Hollywood Comes to Green St.

Your Center City Correspondent (CCC) had an interesting couple of days. Hollywood came to Green Street. They filmed a scene for an upcoming movie in my neighbor M’s first floor unit of our building yesterday. The movie is untitled right now, but stars Jack Nicholson, Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, and Paul Rudd, and is being filmed in locations all over town. They started prepping M’s unit last week, taking out all her furniture, painting it “movie white” and bringing in new furniture, that if the price tags are believed, the movie company got ripped off. They had to shroud the windows of her place, because they were filming a nighttime scene during the day which gave the place the look of a building being fumigated.




These movie companies don’t travel light, showing up yesterday morning with about 12 semi-trailers of equipment, taking up all the parking spots in a two-block radius which I’m sure endeared them to the whole neighborhood. Dozens of crew members invaded the sidewalk outside my place as well as the courtyard, and most of the day they spent hanging around in “hurry up and wait” mode. With that list of names, I thought there’d be some big time actors floating around the place, but it was only a scene involving Paul Rudd and another young actress. The only thing I can remember Mr. Rudd being in is Friends, he was Phoebe’s husband. They started rehearsals around 8 AM yesterday, and worked all day till about 9 PM to film a 3 minute scene! M and her mother P were outside all day wondering if her place would be in one piece when the crew was done filming. They were originally scheduled to film for two days but worked to get it all done yesterday. So the trucks and crew have almost all departed, to descend on another neighborhood. There’s some clean-up work that’s going on outside my window right now.



Needless to say, all this activity drew a crowd of onlookers across the street. So one crowd of people doing nothing looked at a crowd across the street doing next to nothing. The size of the gawkers fluctuated between 10 and 50 during different times of day. At least they were gathering for something peaceful.



Two highlights of the day for me. About noontime I looked down on the courtyard and there was a crewmember sitting down there reading a newspaper wearing a T-shirt with “Fishtown University” on it. That gave me a great laugh. Another highlight was that electricians ran power from 19th Street to M’s unit through the small alley between our homes and the homes in the back. This alley has been overgrown and with no incentive to clean it out has remained that way for the time I’ve lived here. Well the electricians did a great job cleaning it out. That must’ve been quite a chore, as if they were chopping their way thru the African jungle. That might have been worth a movie in itself.



So I expect Green St. to be cleaned and clear this morning, so all the hubbub will be just a memory, and your CCC can go back to tending his fish and enjoying the beautiful weather. Madame CCC decamped to Levittown for the duration of the filming so she can come home. I’ll have to get busy cleaning the place up.



All for now. Watch this space for more news on Center City living.



PS. Didn’t Cole Hamels pitch a gem last night? A complete game 2-hit shutout against a team we may meet in the playoffs. Maybe “Hollywood” Hamels is back in time for the pennant chase