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.