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By Anthony Forcinito, Director Adjust font size:
    5 p.m. I walk out of the Bleecker Street subway station and head in the direction of Broadway. Bleecker is one of the most famous streets in New York City. It's right in the heart of Greenwich Village, filled with trendy cafes, nice restaurants and hip music venues. Musicians like Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and Bruce Springsteen all kicked off their careers on Bleecker. The first location for our shoot is a place called Mr. Black, New York's self-proclaimed "premiere gay dance den." As I approach Broadway, I start looking for the entrance. I had a feeling it would be difficult to find, since the club is in the basement of a building. Where could 77 Bleecker Street be? I pass the place a few times without giving it a second glance. But eventually -- and thankfully -- I spot the members of the Scissor Sisters getting out of their SUV. I recognize them immediately because of their flashy clothes. I walk over, introduce myself to the band members, their PR guy Aleix, and the band's manager. With a name like Scissor Sisters, you might think the band's members are all girls (I did before I researched them), but in reality, there's only one female member. We're doing the interview with Ana Matronic, Paddy Boom, and Del Marquis. Jake Shears and Babydaddy, the two founding members, couldn't make it. The three lead me down a dark stairwell on the corner of Bleecker and Broadway. We pull open a heavy metal door and walk inside. The place is really cool. Dim, colored lighting, brick walls, low, narrow archways separating the main room from several VIP areas -- very underground NYC. We all take off our jackets, put our bags down, and get ready to start. There's only one problem: the bar is a mess! The band's manager introduces me to the owner, Stewart, and he pledges to get the place all cleaned up for us. I then realize we have an even bigger problem: our camera guy hasn't arrived yet! Del Marquis decides that these issues are nothing a few iced coffees can't fix, so he heads out to a coffee shop with the band. Although I'm a big fan of iced coffee, I've got more pressing matters to deal with. 5.30 p.m. I head outside to give Tom Miuccio, our shooter, a call. I'm relieved to hear he's only a block away-he just hit a bit of traffic, so I stand outside and keep an eye out for a white Ford explorer with press plates. Tom drives right past me. This could be a problem, since the streets in this part of town are all narrow, one-way, and filled with bumper to bumper traffic. I call Tom, he tells me he's just going to drive around the block. 10 minutes later I wave him down on Broadway. Tom takes the camera out and gets everything set up. While he's doing that, I run downstairs and check on the bar cleanup operation. They're all set. I head back outside to help Tom, and randomly, I walk into my friend Chris, who I find out works on that block. He asks me why I'm standing in the middle of Broadway holding a boom microphone, I explain, and he goes on his merry way. Tom and I head downstairs. 6 p.m. We're all set up. Stewart gets behind the bar and makes the band some drinks (cosmos, if I remember correctly), and Tom gets some great close-up shots of that. I ask the band to tell us about Mr. Black to start out, and since this place was Ana's choice, she does most of the talking. Ana explains that one of the reasons she loves Mr. Black is because it reminds her of the way clubs in New York used to be, in the pre-Giuliani era. If you're familiar with New York City, you'll know that former mayor Rudy Giuliani (in addition to being praised for his handling of the September 11 terrorist attacks) is credited with cleaning up the city. Ana tells me that the nightclub scene got a lot tamer upon Giuliani's arrival, but Mr. Black is one of the rare places that still stays true to NYC's clubbing roots. Then we get into questions about their music and how New York has affected it. It's obvious from their first answer that they are absolutely in love with the city. This is where the band members met, it's where they practice, and it's where they live when they're not touring. That impresses me, because they're very much an underground band here in the States, while in the UK, they're wildly popular (they had the best-selling album in the UK in 2004.) They could have easily set up shop there. The fact that they hold true to their NYC roots really says a lot about them and about the power of the city to draw people in and keep them here. All of a sudden, I realize it's already 7 p.m... we need to get on our way if we're going to hit every stop. We still have three more to go! 7.15 p.m. We arrive