Ahhhh.... It's nice when we see the young trainee spies out in the field being battle tested. I remember... Jack Fly came to me 11 years ago when he was merely... Jack Maggot. He ate and stuffed himself with the knowledge of infiltration, disguise and deception. Memory games and story telling. Photographing and pick pocketing. Sleeping with the enemy super orgasm tricks... all of it... you learn it all in Spy school. So this young troupe of recruits went out into the field and filed a most eXcellent report... Now... if only we could see what they saw...
Let's get down to it.
I am finally a spy. It only took 11 years of spy school (yes, I had to repeat a grade) and countless hours of supervised missions, but I am a spy. When I graduated, they took away my identity. I was renamed. I became JACK FLY.
It was the challenge of finding the X-Men that brought me to Hamilton last night. If you are unfamiliar with Hamilton, Ontario...well, it is a fairly large Canadian city. It's at least as big as Pittsburgh and finding a major motion picture set is not exactly easy when you don't know where it is. I'm not even from Hamilton! All I knew for certain was that it was being filmed at the "old train station".
At 10:00, I rendezvoused with Face Grabbin' Dave and the P at the local Mac's and we got down to mapping the local area. We had a hopeful, but realistic interpretation of the situation. We were dead dog tired and we were certain that this film set would elude us. Face Grabbin' Dave went so far as to insist that this would become our greatest tragedy. From the back seat, Ed Harris (who wasn't there a moment ago) proclaimed that it would be our "finest hour".
Here's the tip. If you're looking for an "old train station", follow the train tracks. After an hour of finding plenty of exciting (but very wrong) train stations, we finally came to it. Can I describe finding this utopia? It was the Savage Land. It was the Lost World. It was the shortcut to Heaven.
The set was lit for an outdoor scene so the sky was full of huge craned lights. In a moment, night became day in this dingy corner of Hamilton. The entire area was washed in white and I had the impression of angels dancing about us. It was so holy that I could have sworn that God was on the set that day. At the very least, his stand-ins were there.
Here's how to infiltrate a movie set. It's the second thing you learn at spy school (right after the first rule - which is to never disclose anything that you learn in spy school.) Shots to the balls. That's the trick. It's effective, it's fast and when it happens in a movie, it's always funny. This is how we got past the security and onto the perimeter of the set.
We infiltrated a group of extras who were between takes of a scene in front of the old building. I have been on film sets before, but this was something different. There was an energy in the air that woke up the extremities. Face Grabbin' Dave (who worked on a film set as part of a spy school co-op program for two years) was even excited. The P held her calm demeanor as only the P can.
How can I describe to you how it feels to stand amid a group of people and suddenly be aware that you are standing next to Sir Ian McKellen? To suddenly realize that the man is in front of you and it is Magneto in street clothes? And there's Patrick Stewart. No longer Picard, the man has become Charles Xavier. He approaches you and you extend your hand. Then you realize that you are simply standing in front of his chair. So you move.
Let me submit my report now. These men are Magneto and the Professor. I know that there are no doubts about the casting, but to see them up close I had every sense that the magnetic field was alive and that I had to keep my thoughts guarded. Xavier and Magneto were standing in front of me. In contrast to all of my training, I almost pee-ed my pants (more on that later.)
Then there was Famke Janssen. She stepped towards us and I saw Jean Gr...no, it was Famke with red hair. No good news here I'm afraid. She has not magically become Jean Grey (unless there is some major post-production work in the pipes). Her hair is tinted red (she's not even a full-blown redhead!) and she was just Famke Janssen. Hm, maybe I would bump into her blazingly red-haired stunt double later? As much as I like Famke Janssen, I have serious doubts about this casting.
The scene that we infiltrated was just breaking up so FGD suggested that we journey further. The crowd was moving into the "old train station" so we went with the flow. This is the third thing they teach you in spy school. Go with the flow.
On our way across the lawn, we had a great look at the set and it was better than any set that I was trained on. It was at this point that I wished I still had my instant tele-photo glasses (Spider Jerusalem class) but unfortunately, I lost them on a field trip to Niagara Falls. Imagine with me then:
Magneto had clearly been on a rampage. Cars were thrown everywhere and many were piled on top of each other. Concrete and debris were littered about the area and smoke was still rising from most of the wreckage. Police cars were everywhere and their red and blue lights cast the whole area into a crime scene. The grass was scarred. It was a battlefield. It felt like we were first people on the scene of a terrible mutant confrontation.
