BS: Have you been in a Movie?

Subject: RE: BS: Have you been in a Movie?
From: ranger1
Date: 09 Jan 06 - 10:40 AM

I've never been in a movie, but Message in a Bottle was shot at the beach where I was a ranger at the time. I got to see just how annoying Hollywood people are up close. It was my job on one particular day to make sure that they adhered to the rules of the park (HA!), like staying out of the dunes so as not to damage them. This also happened to be the day that Kevin Costner and half of the film crew got stranded on Fox Island because they didn't listen to us local yokels about the tide and the speed at which it comes in. They called Marine PAtrol to come rescue their expensive star and got told: he can wait until the tide goes back out just like anyone else. They eventually bribed a lobsterman with enough money to be worth risking getting his boat bashed in on the rocks to go out and rescue poor Mr. Costner.

Subject: RE: BS: Have you been in a Movie?
From: Severn
Date: 09 Jan 06 - 11:53 AM

To bring things back to the beginning of this thread, I was one of the thousands of little gray speks running up the hill during Pickett's charge in the "Gettysburg" movie. That part of it was filmed in one week using volunteer re-enactors working for free. Money was donated by Ted Turner for battlefield preservation and such. We were fed well by Mr. Turner and we all lived in our tents, just like in a authentic encampment, in the style we would have done at a weekend re-enactment. Our unit actually did a two day march into town over the original route for authenticity's sake, sleeping in a barn overnight.

It was a lot of endless hurry-up-and-wait and standing in formation for long hours at a time (an authentic Army practice if there ever was one) until people in charge re-shot scenes countless times.

For the charge itself, all the Cornfed-Irate soldiers picked papers out of a hat with a number from one to ten that indicated how far up the hill you got and a scenario like "Die" or "Fall back in retreat" or "Get over the stone wall and be captured". Mine said to get halfway up the hill, suffer a head wound and stagger back toward the medics in the rear.

I was only there there for the volunteer week, but a few of my friends were up there for some of the rest of the time, for which they got fed and paid, tax free, I think, and since the construction trade was in a pronounced slump that summer, that was the main source of income for a couple of them at the time. They, out of all the 9th VA boys that were up there, appeared in close ups, rather than a mass charge.

The original working title for the movie was "THE KILLER ANGELS", like the novel it was taken from, and that's what it says on the free T-shirts they gave us, but they must have thought it sounded too much like a Roger Corman biker flick or something, and they changed it.

Subject: RE: BS: Have you been in a Movie?
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Jan 06 - 12:19 PM

my wife's (Ferrara) painting was in a major movie! When they recreated the Washington Post newsroom for making "All the President's Men", they hung real artwork owned by the Post on the walls, and in one scene where Robert Redford runs in, you see him, from a distance, pass a piece that was bought by the Post from a show she did. Every time the movie plays, we try to watch that 3 seconds of 'fame'.

Subject: RE: BS: Have you been in a Movie?
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 09 Jan 06 - 06:37 PM

I've been in a 30 second trailer here in Scotland, trying to dance Blooms of Bon Accord, on sloping cobbles without music and with the sun in our eyes, somewhere in Edinburgh castle, with some presenters in the middle of the set. The glamour!