Law & Order: Criminal Intent comes to the West 79th Street Boat Basin!
Okay, so Woody Allen didn't like my houseboat enough to use in his upcoming (unnamed right now) feature film. But the reason he didn't like it was a complimentary one. In the movie, the houseboat is lent to a college kid to live on for a few months. Woody thought my 50 foot houseboat was "too nice" for someone to just lend out to a college kid. He was on the boat for about 20 minutes with the script girl, director, set designer, etc., so at first I thought I was in. My houseboat is 34 years old, but it is in pretty good shape. So in the end Woody settled for a smaller 34' houseboat that he thought was more 'lendable'.
Then I got a call from Law & Order: Criminal Intent that they wanted to use my workboat in an upcoming (June 08) episode.
I had to move the boat to a different slip and they told me they had to put 'a few things' on the boat. Turns out my boat is used a place for the villian of the episode to hide behind so people on the dock won't see him creeping around. He's just broken into a sailboat and is in the process of trying to espace with no one seeing him. Also I was surprised to learn that they were shooting a movie that would be within the L & O episode. And guess what? The 'movie' is set in New Orleans. When I asked how the West 79th Street Boat Basin in the very heart of Manhattan could pass for New Orleans, one of the cameraman said: "Well, we shooting everything very tight and very low". And one of the set designers added: "And look around at the back of the boats in the scene." When I looked, I couldn't believe it. They actually got permission from each boat owner and relettered the boats with hailing ports of New Orleans!
Pretty impressive stuff. It airs in June. When you see a guy hiding behind a big stack of boxes covered with a brown tarp --- that's my boat!! (See photo top right.)
And how about the other movie that my houseboat was going to be in: "Pride and Glory". That's been posted for another year. That's a total of two years of postponements. Doesn't look like a good omen to me.
My workboot looks better with the tarp on the front, but that's what Law & Order needed.
There were about 2 dozen people involved in the production of the marina shoot.
That's a $275,000 Aireflex Movie Camera on an $70,000 SteadyCam rig. Yep, they were shooting film.