Then we went into the train station (this level of infiltration wasn't even covered until our senior year). The front hall of the old building was set up for another scene and there were more people milling about the open area. Imagine our surprise at some of the faces among them. We saw Ray Park and he was...well, Darth Maul without the face paint.
We saw Sabretooth (the only 7 foot wrestler with makeup on) and let me offer some criticism about that. He had a prosthetic on his forehead that extended his brow and he looked far more like a Klingon than a seven foot feral mutant. Seeing this guy up close, it was hard to imagine him with the intensity of Sabretooth. Perhaps he'll turn it on when the camera is pointed at him, but I had the feeling that the character was just a thug (for more on this, I refer you to "Bane" in Batman and Robin).
And Wolverine. This is the only part of the report that I am sketchy about because I have only seen a couple of photos of Hugh Jackman. Nevertheless I am almost certain that I saw the man who will become Wolverine. He was clearly not an extra and not a member of the film crew (hell, neither were we) and he was speaking with Sabretooth. He looked the part in every way (good build, hard features) but there was something very wrong. It was the hair. The hair was short and flat. Now before the X-fans (me included) go crazy in Talk Back, this man did not look like he had been through make-up yet. Perhaps there are wigs that need to be applied. I HOPE there are wigs that need to be applied. Because as cheesy as Wolverine's coif may seem in the real world...it is an essential part of the character.
At this point, I would like to make it clear that we were spies in every sense of the word. We were not extras being shuffled about like sheep, privy to what "The Man" wants us to see. We were spies, invaders and uncontrollable threats. We were unwelcome and we were stealing the Truth for the Free World.
Then we turned it up a notch. We followed the extras towards Craft. Remember how I almost pee-ed earlier? Well, I needed a washroom for real and following the herd seemed like the best way to find portable toilets. Of course, this was in direct opposition to the Golden rule of infiltration which is to never go near Craft. At this point, we were quickly uncovered and asked to leave the set. Back to square one.
We retreated back to the perimeter where the scenes were being shot with Patrick, Famke and Sir Ian. Let me describe what was being filmed so that you can watch for it and recall what is sure to be Jack Fly's favorite scene of the X-Men. It is a car scene and the camera is focused on Xavier in the foreground. He is in the passenger seat and Jean...er, Famke is in the driver's seat. Magneto is crouched down outside the passenger window and since he isn't in costume and was reading from a script, I assume he is meant to be unseen. There was some confusion on the part of Patrick Stewart whether he was supposed to be looking at Magneto or not, so they shot it two ways (one with him looking straight ahead and one with him looking down at Sir Ian.) From what I could make of the scene (and I only heard part of Patrick's lines), Xavier is begging with Magneto to release Rogue from inside the building. Then there is a gunshot that startles Xavier (and makes all the extras duck down.)
Here are the thrills that were afforded this on-set spy. To hear Xavier speak the words "Magneto" and "Rogue" sent chills down my spine. That was the point that I realized that childhood idols were finding their way onto the big screen and I wanted to jump around like a little girl spy. And then to see Xavier drop his eye lids and perform what I can only assume is a mind scan...well, that's something else. The entire set was silent when he did it and it was...marvelous. I stood 15 feet from this scene and I felt like I was seeing something fantastic.
Another interesting thing we noticed was that they seemed to be filming two scenes at once. Rushes for the scenes were being shown live on a technical console near where we were standing and we could see how both shots were turning out. The second shot (filmed inside the "old train station") showed Sabretooth standing in the background with Ray Park crouching low and to the right, approaching the camera. I could not hear if there were any lines being spoken but both shots looked absolutely great.
This is not the end of Jack Fly. Through dastardly interrogation techniques that cannot be disclosed in this report, FGD and I held down one of the police officers on the edge of the set and gleened the upcoming production schedule for the next seven days of this movie. We will be returning tonight for Wave Two and if our equipment doesn't fail us, we should have some pictures for public consumption this weekend. If you don't hear from me again, it is probably because I am dead.
Be brave.
Jack Fly
