Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: The Unofficial Companion (20 page)

Read Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: The Unofficial Companion Online

Authors: Susan Green,Randee Dawn

11:05 A.M.
Production assistants ward off a video camera-wielding member of the public. It’s not allowed.
11:10 A.M.
Helicopters and motorboats frequently buzz the area, but are only periodically considered interference.
11:25 A.M.
Stabler and Benson cross the park to look at the body. Everyone’s uncomfortable on this dog day of summer. Hargitay asks for help from the makeup people: “Just a little Blotty von Blotstein, thanks.” Pattison is almost drowning in his own perspiration. And no wonder: He’s got to carry the Steadicam on a harness strapped around his chest and it weighs about seventy-five pounds.
The crew trails him as he closes in on Marga’s body and someone sets a wooden crate down so he can sit.
11:30 A.M.
It’s so hot out today that the metal frame containing Marga’s body—purportedly pulled directly from the water—and the blanket surrounding it are drying out, so a crew member is on hand to re-wet the contraption for verisimilitude. He uses what’s called a “Hudson Sprayer,” which resembles an insect exterminator’s equipment. That’s the actual name of the device, not a nod to the river from which it’s drawing water.
NOON
The camera is reloaded, which takes time. Leto joins the actors. When someone mentions a cinematic “freeze frame,” he starts humming the early 1980s J. Geils Band song with that title.
12:05 P.M.
Tunie finishes work for the day and the episode. There’s applause from her colleagues. Kristin is also done being Marga. Hargitay tells her she did a good job.
The crew and the equipment are relocated further down the river promenade for scenes with Belzer and Ice-T, neither of whom is here yet. Hargitay seems to have disappeared, until the raft comes zooming back to shore: She’s in it, along with one of the stuntmen and her assistant. They’ve just gone for a ride. “That was so much fun,” she shouts. “I wanna join the Coast Guard.”
1:30 P.M.
After lunch, setup begins for the day’s last series of scenes at a building with a sign out front that reads, “Hugh L. Carey Battery Park City Authority.” But the set designer apparently has added frosted glass engraved with the words “Hotel Argus” to the doors.
Tracks are laid for a dolly shot. When asked, Ice-T talks about the “Zen master of the set” designation given him Friday by the makeup people: “I have my priorities straight,” he says, explaining that most of his friends are in jail. Some years ago it even felt as if his own luck was running out and the time had come to get his act together.
2 P.M.
Speaking of getting an act together, Belzer is here now and The Men in Black—as the crew refers to him and Ice—have a scene at the Hotel Argus. Munch walks outside to find Fin checking for clues in a sidewalk trash bin.
Between takes, nearby gawkers take pictures, prompting Ice to announce: “Paparazzi! Ice-T Fired From
Law & Order
! Exclusive!”
Leto says, no doubt humorously: “We’ve got ten hours to shoot this scene. Let’s use it!”
2:15 P.M.
In front of the hotel again, Munch has to weave around a luggage cart piled high with suitcases. There’s a car now parked there, as well, with background extras enacting Hotel Guest and Valet.
A prop man later explains the vehicle belongs to someone on the crew; as always, the owner is paid $120 per day for its use.
Belzer’s step-daughter, Bree Benton, arrives with two friends. She’s a willowy ash-blonde who has done some acting, including on a 1999 episode of his former series,
Homicide: Life on the Street
.
2:30 P.M.
There’s some serious choreography needed this afternoon. Not much can be done to avoid noise from helicopters above and water taxis in the Hudson. But production assistants do try to keep the public out of the promenade sequence, again and again allowing joggers, bicyclists, moms or nannies pushing babies in strollers and summer-camp kids with backpacks to pass before each take of a scene.
SVU
has its own background extras in similar garb, however, once the camera rolls. This hilarious mingling of fact and fiction makes for a long day in the blazing sun.
A tourist is heard asking his wife, “Isn’t this the highlight of your trip?”
A short while later, Ice echoes that idea when another swarm of visitors stops to watch the spectacle: “Hello! This is the most exciting thing you’re going to see on your trip to New York except for the Naked Cowboy. He’s next!”
Prop sign from on location set for “Lunacy”
2:45 P.M.
Somewhere in the midst of a scene that demands more than a dozen takes, Ice jokes about the show’s decade-long existence: “Ten years without reading a script.” Belzer, pretending to cringe: “Shhh!”
Computer Screens in Squad Room, used during season ten’s “Lunacy.” Director Peter Leto and writer Daniel Truly appear as astronauts in the lower center screen.
After several unsuccessful takes, Leto says, “We’re over-thinking it; that’s our problem.”
Before another try, camera operator Tom Weston informs him that a guy sitting on a bench within the shot is not a background extra.
Ice-T: “Hard to regulate New York.” Nonetheless, he makes an attempt at crowd control by telling one group: “Back up a bit.” They obey.
Belzer’s a bit blunter with a family obliviously wandering into camera range: “Move, move, move!
