Had a brush with Hollywood?

[KY Gentleman]

Have you ever been an extra? Has a movie ever been shot in your town?
I lived in Georgia for a while and was friends with the man who owned "The Whistle Stop Cafe" in Julliette, GA. where the movie "Fried Green Tomatoes" was filmed. I enjoyed visiting the cafe and hearing his stories about the movie crew. One of my friends at the time was in the movie, too.
How about you?

 

[SamMarlowPI]

i was in Titanic...i handed Leo a glass of champagne...

 

[Quigley Brown]

I worked at an Iowa newspaper in Tom Arnold's hometown when he made a movie with his now-ex Rosanne Barr. We had to make a fake newspaper for the film and I put my face on the front page. The movie was horrible: 'The Woman Who Loved Elvis.'

 

[rumblefish]

i was in Titanic...i handed Leo a glass of champagne...

For real?


A lot of the movie Meet the Parents was filmed in Port Washington, where I was raised. The Oyster Bay Sundries, where they went for more mixer, was actually Salem Drugs in PW. The rehearsal dinner was at Louie's Restaurant, also in Port Washington, and the view from the front overlooks Manhasset Bay and Sands Point, all my "back yard". The race home from Louie's started in front of the restaurant and goes up through Main Street by the PW Train Station. And the tuxedo rental place was Talbot's in Glen Cove, I was there not too long before the movie, getting fitted for a tux myself. One disappointment though ,I was asked to play a bit part, Greg Fokker's dashing older brother. But,,, they cut that charactor out of the film altogether.

I'll bet the folks from The Five Boroughs will have a bit to add.

 

[Cherry_Bombb]

I was over an hour late to class because of the President once....
My college is in a single building, several stories high, and sharing a city block with the Four Seasons and The Academy of Natural Sciences (in Philadelphia). The Presidents motorpool kept circling the block and police were pushing pedestrians back because of protesters surrounding the hotel. So as a direct result I got to walk into my class with a good excuse as to why I was late.

And we had more than one brush with fame over the years as a result of our location. "National Treasure" was shot on our front lawn- when the actor keeps sending the little boy in to get the letters from the Franklin Institute, he was sitting on our lawn in a little area that was torn down shortly there after. Law and Order was shot out front once. I watched one of the girls from my class chase Matthew Lillard down the block and into a cab. The Sixth Sense was shot around the corner, Unbreakable was down the street, 12 Monkeys was shot at the State Prison up the street from my apartment.

*sigh* Everytime they shot in the area, mostly w/o warning to us, I was late to class...

Oh, and the camp I work at during the summer was the setting for the movie "Wet Hot American Summer". A lot of my campers were in that movie.

 

[John in Covina]

My cousin Rick worked as a continuity guy on some small films and met Bill Murray. Also Holly Hunter.

 

[MrNewportCustom]

Boy, did my sister ever have a brush . . .

I forget which Clint Eastwood movie, possibly Firefox, but my sister is in the final scene. She's an extra in the crowd, but in one take as Eastwood walked through the crowd, he accidently brushed her stomach with his arm. She was almost nine months pregnant so he turned and asked her if she was okay.

My Chrysler is everywhere in the background of Robbenberry on Patrol, you can see most of my left side in one scene, and my name is in the end credits twice. It's the only time my car ever put money in my pocket! lol

Here I am with Tim Russ. He directed, played the Red Shirt Bandit and personally approved my car for the film. ("It's ideal", he said when he saw a picture of it.)

Lee

 

[CharlesB]

I was over an hour late to class because of the President once....
My college is in a single building, several stories high, and sharing a city block with the Four Seasons and The Academy of Natural Sciences (in Philadelphia). The Presidents motorpool kept circling the block and police were pushing pedestrians back because of protesters surrounding the hotel. So as a direct result I got to walk into my class with a good excuse as to why I was late.

And we had more than one brush with fame over the years as a result of our location. "National Treasure" was shot on our front lawn- when the actor keeps sending the little boy in to get the letters from the Franklin Institute, he was sitting on our lawn in a little area that was torn down shortly there after. Law and Order was shot out front once. I watched one of the girls from my class chase Matthew Lillard down the block and into a cab. The Sixth Sense was shot around the corner, Unbreakable was down the street, 12 Monkeys was shot at the State Prison up the street from my apartment.

*sigh* Everytime they shot in the area, mostly w/o warning to us, I was late to class...

Oh, and the camp I work at during the summer was the setting for the movie "Wet Hot American Summer". A lot of my campers were in that movie.

