The ‘skeleton crew’ shoot in and around the old Yankee Stadium scheduled for next week has now expanded to include a 100-foot crane, trucks and teamsters, about three times the head-count originally anticipated, and a plan to lay dolly track down a stretch of one of the South Bronx’s busiest thoroughfares.
As predicted, downhill indeed.
My grandfather is in the hospital today, apparently not doing well. Please send Father’s Day get well wishes his way. He’s a kind and loving person, a talented painter, and an endless repository of Yiddish jokes.
When I last spoke with him a few weeks back, he shared this one:
A nice Jewish girl brings her fiance home to meet her parents. After dinner, her father invites the young man to the living room, for a glass of Schnapps.
“So, nu, what are your plans?” the father asks.
“I’m a Torah scholar,” the fiance replies.
“A Torah scholar,” the father says. “Admirable. But how will you provide a nice house for my daughter to live in, as she’s accustomed to?”
“I will study,” says the young man. “And God will provide for us.”
“And how will you buy her a beautiful engagement ring?” asks the father.
“I will concentrate on my studies,” the fiance replies, “and God will provide for us.”
“And children?” asks the father. “How will you support children?”
“Don’t worry, sir, God will provide,” replies the fiance.
So, the daughter and the fiance head home, and the mother asks the father, “nu, how was he?”
The father says, “well, he has no job and no plans, but the good news is he thinks I’m God.”
Get well, grandpa.
And, to my own father, best Father’s Day wishes and all my love.
It’s always worth being reminded that life is unpredictable, that we’d best appreciate, share time with, and love our friends and families while we can.
Today is the three-year anniversary of my first date with Jess, the best thing that ever happened to me.
To celebrate, we had wanted to go away somewhere fun for the weekend. But it’s raining torrentially here in New York. And, at least according to forecasts earlier in the week, it should also be pouring in the Hamptons, Miami, New Orleans, Connecticut, and nearly every other fun, two-night destination we could come up with.
In this weather, our living room seems like a comparatively excellent idea.
[Remember when I used to blog? Me too.]
The old Yankee Stadium is a crucial backdrop – nearly a character – in Keeper of the Pinstripes. So, we’d based much of our production plans around the demolition schedule we’d received from the Yankees’ management.
Turns out, there are actually four different crews working on the demolition, only one of which works for the Yankees. And the schedule we’d received was for the slowest, by far, of the crews. Stick to our original shooting plans, and by the time principal photography started, there wouldn’t be much stadium left.
So, very quickly, we’ve rejiggered our approach, throwing together a small four-day shoot to capture as much footage of the old stadium – during the day and at night, from the ground and from above, next to the new stadium and by itself – as possible.
That way, with the requisite footage in the can, no matter how those four teams’ schedules shift, we’ll be spared worrying about the ticking time bomb of stadium demolition as we shoot the rest of the film.
A week from Monday, then, our mini-shoot will be underway. We hope. So far, we’ve had to convince the City of New York (who now control access to the inside of the old stadium) that, though they denied similar permission to CBS and ABC, they should let our little crew in. We’ve had to convince agents that, though we’d already negotiated deals with department heads based on a specific number of pre-production and shooting weeks, they should let us tack on a few additional weeks at no further cost. And we’ve had to lock down decisions on things like lenses and film stock, set design and visual effects, that we’d otherwise have far, far longer to work our way through.
So, suffice it to say, we’ve been busy. And, frankly, I think it just goes downhill from here.
Production offices are open, and the shoot countdowns are on. Things are totally insane, though, fortunately, still in a good way.
“There cannot be a stressful crisis next week. My schedule is already full.”
-Henry Kissinger
Today I sat on the bench in the Yankees’ dugout, then took the field with Jackie Martling.