Thanks to Mandy for this :) Celebrity stalks my cul-de-sac That driveway in new film is mine PEGGY CURRAN The Gazette Should you ever see the film Abandon - and everyone I know certainly plans to - be sure to look for my house. Well, my driveway, really. Even if it makes it past the cutting-room floor, it's possible you won't see much, on account of the big bags of rubbish, the rusty tricycle, the old Christmas tree and the broken television. But if you look beyond the drifting smoke and the deadbeat extra making a score from the drug-dealer extra, in a scene that will last about 3 seconds and took two evenings to shoot, you'll see a wrought-iron gate and bumpy pavement in the back corner of the frame: they belong to me. The trash was borrowed. My driveway wasn't originally supposed to be in pictures. But it turns out I possess a hidden asset: what we in the movie biz call "a natural vortex," which apparently is just the thing when you're using an artificial smoke machine for a moody nighttime effect. This natural-vortex phenomenon is something I have known about for as long as other people's candy wrappers, cigarette butts, soggy leaves and winning lottery tickets (well, there's got to be a first time) have wafted and twirled into my courtyard. I just never knew that it would be this that finally unlocked the door to fame and fortune - OK, one hundred bucks and pathetic bragging rights among the rabble squeezed behind the yellow caution tape. Some people really will do anything to get sucked into the movies. Lights, cameras, garbage. I'll admit there has been a bit of a buzz in the neighbourhood ever since we found out Paramount Pictures wanted to use our quiet little cul-de-sac for the film Abandon. It didn't hurt that the stars include Dawson's Creek's Katie Holmes and Benjamin Bratt, formerly of Law and Order and currently of Julia Roberts. Then there was director Stephen Gaghan, winner of this year's screenwriting Oscar for Traffic, who can't help it if he's a dead ringer for David E. Kelley, even if he's not all that happy about being mistaken for the television tycoon. But if I'm honest, we'd have signed the petition approving the four-day shoot even if the principals were Phyllis Diller and Pee-Wee Herman. Celebrity does not often stalk our streets. (This is not the Plateau.) What did we care if they used the phrase "nondescript" in the information letter? That they kept repainting the interior of that house across the street until they got just the right shabby effect, and converted Sam's tidy shop into a seedy liquor store? We are not proud. Since Monday, schoolgirls have been haunting the sidewalk in hope of Benjamin sightings and Katie autographs. After word spread that Bratt had joined a soccer game in Westmount Park Wednesday morning, the swooning was palpable. Adults are not immune to the lure of the carnival either, spending countless hours doing nothing but pet each other's dogs and whisper on the sidewalk while limousines come and go and crew members adjust the lights, smoke and mutter orders through their headsets. We haven't bonded this much since the ice storm. Nor have we had so much unexpected company, with friends and friends of acquaintances dropping by to linger and loiter, until one woman finally had to cordon off her lawn to prevent strangers from stomping through the flower beds. It's as if we've been trapped by the mesmerizing boredom of it all, as if by watching take after take for hours upon hours, a little of that Hollywood glamour might briefly be ours. Another couple days of this and we'll all be walking around clutching cell phones and bottles of mineral water. Yes, there's something about seeing your pretty Victorian block transformed into a grotty, graffiti-splattered slum that sets the heart a-thumping. Then again, maybe it's just the lack of sleep from those floodlights shining in the bedroom window and the fumes from the generators. Just so you know it doesn't always look like this. After all, any neighbourhood can play itself. But a full-scale personality change? That takes talent - and trash from the props department. Anyway, if you hear of anyone in need of a natural vortex, don't call me. You'll have to talk to my agent. Link to article

<< Read More News | Talk About It >>