Hey folks, Harry here with a pair of reports on the SPIDER-MAN shoot for both yesterday and the day before... Decided to sandwich the two reports for ya... For the Spidey-geek that can't get enough... here ya go....
Hi Harry, Romanadvoratrelundar here, before starting let me mention that the Saruman + Orc pics were great, but for some reason really reminded me of those "ahh, the power of cheese" commercials. Not sure why.
On to the meat:
Spider-Man is filming around the corner as I write this and a short while ago I had the opportunity to viddy a scene being filmed from a convenient perch high above the action, hence, no sound but a good bird's eye view. Confirming with a friend who also saw a setup of this scene at street level, it looked like this:
Mary Jane (Kirsten), with her blazing red hair tied up haphazardly, exits the Moondance diner at Grand Street and Sixth Avenue in a hurry, not stopping to tie her coat around her, and turns the corner, passing a Daily Bugle newsstand. Later investigation noted that the bugle issue carried the headline "Subway Bandit Strikes Again" over a photo of a graffiti'd train. Sub-headline: "Police offer token response." MJ looks upset.
Peter (Tobey), wearing a semi-stylish blue jacket and jeans with a white shirt and carrying a backpack, is talking to some heavyset guy on the corner, probably looking for info on MJ's whereabouts. The corner guy points her out to Peter and he lightly runs over to where she's at, stopping her after a few more paces. This is played out around the corner of the Moondance diner with a parking lot to the left side (not sure if it would be in the shot), on Grand Street, with Sixth Ave in the background. They talk for a couple seconds, then a REALLY big (tall and like 300 lbs) black guy wearing a grease-stained cook's apron and a purple t-shirt hustles around the corner toward them, carrying what look like crumpled receipts. He stops before getting all the way over and shakes them at her, yelling something.
A huge 70s turquoise Caddy swings around the corner from its previous position parked in front of the diner. The shot ends with the cook guy with his arms out in that NYC "so what'cha gonna do about it" position. Kind of reminiscent of Superman II with the abusive Canadian diner guy -- maybe there's one of those "prove your manhood for your lady vs. reveal your powers" conundrums in store?
Some time later I wandered around the setup area and passed the actors' chairs which were sitting empty. Tobey's and Kirsten's were together at the corner in front of this place called Cafe Noir, the actors themselves probably having lunch in the white Haddad trailers around the corner. The chairs were standard directors' chairs, with black cloth with red lettering, which was not as serif-y as the logo, but a similar typeface. Lo and behold
-- in the pocket of the chair that said "Kirsten Dunst" was a stapled SCRIPT, probably her personal copy. I took a peek but didn't pick it up ... call it respect. Also call it the watchful eyes of various set dudes all around. I did get to read down a scene description on the first page though. Scene 29a, I think it was, begins ... "We are looking through the window of the MOONDANCE DINER"... so the diner is definitely a location in the story. Script voyeur moment over.
Hope this tidbit is to your liking. If you feel like using this, you can call me ...
Romanadvoratrelundar
And we had this report from Gold Toothed McGee
hey harry--- this happened two days ago, but i have only seen pictures from the nyu shoot. I saw paramount equipment trucks set up all along 4th street around mercer, so I asked a guy rumaging through a box of lights what they were shooting. He replied " all I can tell you is it a movie based on a popular marvel character." What a fine day. Oh yes.
Well I noticed they were shooting on Broadway above a French Connection and some other stores so i walked over to find a camera three stories up on a crane. It shot from the top of the building and lowered down the face of the stone building, stopping at the store fronts. I stopped by later and watched them do sweeping pans from the building to the street. Then I noticed two doors were swung wide open with a sign that said TO SET with set 1: Penthouse , set 2: 9 (floor) written bellow. I agreed to meet up with my adventurous friend later in the day to investigate.
When we got back the P.A.'s had set up cones a line closing off the street. We walked right over it and pretty much right through the open doors. We got into the elevator and two girls ahead of us asked the elevator man to go up to the set. Easy. My friend and I kept on talking, trying to fit in and such. Then we were let off on the penthouse floor.
There was no shooting going on a the time, but this is what we saw.
There was a large bar directly in front of us which some P.A.'s were behind, messing around. We cautiously began to wander around the spaciuos apartment. On either far off side were huge windows. The ones to the left looked on to Broadway and the ones to the right revealed the eastward cityscape.
Around the room with windows facing Broadway they had covered up areas of the dark wood floors with cardboard and were setting up (or breakin down) a bunch of lighting equipment.
There were a couple of interesting things around. In the other room there was an entertainment set up. They had this T.V. being held up with, well, how to describe it?, a set of metal levers x'ed over one another to expand and contrast. Similar to those guns that have a boxing glove attatched and when you pull the trigger it punches your friend in the face. Yeah. OK. So this didn't seem like the typical bourgeois television stand. And then there was another monitor / TV that had a screen saver floating around that said BOOYA on it. Lastly, there was smaller sub-room that had a wooden dinner table that looked like it was from med-evil times. So i don't know if they were filming any of this stuff, though it stood out as being abnormal.
We went down to the ninth floor which looked very similar. It had set ups through out. At that point we decided to get out while we still had our hides. But nobody bothered us the entire time.
It was great seeing a piece of the puzzle. I just wish i got to see Raimi.
You can call me......
Gold Tooth McGee
