, "where you
thought you'd still have a certain feel - like going into the Bronx
to find '70s New York - that timeless row of tenement buildings
that nothing's been added to - the renovations are just insane.
And when you do find something, you've got scaffolding everywhere.
I mean, I come from a town in Cape Cod where you can only paint
your shingles two different colors. And that's kind of extreme,
but..."
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"We often deal with directors from LA who
lived here from 10 to 30 years ago and have a vision of New York
that no longer exists," Pitcus told me. While doing some preliminary
location research for Fifteen Minutes, she and some colleagues went
to the Bronx looking for that old burned-out Fort Apache The Bronx
look. Driving to places like Hunt's Point Road and other places
in the South Bronx she found that for the most part it really doesn't
exist any longer.
And some directors who are not from New York can make the location
person's job more difficult than it already is. From one location
manager's observation that some Los Angeles directors seem to think
"New York is their back lot," to the story of another
who worked with an out-of-town director who thought it was OK to
release live cockroaches into an occupied building, the New York
location manager has to be both diplomat and creative thinker. In
the case of the cockroaches, the location department, unnerved by
this "ridiculous, out-of-bounds request," ended up getting
letterhead from the Mayor's Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting
and faked a letter to the production company stating how outraged
they were about hearing of the request and threatening to pull their
permit if they even thought about it.
"Locations is a weird job because you're the first person to
say 'you can't do this' usually very early on, sometimes even before
the production designer is starting," said location scout Mike
Kriaris. Sometimes the scout does something called "ain't scouting"
which means he or she goes out and proves that something the director
wants cannot be done exactly the way it has been envisioned. One
of the great things about New York City, though, is that there are
always options and alternatives - which might not be the case in
other, more homogenous cities. Locations people in New York can
offer the choice of a vast selection of buildings (exterior and
interior), all kinds of nooks and crannies, tunnels, bridges, harbors,
tankers, riverbanks, roadways, monuments, wildlife refuges,beaches,
hundreds of miles of railway and expansive city parks.
But with all of its diversity, New York is no longer a place that
can really be seen through the eyes of, say, Travis Bickle. The
mean streets are now more and more filled with yuppies. The city
feels increasingly like Sleepless in Seattle, rather than Taxi Driver.
Many of the small, family-run neighborhood shops which historically
gave New York a certain character, are being forced out of business
by real estate developers. Big department stores and expensive boutiques
are taking their place. There is even a mall in Manhattan, believe
it or not.
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For the newcomer, it's become incredibly difficult
to find a place to live in the city because rents have spiraled
out of control. And for the past six years, the city has been strong-armed
by a mayor who has his own ideas of what is culturally acceptable
and what will be tolerated.
But New York is a city of cycles. It never rests in its ongoing
molting process. And there's no reason to doubt that, as it has
for the past hundred years, with all its changes, the place will
continue to provide an almost mythological backdrop for new cinematic
stories. Recently, the direction seems to be toward the mainstream,
but the city - as it always has been - is like a living organism
in a state of constant flux and evolution. The fact remains that
New York, with its stories, atmosphere, talent pool and resources,
has no comparison anywhere.
"A lot of stories go to Toronto to be filmed for New York."
Joseph Zolfo says. "Toronto doesn't look like New York. There's
no city in the world that looks like New York in character and culture
and in the diversity of people. You see it on every street corner,
every storefront, the buildings, the people on the street, the cars
on the street. Every aspect of New York - every detail - is so unique
that it can't be duplicated. I've never seen New York successfully
duplicated anywhere." MM