Mach schnell
!”
He then politely asks a man in a yarmulke to back away, before muttering to himself: “Get your ass outta here!”
Despite all this angst, the two actors are soon glimpsed on a bench, posing with their arms around strangers who request snapshots of themselves next to The Men in Black.
3:05 P.M.
“Men in Green! Men in Green!” Ice proclaims, as New York City park employees in cucumber-colored uniforms come into view. One of them shakes his hand, saying: “I’m a big fan. A big fan.”
Belzer is ensnared in a canine altercation, as little Bebe and a gigantic black Lab snarl at each other.
When someone points out that they’re shooting an episode about astronauts one day after the 39
th
anniversary of the first moon landing (July 20, 1969), Ice-T says: “Fun facts.” It happens to be one of his lines in this very scene.
3:30 P.M.
Leto says he hopes the Hudson River’s water is clean because a stunt-woman has swallowed some.
4:05 P.M
.
McMaster to Leto, who’s eating pretzels and sipping a can of iced tea while Ice-T and Belzer wait for their marching orders: “Peter, your Men in Black need a little direction.”
4:15 P.M.
Leto: “Good energy now and action! . . . Cut! . . . OK, here we go. Good pace, good pace . . . Cut! Check the gate . . . Oops, no. One more, one more.”
TUESDAY, JULY 22
10 A.M.
SVU
has fanned out into a second borough, at the New York Hall of Science in Queens. The setting for some of today’s scenes involves two gigantic Atlas and Titan rockets on display outside amid a landscape that’s overgrown with plant life, crying out for a gardener. This is intentional, it turns out (the museum, based near Flushing Meadows, is letting the grasses grow wild). But the look is untidy for filming purposes. “Benson has fuck-all for background,” Leto complains.
In the script, the detectives seek information about Marga’s murder at a space symposium discussing a return to the moon. So another part of the grounds they plan to use has been given a dais, where dignitaries are supposed to give speeches, and bleachers for the spectators.
10:35 A.M.
The show has recruited an unusually large group of background extras. About 125 of them are assembled in a cavernous second-floor area that’s the location’s equivalent of a holding room. Some are outfitted in either NASA or military uniforms. This might be confusing to the museum’s regular patrons—mostly kids—who excitedly browse the interactive exhibits.
As they set up a scene outside, cast and crew don’t have leisure time for such educational pursuits, but do understand one fundamental scientific truth: 90 percent humidity is profoundly uncomfortable, especially for those constantly on the move lugging heavy equipment or dressed in costumes befitting late autumn.
Moreover, mosquitoes have moved in, though the prepared-for-anything props department is stocked with repellent. Other crew members have had to venture into the dense meadow in order to do some preparations and they’re now imitating monkeys in the jungle.
11:15 A.M.
Background extras are in the bleachers or at the podium. One of them, George Wilkinson, is dressed as a Navy commander. He’s been on the show four or five times over the past two years, ever since retiring from the electric emergency services field and enrolling in an acting course at Nassau Community College.
“I was watching
Law & Order
and saw a jury filing into the courtroom,” he recalls. “I told myself, ‘I can do that.’”
The crew shoots B-roll footage of the rockets.
Yesterday, the noise was due to choppers and water taxis. Now, it’s the frequent fliers above us from nearby LaGuardia Airport.
McMaster tells the crew to move all the equipment to the opposite side of the road. They’re situated too close to the busy museum loading dock. “Welcome to the first cluster-fuck of the day,” he says, waving his arms for emphasis.
11:35 A.M.
Meloni has a sleeveless business shirt on again. His upper left arm sports a large tattoo with a religious theme. Hargitay tries to beat the heat with a personal-sized, portable fan.
On July 27, the
New York Post
publishes a photo of him this way, with a cutline describing the tat as “a self-designed depiction of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion.” A few days later, the newspaper shows Hargitay alongside “Trials” guest star Luke Perry; he’s got a portable fan in each hand, one aimed at her face and the other at his.
12:10 P.M.
Out of the blue, Leto starts singing a snippet from “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” another 1968 Beatles hit: “Flew in from Miami Beach BOAC; Didn’t get to bed last night . . .” Could this be in reaction to the intrusive LaGuardia flight path? In addition to the air traffic, trains rattle past not too far away from the shoot.
Dan Truly explains that while writing the script he’d envisioned the Hayden Planetarium in Manhattan, “but this site offered more opportunities.” And more planes.
Even here, humanity is an issue. Pedestrians and cars periodically disrupt filming. At one point, a bare-chested Asian man so thin his ribs stick out pedals by on a bicycle rigged up as a sort of truck filled to the brim with detritus. A junk collector, perhaps? Leto asks a member of the crew to give him several bottles of cold water.
12:35 P.M.

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