at destination No. 2: Tompkins Square Park, Paddy's favorite place in the entire city (Tompkins is located in a neighborhood in Manhattan called Alphabet City, which is basically the eastern most part of the East Village. It was a "no man's land" until fairly recently.) Tom grabs the camera, I grab the microphone, and Paddy gives us a tour of the place. Things are starting to get a little tricky now, because I'm not only following them around with a boom mic in one hand, but I'm snapping digital photos for the web site with my other. Paddy knows so much about the park. He describes in detail the way it used to be before the neighborhood turned around. The park was filled with homeless people living in tents, people buying, selling, and using drugs (mainly heroin) out in the open. He also talks about the police riots that erupted after cops tried to clear all of the homeless people out. He even says that he once saw a man "cut his beard with fire"... he then goes on to describe how it was done. But now Tompkins is completely different... it was cleaned up in the 1990s and is now a pleasant and peaceful place to relax, and most of the people you see there are families and college students. Paddy shows us the grass "beach" where people lay out, the dog run (which he describes as a great place to find a date), and the areas where musicians hang out. He describes late-night drum circles, which he frequently attended when he lived in the area. Just like with Ana, I can really see his love for this place and this city come out. 7.45 p.m. We find out one of the band members has to be finished with the shoot by 8.30 p.m. That means there's no way we're going to have time to make two more stops. We'll have to choose one -- it's either the Manhattan Bridge (Del's favorite spot in the city) or one of their favorite stores. I think the bridge at sunset would be more valuable to the story we're trying to tell... everyone agrees, so we head over. Before we leave the park though, Tom and I walk to a bench where there's an older guy playing the trumpet. We need to get a close-up of him playing, since his music is in the background while the band was guiding us around. Unfortunately, he's resting his lips at the moment. We wait. And eventually, he starts playing again, we get our shot, and we run to the car. 8 p.m. Tom and I arrive at the base of the Manhattan Bridge. We propose staying by the base and shooting from there since we're short on time, but Del really wants to go to the center (there's a pedestrian walkway, of course) -- apparently, he goes there and watches the sun set when he needs to relax and unwind. The walk will take at least 15 minutes each way, but the band doesn't mind, so we head up. As Tom gets some wide shots of the band walking, I snap some pictures of the skyline and passing subway trains. Although I'm from the New York area and have lived here my entire life, I've never made the trek over one of its storied bridges... I'm glad I'm doing it. One thing that startles me, however, is the way the bridge rumbles every single time a train passes. There are four tracks total, so as many as four trains could potentially pass at one time. After experiencing the amount of rumbling that takes place when one train passes, I'm hoping I never get to experience four simultaneously. We arrive at the lookout point in the center of the bridge. The New York City skyline is gorgeous at this hour. We're staring at the downtown Brooklyn skyscrapers on our left, the East River and Brooklyn Bridge down the middle, and the downtown Manhattan skyline on our right -- it's absolutely incredible. Del tells us about his love for this spot and the city, and Ana repeats one of my favorite quotes of the night: "Sometimes the most peaceful places in New York aren't necessarily the most quiet." She confesses her love for the city one last time, and almost like it was scripted, we run out of tape. That's OK though; they have to go, and we've gotten everything we need. 8.30 p.m. After Tom and I thank everyone, we all part ways. Del and the band's manager head east on the bridge, in the direction of Brooklyn. Paddy, Ana and Aleix walk back to Manhattan to their car. And Tom and I stick around to try to get one last shot of a train passing by. We find five seconds at the end of the tape to squeeze it in... but it has to be timed perfectly. We hear the rumble... we feel the rumble... Tom begins recording. He gets his perfect shot, we head back to the truck, and eventually, head back to the bureau. It was a long day, but we had a great time, got a chance to get our creative juices flowing, and I learned a few things that make me love the city I call home even more. |
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