September 10th: 2009

When the next big terrorist attack happens we will be as unprepared as we were on 9/10/01, lulled into a dangerous complaisance by the Old West Main Street facade that New York has become:

Awakened residents thought it was a gas explosion, maybe a sonic boom. Others figured an espresso machine inside the Starbucks had blown up. One woman, walking by the dozens of official-looking law enforcement folks inside the crime-scene tape, explained to her young daughter how similar shows like “C.S.I.” are filmed before realizing the asphalt was no stage.

“This is the real deal?” she said with a gasp. “I’m explaining it like it was a movie.” She grabbed her daughter’s hand and hurried away.

The growing realization that the commotion at 92nd Street and Third Avenue on Monday morning derived from a small explosive device rather than a script left nearby residents stunned, curious and ultimately frightened.

. . .

Some noted how much it looked like television, while others experienced an odd collision between fiction and fact.

“It sounded like a bomb, to the extent that I know what a bomb sounds like,” said Casey Mallinckrodt, who was awakened with her family in their apartment one block north on 93rd Street. “It’s confusing. Obviously we don’t live in a bomb-riddled city most of the time. And bombing a Starbucks doesn’t seem like a terrifically pointed act of terrorism towards a community. It seems as though it might be a statement towards Starbucks.”

When In Doubt, Rent It Out

Manhattan as one big photo shoot, not only B-roll for major motion pictures but also fashion shows, and not just in Bryant Park, either:

Critics are calling foul on a plan to rent the fabled West Fourth Street Courts today for a private gala.

Clothing designer Joseph Abboud is paying the city $14,100 to rent the Greenwich Village playground, affectionately known as “The Cage,” for the private launch of a fashion line with JCPenney and the NBA.

. . .

The Cage is widely known for hosting hardcore playground basketball games and helping the pro games of Hall of Famer “Dr. J” Julius Erving and other NBA greats

Paul Lerner, a Joseph Abboud spokesman, said “the setting of the legendary street basketball court really helps us depict” the designer’s new JOE collection — which is tailored for the regular guy.

Film Tax Credits Nearly Turn Deadly

And in a time when there is much confusion about what’s real and what’s not you can’t be too sure what you’re seeing:

A movie chase scene got too realistic early today when a car jumped a curb during a film shoot and smashed into the entrance of a Times Square restaurant, injuring two people, police and witnesses said.

The action scene gone awry unfolded at the Sbarro at 47th Street and Seventh Avenue shortly before 1 a.m.

Street closing notices posted by the police indicated the shoot was for the Nicholas Cage film, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”

. . .

Mark Watkins, a tourist from Birmingham, England, watched the live action chase from the top of the new TKTS booth.

“A black Ferrari and a silver Mercedes were chasing each other,” he said.

“The Ferrari took a route down the center of the road, swerving between cars. The Mercedes took the outside lanes.

“The Ferrari took a sharp right to the left and lost it, swerving across the lanes, taking out a lamppost and a news stand.

“One lady was knocked to the ground and a lamppost landed directly on top of a chap.”

Horrifying video at link.

The Unintended Consequences Of Film Industry Tax Credits

It’s changing how we see the world:

Erick Pulido, 29, who lives in a condominium three buildings down, said he measured his shock over the killing with the realities of city life. “Things happen all the time, it’s a big city,” Mr. Pulido said.

Mr. Pulido said that while on his way to work on Monday morning he noticed the police swarming around Ms. Lee’s building.

“I thought they might have been filming a movie so I just left,” he said.

The Mind Reels

See, tax credits work! They give good jobs to deserving New Yorkers! Though there is something absurdly circular about someone getting laid off from an industry that is probably as responsible for reestablishing New York City’s on-screen persona than anything else in the city for the last couple of economic cycles who then gets work as an extra in those films. It’s like Old Tucson* or something:

Laid off in December from a private equity firm downtown, Trent Calabretta, 26, found himself last month within a cubicle’s length of Angelina Jolie on a Manhattan set for the movie “Salt.”

“I’m not one to get star-struck, but it was a bit surreal,” Mr. Calabretta said. “There were thousands of people there, and we were going up and down Park Avenue for this one parade scene. People were playing military officials and past presidents, and everyone was in different uniforms, and we were all trying to come together to shoot this one scene. When I saw Jolie, my first thought was, ‘Well, she’s definitely not ugly.’ ”

The $8 an hour Mr. Calabretta earned as a nonunion extra — more recently, he was on the set of the CW’s “Gossip Girl” — will not cover the $1,750-per-month rent on his Upper East Side apartment, but he hopes the money he saved during three and a half years in finance will last until he finds a similar job.

“I’ve gotten a few paychecks as an extra, but I haven’t even looked at them yet,” Mr. Calabretta said. “My intention is to get back into finance, and in the interim, I’m going to keep doing these fun little side jobs.”

Managers at casting agencies around New York said they were seeing increasing numbers of people like Mr. Calabretta who have little experience in, or even aspirations for, acting, but are filling hours they used to spend at office jobs with gigs as extra, also called background, talent.

At Extra Talent Agency, a Manhattan firm that casts extras for commercials, television shows and documentary films, the actor database swelled to 9,680 in March from 6,850 in December. Fleet Emerson, assistant casting director at Sylvia Fay/Lee Genick and Associates Casting, has seen correspondence from aspiring extras triple over the past several months, something he called “quite a phenomenon.” And Grant Wilfley Casting, also in Manhattan, had open calls for new background talent in February and March that yielded 1,500 and 1,300 people, respectively.

*Location Scout: Old Tucson.