My walk from the office to the bus in the evening takes me through Pike Place Market. Normally, it’s the same thing. Dodging slow-walking tourists, walking through some family’s photo in front of the original Starbucks, and pretending I can’t hear people asking for change because my headphones are too loud. Today there was some actual excitement:
Crews are shooting various Seattle scenes this week for “Traveling,” a movie starring Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart.
From about 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. Wednesday, filming will be done around the Market and Post Street Alley. Pine, Stewart and Virginia streets between First and Western avenues will be closed most of the day.
They had a crane sprinkler system set up at the corner of Virginia and Western, raining down fake rain on Eckhart (he was the guy from Thank You for Smoking) as he held a briefcase over his head during the one shot I saw. A fake traffic jam filled the market with slightly more cars than there normally are on a nice day.
Hopefully, Eckhart fares better than the last person I saw filming a movie in Seattle.
I remember when they attempted to film a scene of “The Hunt For Red October” (for the record, it was the scene where RO’s crew was put into lifeboats as the officers defected with the sub) out on the Strait of Juan de Fuca by Port Angeles when I was in HS. Just about every athletically-built guy I knew in school was hired to be an extra. Usually the weather out on the Strait sucks year-round, but the movie’s producers just happened to show up on one of those rare days when the waters were as flat as glass, and the weather was warm and calm.
My friends spent a day-and-a-half floating around in lifeboats getting tan (an especially exotic fashion accessory in Port Angeles) and earning $70 a day doing absolutely nothing while the crew, a handful of Navy vessels and an especially anxious group of producers waited for the usual miserable Strait weather to arrive. After that day-and-a-half, the producers called bullshit and headed down to Coos Bay, OR to shoot the scene.
IIRC, the movie tanked, and Port Angeles wasn’t mentioned in the credits. Hey, the weather wasn’t our fault! And for the record, I’ve never been athletically built. I have a body for rugby. And the drums.
“Hopefully, Eckhart fares better than the last person I saw filming a movie in Seattle.”
I thought this was a reference to your former boss!!!
“pretending I can’t hear people asking for change because my headphones are too loud.”
I usually just shuffle and drool. No one wants change from someone they assume is Piper Scott.
I actually lived within a block of film shootings for “The Fabulous Baker Boys” (when I lived on Capital Hill) and “Sleepless in Seattle” (when I lived in Queen Anne).
Tom Hanks – check
One of the Bridges boys – check
Michelle Pfeiffer – check
Meg Ryan – check
Now, if I can only see William Shatner I can die
happyhaving seen William Shatner.@3 BlObv
My God! I just got a hernia after blowing milk through my nose. (Is there an acronym for that sequence? )
Next time you do something like the second line in that, give advance warning. I’m never gonna be the same.
Neither is Piper.
We stumbled onto a movie shoot while in Bridgeport, Connecticut a few years back visiting friends. We were driving around the old part of the city one evening and lo and behold a movie shoot. The po po five oh had ten city blocks cordoned off. They wouldn’t tell us the movie when we asked. It was a clear evening so it must of been a clear night shoot. What sucked is some of the streets were one-way and the navigation back was hellish. I guess doing a credits search on the movie database would tell me but I’m not too interested.
@4 while cleaning the milk buggers out, how about answering my networking questions in the other threads.
@2
Hahaha. :)
I remember in the 1980’s there was a big push to get movies filmed in Seattle – something about turning the Navy buildings at Sand Point into sound stages. But the movie makers found out that the exchange rate made it cheaper to film in B.C., and just pretend that they were in Seattle.
Now that the exchange rate has been reversed, I wonder if movie studios in Canada might be interested in filming here? We could pretend that we are in Vancouver for the right price, heh?
@5: Puddy
Been to Bridgeport and New Haven – there are parts you don’t want to be in at night – be safe.
Even with a black belt in Karate – I don’t go to some of those places – I don’t want to mess with a gun or knife. Being 6-2, 240 doesn’t scare away everybody, unfortunately.
But having a movie crew in your town can actually be a pleasant thing sometimes. When “An Officer And A Gentleman” was shot in Port Townsend back in 1981 or so, the cast and crew generally tried not to cause too much of a stir. They even fielded a team in the municipal slowpitch league. The local paper ran picture of Richard Gere (presumably minus the hamsters) swinging at a pitch on the front page of their sports section, and I’m pretty sure that this day’s issue would be the first that my sister would ever read the sports section…..