Look Law & Order, I know you’re a big important television franchise. And I’m sure many would be of the opinion the shows you produce are much, much more important than the commercials and independent films produced by the company I work for. Just look at how many people you employ, for goodness sakes. Why because of you every schlock nimrod actor in New York has had extras work, at least once! We simply do not measure up, Law & Order.
And when you’re as important as you are, you gotta shut down streets and take over sidewalks and tow parked cars and commandeer whole restaurants and businesses. You have to hang up building-blocking scrims to get the lighting just right, so Ice T will look his very best. I agree Ice T should look his very best. And I understand it is occasionally necessary to put craft service in the middle of the fucking road, encircled by a few of New York’s (actual) finest, so the hoi polli can’t get too near the supremely hot Mariska Hargitay, or so a stray homeless person won’t try to steal a bagel or something. I know you have to do that.
But Law & Order? May I remind you that there are other people in New York who also make the filmy-type thingies, and who also need to get their, albeit less glamorous, job done? And that just because our front door happens to be in the middle of your set at the moment, it does not, for instance, give YOUR PAs the right to turn away the cube truck MY PAs need to load with the camera and light kits for OUR SHOOT THIS MORNING, or to intercept MY FUCKING FILM TRANSFERS FROM TECHNICOLOR, thus leaving me, here, in the office above your set, with the impression that these people simply never showed up, and thus causing me to make several phone calls to numerous innocents and proceed to rip them a whole new category of asshole…
It may be a shock, Law & Order, to learn this tid-bit; but the city of New York was not erected for the sole purpose of being a super-nifty gritty backdrop for your mediocre cop dramas. Sour grapes you say? Fuck off.
Unless you’re hiring coordinators.
Yes, I would be one of the ones that would need to be kept away from the extremely hot Mariska Hargitay. An entire police force would be needed to keep me away from drooling on the bagels on the craft table.
I do also understand the trials of shoots taking over your neighborhood.
One time when I lived in Hell's Kitchen, I had just come up the stairs from the subway and was walking with my head down. (another story about why I didn't make eye contact i.e. psychomagnet)
I was innocently walking toward my home when I saw snow along the sidewalk. I started poking the snow with my boot tip wondering why it had started snowing so soon in the season. I looked up and had about a hundred angry PAs throwing their hands up in the air at my stupidity as I realized that it was this weird cottony stuff that was supposed to be snow. Hee Hee silly me I screwed up the whole scene.