Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

It would figure that the day I don't take my new digital camera with me into the city is the day I stumble across a movie shoot, a block from the Liberty Bell.

I'd gone to Center City to check the post office box for Wild Violet, and I was reviewing the many submissions I'd received, opening up letters and glancing through them while walking.

That's when I noticed that Fifth Street was blocked off, and a crowd of people was halfway down the block, by Ranstead, talking excitedly.

Curious, I sauntered up and saw a couple cameras on my side of the street, along with a monitor and some people dressed in black, sitting in chairs, intent on the action. Across the street, extras were milling.

I got a little closer, keeping my eyes and ears open. By now I'd figured out they were shooting a movie; I just didn't know which one.

An elderly man was talking excitedly to a guy dressed in black who was just a little taller than me, with spiky blonde-tipped hair and a little bit of a tan. I asked the man with the tan, "Do you know what movie they're shooting here?"

As soon as he opened his mouth to speak, I realized that he must be in the film. I felt foolish for asking him, all of a sudden. But he said very graciously, "Of course! They're shooting National Treasure, starring Nicolas Cage."

Then he returned to the elderly man and said, "I should be asking for your autograph. What war did you fight in?"

Somebody wants his autograph, I thought. I'll have to look him up on IMDb when I get home. But the IMDb listing for National Treasure wasn't terribly helpful. I wasn't able to figure out who this friendly actor was, since he's not Christopher Plummer or Harvey Keitel, and there were no helpful pictures of Justin Bartha online. It's possible it was Sean Bean, who played Boromir in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

A news brief found elsewhere, dated today, said that shooting has wrapped for National Treasure, "directed by Jon Turteltaub and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer for Touchstone Pictures. The action-adventure film stars Nicholas Cage as a historian searching for treasure from a map he believes is on the back of the Declaration of Independence. Production took place in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Washington DC and Utah."

Sounds like a hokey idea, but maybe the action scenes will make it worth it.

Now, Nicolas Cage has not been on my list of favorite people in the world ever since an encounter by proxy. I was working at a Philadelphia museum, and Nic was in a movie called Windtalkers, which is about the unbreakable World War II code, based on the Navajo language and relayed through Navajo soldiers.

The museum was going to be hosting one of the actual "windtalkers" for a special talk, and our overly ambitious chairman had suggested we get in touch with Nic's agent and ask if he'd be interested in making an appearance at the museum to talk about his movie, as part of the presentation. The chairman figured this would give the movie some exposure in Philadelphia as well as boost our attendance to the windtalker's speech.

The job of contacting Nic's agent fell to someone else in the marketing department, thankfully. It didn't surprise me that Nic's agent declined the invitation. What surprised me was the reason.

You see, apparently Nic would have been happy to come to our small, non-profit museum, but only if we would put him up in first class accommodations and meet a host of other demands, including paying for a private jet.

Now, we had United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan as a guest of our museum once, and while he did require a special security detail, he did not require a private jet. He didn't even ask for bottled water.

I had been on my way to my favorite lunch spot in Center City Philadelphia, the Pacific Cafe on Fourth Street, so I decided to get my sandwich to go. I took a shortcut through the alleyway next to the Bourse, and it wasn't until I was about halfway down the block that I realized I was walking through the crowd of extras, who were on their marks to begin again. It was really strange; they were all standing still, evenly spaced, smiling at me as I passed.

So I grabbed a tuna on rye and came back to watch the shoot a bit longer. I passed two guys in black, talking to each other. One had a radio clipped to his belt. I could hear the director giving instructions to his assistants. He was saying to make sure that this time the extras would talk to each other instead of just walking, because it needed to look natural, and they needed to avoid the "zombie effect."

I leaned against a cement planter and ate my sandwich as I watched them do another take. The extras walked down the street, a few cars drove by. The shot was only about 45 seconds long, and then they all backed up and got in their places again.

A guy standing next to me was smoking, wearing a black Harley Davidson shirt and had no front teeth. "I want to be an extra," he said with a toothless smile, looking longingly across the street.

I told him there are agencies in the area that hire for that kind of thing and suggested he ask one of the extras how they got their job. Of course, I didn't tell him that he's most likely to get work if they're shooting a biker movie.

Someone ushered us all down the sidewalk behind the yellow police tape they'd set up. This way we'd be out of the way of the crew.

I kibbutzed awhile with my fellow Philadelphians. We were joking around about the inaccuracy of the scene.

"There's never a hot dog vendor on that corner! They're only allowed to be on certain corners. And everybody knows there's never one there."

"Yes, and I've never seen that many people at a souvenir stand," I said, gesturing to one across the street where four women were lined up to buy gray T-shirts that said "Philadelphia" on them. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a shirt like that on any of the stands near the Liberty Bell.

The woman next to me said, "Yes, well, where I live, they put different colors of hats out on their stand to indicate what kind of drugs they have that day."

"Oh, that explains the crowd," I said. She nodded, triumphantly.

I noted that it didn't look like they were shooting any principles today.

"No, they are." She pointed. "The blonde woman over there in the tan coat, running against the crowd, she's the leading lady," she told me.

"Oh, really?" I said, watching them shoot another take. The woman was holding some kind of a cardboard tube and running down the street, looking over her shoulder, fighting through the crush of pedestrians moving the other way. She looked awfully small, in comparison to the normal-sized extras. If my informant was correct, she is Diane Kruger. A quick online search turned up a photo of her that resembled the woman I saw, so I guess it's correct.

"And before that, they shot a chase scene," she said.

"Did they?" This much action and excitement in Center City Philadelphia, in the tourist district, made me laugh.

But I had things that needed to be done today, so I told everyone to have a good time watching the shoot, and I headed out. As I was rounding the corner, right in front of the new Liberty Bell pavilion, what did I see but a woman wearing a jacket that said "JESUS" and holding up a sign that said that Jesus bled and died, blood and guts for our sins, or something like that.

What a day to not have my camera with me!

So this is a lesson, I suppose, that I need to have it with me at all times. After all, you never know when you're going to get a chance to photograph Nicolas Cage's private jet.

Copyright 2003 by Alyce Wilson

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