In the
spring of 1985 before starting working on Peter Pan, Richard the scene
designer asked me to help him on an outside project he was working on.
Richard
was a unique individual, some called him odd, and he knew a wide range of
people.
One day
just outside my office Richard introduced me to Derek Wolcott, the Noble Prize
winning poet, who was a friend of his.
I do not
know why he was there, what he was doing and I am sure the college would have
loved to have him speak while he was in town, but Richard never thought in that
way.
Somehow
got hooked up working on a film documentary series and convinced them to film
it in the Rochester area.
The film
was going to be part of the PBS
series Voices and Visions which featured the lives of American poets
and this was to be the Emily Dickinson
episode.
Link to online video, it is poor in quality but you can still get an idea of what we did: http://www.learner.org/resources/series57.html#
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| Emily Dickinson |
At first
I was asked just to make some simple furniture pieces needed for one of the
scenes but soon I ended up on location helping out and doing much more.
The
documentary was film in several locations in the Rochester area.
We
filmed in several historic homes, a museum village and the building fronts of a
local small town.
We used
the Morgan-Manning House in Brockport, The Leroy House and its Carriage House, three buildings at the Genesee Country Village and Museum, the
town of Lima, NY and several homes in the Corn Hill section of Rochester.
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| Extras in Costume |
I
assisted the designer on set doing many small things but my duties would
greatly increase as Richard would disappear and I was asked to make decisions
and fix problems on the spot.
Shooting
in front of a house on Atkinson Street in Rochester, we added shutters to the
inside of some windows, made the doorbell disappear with a little tape and
spread 20 bags of peat moss over the modern street.
A horse
and carriage was set to ride up to the house and several actors would get out
and go into the house.
The
cinematographer asked me to remove a No
Parking sign that was in the way of a shot and as me and the other
assistant George, who now works here at Brockport, tried to pull it out I was
surprised as a cop came over.
I
thought he was going to yell at us but he just helped us pull it out of the
ground.
During
the shooting I was given a Walkie-Talkie
and asked to stop traffic on Plymouth Avenue, the main cross road.
So just
out of sight of the film crew around the corner I stepped into the road with my
trusty Walkie-Talkie put up my hand
and stopped traffic.
I thought
people would protest and be pissed, but when I told them that we were making a
movie they all thought it was cool.
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| Film Crew |
I
quickly found out that when you are working on a movie you can get away with
many things and people treat you as if you are special plus the food is much
better than the doughnut or two you might get in a Theatre load-in.
In Leroy
we filmed in both The Leroy House and its Carriage House.
We used
several rooms in the old Carriage House, one was used as a Boston
photographer’s studio and another became a 19th century school room.
A dinner
scene was filmed in the main house.
At the Genesee Country Village and Museum we used at least three of the buildings.
It is a
wonderful place with over 40 buildings and many costumed interpreters that give
you a nice depiction of what life was like back in 19th century.
We
filmed in George Eastman’s boyhood home, the Hamilton House and one of the three
churches.
It was
in the Eastman home that the furniture that I built was going to be used.
In a
scene the actress playing Emily Dickinson was to light an oil lamp.
Simple
enough.
The
designer gave me some fuel and asked me to fill the lamp but when I looked down
I saw that he had given me a can of Coleman
Fuel or what is commonly called WHITE GAS!
If you
put gas in a bottle with a rag, or in this case an oil lamp with a wick, the
result is a basic Molotov cocktail!
One
little drop and B A N G !
Knowing
that we had some back at the school I drove back and picked up the lamp oil.
Oh
course the battery in the van they gave me was close to death so I pulled the
battery out of my old Javelin and put
it in the van so that I could finish the job.
This was in the
time before cell phones so having a dead battery and being on the side of the
road miles from home was not fun.
Later
when filming in the Hamilton House the designer had me fill two oil lamps
hanging on the wall and light them for one of the scene.
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| Hamilton House |
One
hundred year old, untested lamps, what could go wrong?
Fortunately
nothing did and neither house burned down, but I am sure the people at the
museum would have burst a gasket if they knew what we had done.
Guess
they will never have us back now.
We also
filmed in one of the churches and I got to be a sound assistant for that one.
I got to
hold the boom microphone over my head for a while during the shooting.
Yes your
arms start hurting right away and I was happy I was just filling in for just a
short time.
The film
crew took over the whole downtown of Lima, NY for a day and a half of filming.
The
designer and I came in the night before to start prepping the town by putting
up 19th century business signs that we had made to cover the modern
signage.
We got
to stay in a funky old hotel and have a few drinks with some of the colorful
locals.
The
stores were paid to be closed all day and the film producers took over a local
restaurant to feed the crew during the long day of shooting.
We laid
down wood planks over the sidewalks and the peat moss was used for a second
time to cover the street.
Fortunately
I did not have to re-bag the peat moss this time as a local farmer watching us
work offered to take it away when we were done.
As what
would be the case with at least half of what we shot, none of the filming from
Lima was used in the final film.
We did
use the film shot in front of a local bible college for another scene of people
arriving by horse and carriage.
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| In front of the Bible College |
That was
a simple set-up and went very fast.
There
was a nice wrap party at a local bed-and-breakfast that the producers were used
as their home base during the shoot.
It was
almost a year before the whole project was finished and our episode made it to
TV.
The film
is still re-run from time-to-time of some of the educational channels.
It was
nice to see my name flash by in half a second during the end credits.
I was
surprised to see that another person named Musante
had worked on the film but I do not remember meeting them or if I did our family
name never came up.
In all I
worked in about twelve different locations for the film and I know that they
filmed in several more.
There
was a very tight filming schedule and it was always a bit crazy, but still it
was lots of fun.
***
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