I've had QUITE A FEW parties in that four seasons

 

[kysaddletramp]

movie sets

I have been to Juliette and it is a cool place. The cafe appears just as it was in the movie and the fried green tomatoes are tasty!
In Danville, Ky, the movie Pharoah's Army was filmed in part at the Danville outdoor theatre. They have a movie set of an old town, circa 1860's, and the log cabin that was the primary set for the movie. After seeing the movie it is interesting to see the actual cabin and how small it is. On the movie set it appears much more substantial. A Civil War movie starring Elizabeth Taylor was also filmed there in the 50's and some of the store fronts are still standing. The Keeneland race track in Lexington was home to "Seabiscuit" or at least the racing scenes. Some of the town scenes were filmed in Bourbon County. People gathered in large numbers to watch the "stars" do their thing. A friend of mine rented his vintage John Deere tractor for the movie and was the extra that drove the tractor for the few seconds it appeared on the big screen.

 

[imoldfashioned]

I walked out of a job interview last fall and they were shooting scenes of a movie with Dane Cook and Kate Hudson at the church across the street. I also passed some cameras and such in Boston's Public Garden when they were shooting footage for the remake of The Women. I saw no stars alas, but it was still neat to see all the equipment and such.

 

[Ugarte]

Believe in Me

Believe in Me, 2006

My son and I spent a day as extras in the crowd during the "Regional Playoffs" scene shot here in Portales in the local high school gym.

Most of that movie was shot in and around Portales, though they only credited Clovis -- a larger town 18 miles north of here -- where they shot the "State Finals" games and I think a banquet. They used our Main Street, lots of rural shots just outside town, the main character's house is just outside of town, the church they used was at another small town west of here, and tons of stuff shot in the old junior high gym as well as the high school.

Some of the local moguls got paid parts as extras. One local personality [size=-3]*cough attention whore*[/size] had a speaking part.

They gave away door prizes to the crowd extras and my (then 10-year-old) son won a 32" flat screen TV.

Terrific experience. You can see the crowd we are in, but you can't recognize any individuals. Nevertheless, we really enjoyed it.

If you can catch the movie do so. It's a real Hallmark card.


Mark
.

 

[Vardeman Sneed]

The best I can do was being on the Bozo show twice when I was young. Oddly enough, there were several Bozo franchises across North America. The one I was on was filmed in Windsor, Canada.

I am also very familiar with places where movies were filmed, but I have not been in any. A few of places come quickly to mind:

"Madison" - Madison, Indiana
"Next of Kin" - Jackson, Kentucky (Breathitt County) - (The town of 'Carbon Glow' in the movie is actually in Letcher County)
"Fire Down Below" - Jackson, Kentucky
"Coal Miner's Daughter" - Blackey, Kentucky (Letcher County) - (The town of 'Van Lear' in the movie is actually in Johnson County)
"Country Boys" (PBS Documentry) - David, Kentucky (Floyd County)

There are others, but I cannot remember them right now.

 

[rebelgtp]

Well one of my cousins was one of the riders in "The Postman", my aunt slept with most of hollywood in the 60's then wrote a book about it, she was also on the cover of the album "Walk Don't Run" by the Ventures. Oh and I was in a fist fight on the "Ramblin Rod Cartoon show" when I was a kid, I think that made the news...I still have a tape of it, they use to skin through the audience of all the kids there and when they got to me I was just turning around to slug the kid behind me. He kept kicking me in the back...I think it made the news. [huh]

 

[~*Red*~]

Growing up in the valley, we brushed a lot with hollywood, some of the ones I remember right now are:
~The Karate Kid. The apartments they filmed them living at were directly across the street from where I lived as a kid. We used to hang out at the fence and watch. Also, the high school he went to, (Cleveland High), we were there every weekend while my dad played pick up basketball.

~Henry Winkler. He used to bring his daughter to the little pony rides we always went to.

My Grandfather, dad and uncle all worked at Paramount, and my mom grew up hanging out with boys from Bonanza.

 

[Retro Rob]

Gettysburg
Gods and Generals
Cold Mountain
Into the West
Assassination of Jesse James
National Treasure Book of Secrets
(History Channel, Discovery Channel, PBS, BBC)-April 1865, Hunt for John Wilkes Booth, Owl Creek, Civil War Photographers North and South, Unsolved History, History Detectives, Civil War Journal, Reporting the War

 

[Josephine]

...the remake of The Women.

fftopic: I had heard they were thinking of remaking this movie again (they have been for awhile, of course), but I hadn't heard that it was a go. It better be good, I really really like the original...

