Hey folks, Harry here with a set report from the set of I SPY, where we had an Extra shooting today. Now, I really like the original series. Personally I liked Cosby and Culp's low impact good humor... How it felt like a natural pair of best buddies working together for years... Getting deadly serious when necessary... and the felt like real people.... and their charisma was supreme. Very curious to read this script.
Hi Harry-
In case this is of interest to you, I thought I would share a little of my experience as an extra on the set of I SPY today.
Was there from 7am to 9pm. It looks like Vancouver will be playing the roles of at least Las Vegas and Budapest. Today's shoot was made to look like an arena in Hungary, even though it looked more like Ronald McDonald's idea of Soviet design with some of the posters, colours, and text.
Okay, I haven't read a script on this, so whatever judgement I am passing is based on biases from the old TV show with Bill Cosby and Robert Culp. I remember only a little about it, really.
I don't know if I SPY ( the movie ) is supposed to be a remake of the same characters, or if the movie can fit in somehow as a sequel to the show, with Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson playing the same characters or new characters...? Oh, and I recognized the director as Whats-'erwoman from Hill Street Blues... but looking more like a mellow Grace Slick these days.
In the scene I saw today, Eddie's character (Kelly Robinson) is a boxer... I guess he just happens to SPY too, but I guess Cosby's character did tennis to cover his sneaking and probing. Oh, and Kelly Robinson has these little score keeping tattoos on his right arm... I counted about ten groups of five.
Now this scene may tell us nothing about the actual film, but if this is any indication, I think I SPY will be a turd patty.
So what do boxers do in movies? They lose. Then they win. I don't think boxing will be the major theme in this movie since they've only shot scenes for the match over three days.
So a lot of both was shot today was Murphy doing a shoddy job of pretending to be drugged so the opponent can do a sucker punch. So over, and over again we watched Mr. Eddie get in a tangle clench grab thing with his opponent ( a Hungarian named "Siedrick ( or Sedric or something) "Mills") ... The entanglement would end with a shove, then Eddie/Kelly would start punching weakly at invisible things over his shoulders for a second or two.
Eddie then proceeds to look side-to-side for a second, confused... and a second later, he's huffing, boredly as if no one is there and he forgot something ( b'duh!), and then the sucker punch hits.
Okay, so Eddie's - I mean Kelly, our boxer hero is drugged. Okay, and whatever that does have to do with the plot, I'm willing to give that a chance, but the total boredom expressed by Mr. Eddie while filming this scene... which I think would be an important scene... was more than a little lacking. I don't want to totally blame one person, though. And of course, things will be editted, sounds added, pacing, trimming, whatever. It will look better in the film. But no amount of work will make today's footage useful. It's not exciting, it's not interesting, and it's not even remotely funny. And filming is finished on this set, so unless they call people back , the boxing shoots are done. They're stuck with some foul material to work with there!
I won't go into Mr. Eddie's total lack of interest into what was going on around him. His stunt double, who's shorter and darker, was actually a lot more charismatic and friendly. He didn't do any of the "sucker punch" footage.
Hooey! What a treat we have in store when this hits theatres!
lub
Southern Crane
