'Bred Crumbs
06.23.03
So Robbie and I are making this odd little short video thing, CrossWalk. The shoot was this weekend, and it went remarkably smoothly, given the conditions, lack of money or resources, and our tendency to crack up and goof around at the slightest provocation. (An indication: we have an hour of "making-of" footage about our eight-minute movie.)
Despite spending most of an afternoon at an intersection, in the middle or nearly in the middle of the street, we were fairly unharassed by passersby. The blasé, showbiz-acclimatized Californians just went around us. There was extremely little gawking; the most prominent case, quite enjoyable, was the girl who watched fascinated out the window of a van at a stop light as, right below her by the streetcar stop, two actors and two cameras were low to the ground shooting a vital, twisted shoe-stuck-in-gum sequence. There was also the guy who pulled up next to the stop during another scene, wearing a DreamWorks cap. He wanted to know what we were shooting. No, what we were really shooting. What, he thought Soderbergh was shooting a two-camera, no-name video epic behind the industry's back?
We wondered if The Man would hassle us at any point, but it became clear pretty quickly that the cops who passed by didn't give a crap. As for real-life pedestrians, we were very careful to stay out of people's way and always leave a path, yet there were three cases – all male – of complaint. Two of them grumbled as they walked, completely unobstructed, past our small base camp. And one guy early on let loose some curses when we caused him to go slightly out of the way on the sidewalk. Man, if that's gonna bend you out of shape, how the hell do you get through a day in San Francisco?
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