 

[Chas]

I met Bruno Gerussi on the ferry to Langdale once.

 

[imoldfashioned]

fftopic: I had heard they were thinking of remaking this movie again (they have been for awhile, of course), but I hadn't heard that it was a go. It better be good, I really really like the original...

Frankly, I am sore afraid; for starters, Eva Mendes just ain't Joan Crawford.

More info here

 

[Lady Day]

My brush with fame happened in high school.

Ever see the film The Insider? This was about my teacher Jeffery Wigand. I was a student during the time this was going on. There would often be an armed guard outside our class room, or times he would not be in class at all.

It was not until a few years later when the film came out that I understood it all.

LD

 

[Mike in Seattle]

As a toddler, Granny wanted to know what some commotion was nearby one day when she was babysitting, so we took a little strole and we're in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World for a split second in the background during the big chase through Long Beach. Long Beach shows up in lots of movies - if you've watched the Showtime series Dexter, it's Long Beach masquerading as Miami a lot. My aunt's neighborhood shows up on commercials & TV shows quite often. A restaurant family friends owned was used in Corinna, Corinna - we frequently had lunch there, including the day before shooting and were invited back to watch...but let me say, Miz Goldberg is quite a diva and NOT a nice person. So bad the owner threw them off the premises and wasn't going to allow them to continue filming, and I got into a little verbal spat with an off-duty cop Ms G. sent over to try to confiscate my camera and camcorder. "Try" being the operative word since I was on public property and knew when the cop was going beyond what he could do or threaten, especially when he was off-duty. Having a godmother who was long-time secretary to the chief of police, plus an uncle and a couple cousins on the force, doesn't hurt either. An old friend's dad, also on the force, pulled up to see what was going on (3 blocks from his house) and gave the off-duty officer what-for. A co-worker's cousin owned a jewelry shop in San Pedro where they were filming an episode of "Hart to Hart" and just missed meeting "the Harts" by five minutes. They filmed Swing Shift in 'Pedro too, and Kurt Russell stopped in one afternoon to buy some equipment. I had to cut up the credit card of a TV star. I met Carol Burnett trying not be recognized while seeing a play in Long Beach - red hair & huge sunglasses & big scarf wrapped around the head trying NOT to look conspicuous just made her all the moreso conspicuous. I thought it was her, I walked past a time or two where she was trying to scrunch down & blend into the woodwork, and pretended to be looking at a nearby piece of art and said, "I think I know who you are and that you're trying to not be recognized, but I just want to say Saturday night at 10 for years meant we were watching the funniest show on television, and I thank you for a lot of good times." She whispered "Thank you!" back. Later, I'm sitting up in the balcony and look down at the end of the first act to see Ms. Burnett was seated directly behind Mom...who turns and starts conversing with Burnett. Mom hauls out a pen to get her to autograph the program for me (she wasn't in that show but was in their next production, Company). I still have both the program and pen. Weird coincidence was the week before we'd had dinner with a friend from church had danced with Burnett in the 50's on the Gary Moore show - a routine where she was dressed up as Jeanette MacDonald and the guys (Michael Bennett, Bob Fosse, someone whose name escapes me and Warren) were dressed up as Mounties. Warren had shown us a tape of the performance which he'd recently come across...and there a week later, I see Burnett live and in the flesh. Second weird coincidence was I'd gotten up at 6 that morning to tape Noises Off. I'd mentioned that when I picked up Mom to go to the theatre, and then she mentioned it to Burnett. "My son got up at the crack of dawn this morning to tape one of your movies!" "Really? Which one?" Mom said she was all bright-eyed and smiling until Mom said, "Noisy something," and Burnett deflated and said, "Oh...that..." I saw Shelley Fabares & Mike Farrell having dinner and walked over to say one of the best theatrical experiences of my life was her aunt (Nanette Fabray) doing Applause in Long Beach in 1974 or so - first thing she'd done after her husband died - and Fabray came out at the end of the show to talk to the audience and answer questions, and asked Fabares to pass along a thank you from me (I'd heard somewhere she'd been ill at the time). My partner's sung in Bram Stoker's Dracula (a rushed job because the Rodney King riots broke out and they cut a scheduled five-day session to two days), Jurassic Park, Ghost Rider and loads of others, as well as recent computer games for Microsoft. Paul was a paid soloist at a couple different churches when we lived in LA, one of which had Meredith Baxter, Andrea Martin & others in the congregation - just seemed strange at post-service coffee seeing all these people from TV and movies milling around. Mom saw Gloria Swanson in Broadway in downtown LA and got her to autograph a copy of her autobiography to me.