Photo of the Day: TV Series Filming in Sparkill, NY

I took the picture accompanying this post a couple of days ago, on the first day of location shooting for a Season One episode of the upcoming 8-episode Netflix series Unaccustomed Earth.

The actors and crew can be seen in the background of this photo. I didn’t want to move closer lest it aggravate production assistants who would, of course, loathe distractions on the set of this adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's acclaimed short story collection. 

Why did the producers choose Sparkill, an upstate New York hamlet so small (less than 1,400 people) that if you sneeze, you’ll miss it? Beats me, except that the state must have offered quite a financial package to attract this business.

A local businesswoman warned me before I drove up from Northern New Jersey that it might be difficult to find parking near her store because of the movie out-of-towners. So it proved, but I didn’t mind walking the few extra blocks.

Movie location shooting can be tricky. Whatever publicity and dollars that might accrue to the town often don’t mean much to local businesses that have to cope with what sometimes turn out to be annoying and protracted disruptions of their normal routines. What shows up on the screen may not be worth the turmoil.

My town, Englewood, NJ, was the site of two Woody Allen movies, for instance. In Annie Hall (1977), you can see the marquee of the then-still existing theater, the Plaza, for up to a minute. Two years later, his script for Manhattan called for what was evidently a satiric take on a Nazi rally. But you’d never tell from the final cut: there’s only a scene of Woody and Tony Roberts driving back into New York as evidence of something more.

It was a more dismal outcome than another movie shot there the same year, the Peter Falk-Alan Arkin farce The In-Laws. Any time I know it’s on TV, I can’t wait for one of its maniacal car chase scenes, shot at the southern end of my block, with my longtime church clearly visible in the background.

A much different experience unfolded in autumn 1999, when Robert Redford shot many scenes for The Legend of Baggar Vance in Savannah, Ga. While on vacation, I watched him on two consecutive days directing stars-in-the-making Matt Damon, Will Smith and Charlize Theron in a courthouse scene. Onlookers cheered wildly each time the actors waved at them in breaks.

Savannah was especially popular with filmmakers in the Nineties, with Forrest Gump also being shot there. But residents I talked to back then seemed to have especially fond memories of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. 

Despite what many might have thought from his Dirty Harry scowl, Clint Eastwood evidently personified geniality, posing for pictures with many star-struck locals.

We’ll see if the on-screen results and revenues in the town coffers fulfill initial expectations in Sparkill for Unaccustomed Earth. If they do, expect more of the same. If not, a lot of feathers will have to be smoothed down from now on.

TV Quote of the Day (‘Seinfeld,’ on Appropriate Terms of Admiration)

[Jerry and Elaine are talking about her new boyfriend, a conductor of a police band who insists on being called “Maestro.”]

Jerry Seinfeld [played by Jerry Seinfeld]: “So, what about the ‘Maestro’ stuff? Did he make you call him Maestro?

Elaine Benes [played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus]: “Yeah, I called him Maestro.”

Jerry: “You didn't mind?”

 
Elaine: “Well, I did at first, but actually I kind of got used to it.”
 
Jerry: “Okay, from now on I want you to call me ‘Jerry the Great.’”
 
Elaine: “I'm not calling you ‘Jerry the Great.’"
 
Jerry: “Why not? You call him ‘Maestro.’”
 
Elaine: “He is a Maestro.”
 
Jerry: “Well, I'm great.”— Seinfeld, Season 7, Episode 3, “The Maestro,” original air date Oct. 5, 1995, teleplay by Larry David, directed by Andy Ackerman

Quote of the Day (William James, on the Range of Emotions)

“There is no limit to the number of possible different emotions which may exist, and why the emotions of different individuals may vary indefinitely, both as to their constitution and as to objects which call them forth.”— American philosopher William James (1842-1910), The Principles of Psychology (1890)

Quote of the Day (Oscar Wilde, on a Wrong Way of ‘Solving the Irish Question’)

“There are some who will welcome with delight the idea of solving the Irish question by doing away with the Irish people.  There are others who will remember that Ireland has extended her boundaries, and that we have now to reckon with her not merely in the Old World but in the New.”— Anglo-Irish playwright, novelist, short-story writer, and wit Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), review of J.A. Froude’s “Two Chiefs of Dunboy, " The Pall Mall Gazette, Apr. 13, 1889

Quote of the Day (Paul McCartney, on Early Concert Mistakes)

“When we first started out, I was terrified of doing anything wrong onstage. I got to learn, though, that people don’t mind. In fact, they kind of like it. People go, ‘I was at the show where he made a mistake!’”—English composer and rock ‘n’ roll legend Sir Paul McCartney, quoted by Hardeep Phull, “Paul McCartney Plays for the Kids at Frank Sinatra School,” New York Post, Oct. 9, 2013

I wasn’t that big a fan of Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles work in the Seventies, but I’m curious to see the recent documentary about that period, Man on the Run. 

It sounds like, more than half a century after he went on his own, we may be learning new, even surprising, things about one of the most significant forces in popular music in the 20^th century.

Quote of the Day (Bruce F. Murphy, on the Miscalculations of Dictating to Other Nations)

"Neither international law nor the United Nations charter allows for a country to export its political system to others, and certainly not through war. It may be reassuring to some Americans to think of our country as above the community of nations and beyond the footling machinations of minor states. But the tendency to think we can ignore history and the feelings of others leads to gross miscalculations, like the failure to anticipate Iraqi resentment of American occupation. [Neoconservative thinker Robert] Kagan may be right that ‘it is reasonable to assume that we have only just entered a long era of American hegemony.’ It is also reasonable to conclude that the rest of the world will fight this hegemony tooth-and-nail—at the UN, on the Internet, in the vastly expanded media, and, unfortunately, through violence. Other people may accept, under duress, that the United States is the most powerful nation. But it is unlikely that they will accept the premise that we are the best nation that has ever existed, with a providential right to dictate to others.”—American essayist, poet, and freelance writer Bruce F. Murphy, “The Last, Best Hope? The Perils of American Exceptionalism,” Commonweal, Oct. 8, 2004

Clearly, in targeting Iran a generation after we thought we could shift the power dynamics of the Mideast for the better, this country did not learn a major lesson of the Iraq War: the folly of what historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called replacing “a policy that aimed at peace through the prevention of war by a policy aimed at peace through preventive war.”

Donald Trump distinguished himself from the rest of the Republican candidates for President in the 2016 primaries by declaring the Iraq War a disaster. Many of those who voted for him in the next three fall Presidential elections assumed that he would keep the nation out of future conflicts.

But after his nearly half a century in the public eye, could anyone reasonably assume that a personality so bellicose in dealing with others would not sometime, somewhere resort to an actual war putting lives at risk? 

And can anyone now assume that, after he loudly dissed our allies since January 20, 2025, we will be strong enough to go it alone and never need their support again?

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Pat and Mike,’ With a Promoter on His New Athlete Client)

[A slightly shady promoter-manager summarizes his new client, exceptional multi-sport female athlete Pat Pemberton, played by Katharine Hepburn.]

Mike Conovan [played by Spencer Tracy] [to his friend Barney]: “You see her face? A real honest face. The only disgustin’ thing about her.”— Pat and Mike (1952), screenplay by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, directed by George Cukor