Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: The Unofficial Companion (21 page)

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Authors: Susan Green,Randee Dawn

BOOK: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: The Unofficial Companion
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Museumgoers, many of them school-age children, have gathered in the weeded area to take pictures and watch filming of a two-camera scene.
12:45 P.M.
The sun’s directly above and everyone is dripping, especially the actors who wear heavy clothing. “I feel so sorry for those extras in sweaters,” Leto says, “but we air in the fall, so the episode has to look that way.”
1:05 P.M.
While in character for a scene, Meloni introduces Benson to Dick Finley as “Olivia Stabler.” Leto: “Whoa, Freudian slip!” Gail Barringer: “Save that for the gag reel.”
1:10 P.M.
More planes, trains, automobiles, and non-
SVU
people interrupt the shoot. Leto: “We’d do better on Lexington Avenue.” Nearby, a police car has pulled up that’s marked “Movie TV Unit.”
Now, there’s a tough beat
.
1:51 P.M.
Cast and crew are on hold, waiting for Meloni to return from elsewhere. “Something’s not right with him,” Hargitay says, then turning to the authors: “Put that in the book.”
Yes, ma’am.
2:25 P.M.
A child screams in the distance. A car honks insistently. Delays, delays, delays. Heat, heat, heat.
Hargitay to Leto: “I’m hanging in there like a champion, but sweat is just dripping down my back.”
4:20 P.M.
Child extras are placing a teddy bear in a space helmet on a make-shift memorial to Marga that includes flowers, condolence cards, and Belgian flags. Stabler and Finley spot Anton Thibodeaux, clutching a prized autograph book. He’s bragging to anyone who’ll listen about the famous astronaut names therein, but with each successive take Chris Elliott improvises slightly different dialogue that refers to renowned pioneers of space flight. The guy seems to know his NASA history.
4:40 P.M.
Leto asks Meloni to step into the frame, an angle not previously planned. The actor playfully asks the director: “You want a piece of me now?”
There’s a long debate among Leto, camera operator Tom Weston, script supervisor Stephanie Marquardt, and James Brolin over where Anton should direct his gaze at the end of a one shot in order to match the placement of actors in the next one.
5 P.M.
Leto announces that Chris Elliott’s work is done. Cast, crew, and extras applaud him.
6:15 P.M
In the holding room, PA Drew Wood reads names from a list in an effort to round up several child extras for a “Lunacy” scene that will have them watching the Marga-in-zero-gravity video. A few don’t respond right away and there’s confusion about what they all should be wearing.
One little girl peppers him with questions: “Should we take notes?”
Wood: “No, you’re just watching a video.”
Inquisitive Girl: “Can we take notes about the video?”
Finally, everyone is ready. “Follow me. Here we go,” Wood says like a Pied Piper leading the ambitious kids to their acting destiny.
6:47 P.M.
The shoot has finally gotten away from the direct sun by going indoors, but the temperature in this enormous chamber of a room—three stories high—keeps the sweat glands pumping. It is beautiful, though. Curved in and out like waves, the walls are studded with irregular shapes of dark blue glass that block daylight.
7:05 P.M.
“Monkey” (Key PA Brian Campe), on how he got his nickname: “When I started four years ago, I was young and eager and wacky and trying to make an impression and maybe a little goofy.”
8:20 P.M.
Leto hugs Hargitay, possibly as encouragement to endure the swelter and long hours.
Seated, Meloni hoists himself up several inches using just one arm on a museum pulley exhibit that allows people to try lifting their own weight.
A crew from TV’s
Access Hollywood
has arrived to interview James Brolin.
8:30 P.M.
When longtime
Law & Order
publicist Audrey Davis mentions that the show’s scripts are redone with local casts in several foreign countries, Meloni and Hargitay spring into a hilarious sketch comedy routine.
Germany? Their accents are pitch-perfect.
Russia? Hargitay: “Nyet.”
England? In character, they deliver an increasingly raunchy version of
SVU
, telling the Queen that Benson and Stabler are there to see Her Majesty.
France? Meloni, as he mimes puffing a cigarette with insouciant
joie de vivre
: “Zat ees not a sex crime. For ze French, ees never a sex crime.”
Everyone is in stitches.
10:05 P.M.
The laughter is long gone, as fatigue sets in. Hargitay yawns. The attempt to nail a wordy sequence drags on and on because Brolin, possibly approaching heat exhaustion, stumbles over his lines. Lunacy, indeed.
Leto tells the crew to “warm Odafin up” for a scene in which he identifies Marga’s necklace in a pawn shop—actually a sort of stall with props that’s been constructed in the holding room. Poor Ice-T has been waiting to do this since 3 P.M.
Not a very fun fact.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 23
10:30 A.M.
“We’re in!” comes the call, which means everyone heads to the squad room so that Peter Leto can conduct a walk-through of the sequence. But only stand-ins are on hand—the actors haven’t arrived yet—and it’s as cold as a meat locker in here. Quite a contrast with yesterday’s torturous heat.
10:45 A.M.
Just inside the main doors to the soundstage, a bulletin board displays “approved” articles about the show from the Internet. Today it has expanded—there’s going to be a
Law & Order: UK
version with an actor from
Battlestar Galactica
appearing in it.
Quick, somebody cue Meloni and Hargitay about that interrogation of the Queen!
10:55 A.M.
Stand-ins are reading lines to themselves in the holding cell just outside the squad room doors. A crew member has modified a director’s chair with pink tape and written “Tom Weston” on it. He’s the camera operator.
11:25 A.M.
Belzer and Bebe stroll onto the set and initial rehearsals with main actors commence. During one of them, he is standing next to Brolin, whose line is: “Anything I can do . . .” Belzer adlibs a verse from an
Annie Get Your Gun
song: “ . . . I can do better.”
11:35 A.M.
The first takes go relatively well. Dan Truly, for whom this is the last day on the set, talks with Leto about which of Brolin’s arms should be carrying a duffel bag. Three bells ring, as they do every time the camera rolls.
11:45 A.M.
Leto re-frames his shot a tad inside the squad room, comes back out and examines it on the monitor: “That’s a-nice a-frame,” he says in an exaggerated Italian accent.
Bebe on the set of “Lunacy,” season ten
Meloni arrives on set in a shirt and tie—and shorts—for rehearsal. A recent college graduate, aspiring actor, and neighbor of Howard McMaster’s has been invited on the set today and is eager to understand the whole process.
Meloni shakes his hand. “Who’re you?”
McMaster’s neighbor: “Sam.”
Meloni: “I’m Chris.”
Sam: “I know who you are.”
But he’s amused and delighted by the actor’s casual attitude.
12:05 P.M.
Tomorrow’s on-location shoot will return to Battery Park, where exteriors of the faux Hotel Argus were done on Tuesday. This will be a night shoot (as opposed to the original location shoot, which took place during the day). McMaster explains that they tend to save night shoots for Friday, so that they don’t have to deal with union-mandated turnaround time for the crew, since Saturdays are rarely on the schedule. The requirement: ten hours off between workdays; actors get twelve.
1:15 P.M.
With the squad room scenes done, everything and everyone relocates to the interior of the Hotel Argus, situated elsewhere on the set. There’s a closed blocking rehearsal, and then it takes a very long time to light the room.
The authors must flee, but learn later that the indefatigable
SVU
people wind up going until about 12:30 A.M.
THURSDAY, JULY 24
11 A.M.
On this cloudy morning with intermittent rain, the show relocates to a lovely neighborhood in Fort Lee, New Jersey—specifically, Abbott Boulevard, which has houses on either side of a street bisected by a wide grassy, tree-lined median. Chairs, tents, and equipment are parked all along the strip, which also serves as a kind of park or promenade. Trucks line the streets, which are closed to traffic and monitored by local cops.
The whole setup occupies a good three to four blocks, not counting the holding area, which is even further away. The sun is fighting to come out but we’re all hoping it’ll stay in.
(Weeks later, location manager Trish Adlesic notes that “Lunacy” director Peter Leto hails from Fort Lee: “We call it ‘Fort Leto.’”)
11:15 A.M.
An ode to Crafts Services: They are awesome! Eat like a Teamster! Now it’s clear why so many of those folks are, shall we say, on the large side. Cooks inside the trailer make food to specifications. Blueberry pancakes? No problem. Egg/bacon/cheese quesadilla? Coming right up. Turkey club? Certainly. And there’s a table with other tempting items, from oatmeal to biscuits to fresh fruit to kielbasa sausage.
Jeffrey Scaperrotta, who plays Dickie “I Just Go By Dick” Stabler, is here again today.
11:30 A.M.
At a private residence that will serve as Stabler’s home, the crew has lined the floor with thick paper. Someone says
SVU
is probably paying about $3,000 for the day to rent the place, and that the production will be gone before the owners return—likely from work. Leto explains that this house is one of many they’ve used as Stabler’s domicile over the years.
Today he’s got on a black shirt with a crudely drawn chalk outline of a body whose crooked leg makes the “V” and whose bent arm makes the “U” in the words
Special Victims Unit
. “This is old-school,” Leto notes, “from, like, season one.”
11:45 A.M.
More prep in progress, no shooting yet. Meloni is going over lines with Jeffrey on the edge of the lawn. Pattison again wears his Steadicam harness.
12:05 P.M.
The scene with Stabler and his son getting out of a car and going into the house works well and is done quickly.
12:10 P.M.
Neighbors have assembled to watch filming. Truly has gone back to Los Angeles. Leto and Barringer both express regret about that; it’s always preferable to have the writer on hand—especially later, when Meloni has issues with something his character is saying.
When it starts to drizzle, the crew springs into action, laying sheets of plastic over everything and pushing equipment into tents or—in the case of the sound man and his cart—under a tree.
12:40 P.M.
While they wait for the shoot to begin, Meloni directs Jeffrey, suggesting motivation and explaining the scenes. They try two different ways of expressing something: In one, Dickie is amazed dad “got mom pregnant.” In the other, he says his father “knocked mom up.”
1 P.M.
After the authors interview Scaperrotta, Meloni asks: “He said I was the greatest actor he’s ever worked with, right?”
Mais oui, French
SVU
detective
.
In yesterday’s fight scene, which was restricted to just a few observers and workers, Meloni came out “un-dinged.” But, he says there may have been damage when he bent down to pick up a “230-pound stunt guy” and felt something move in his gut, before pulling back to avoid a hernia. He’s a bit tender today.

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