Wednesday, March 10, 2010
A Treme Grows in Brooklyn
Posted by Kevin Allman on Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 10:40 PM
Those of us who have become used to the local comings and goings of the crews for Tremé might be surprised to know that even New Orleans can't play New Orleans on film all the time. Courtesy of the blog NewYorkShitty comes this image of a flyer posted in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, advising residents that their neighborhood will be doubling as the Crescent City for some night shooting this Saturday evening.
This from the flyer, however, is cause for pause:
It is the heartwarming story of the residents of New Orleans Ninth Ward attempting to rebuild their lives after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
Heartwarming? That's Touched by an Angel stuff. We can hope that's shorthand for "gritty drama, leavened with the weary, knowing sophistication and bawdy humor that so characterizes the Jewel of the South."
But what of Greenpoint? Looking it up on a map, it's scarily adjacent to Williamsburg, that district of Brooklyn where Hasidim and hipsters have been on a collision course lately. The Web site Not for Tourists characterizes Greenpoint as a Polish enclave being inevitably hipsterized, and adds:
One exciting aspect of Greenpoint (though not for locals with cars) is the frequent number of movie and television productions being filmed here at any given time. Again, because of its proximity to Manhattan and Long Island City (where a number of studios are based), Greenpoint serves as an ideal location for a production that is looking for a green, industrial, or cozy neighborhood setting.
Green? Industrial? Cozy? Our L9W???
We'll see -- obviously we have a lot of trust in David Simon, but some of us remember the disastrous results the last time a foreign location was used to represent the Big Easy.
Speaking of...
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Interview: Willie Robertson of A&E's Duck Dynasty
An interview with one of the guys from Duck Dynasty to preview this week's Gambit cover.
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Comments (11)
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Maybe nobody in N.O. media gives a shit about this kind of thing any more, but can't we take a moment to acknowledge that by most definitions, no part of the Treme is in the ninth ward? ...esp. not the "L9W," as Kevin apparently has nicknamed it. This casual sloppiness about New Orleans' geography is really what sticks out the most about the flyer as transcribed... not its choice of adjectives. ...but I guess who cares what a handful of hard heads think. If someone doesn't blog or tweet, can we be sure they really exist at all??
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The Brooklyn shoot is a one-day affair that involves a character traveling from New Orleans to, um, New York as a plot point. New York is doubling as New York. New Orleans is New Orleans. Posts like yours is why the internet cannot be considered an accurate source of information. And yes, TMM D-Block is correct, Treme is in the 6th Ward.
But "Heartwarming"? Come ON. Even the most optimistic New Yorker wouldn't give that description the time of day.
Speaking as someone who has lived in Greenpoint for ten years I find the suggest that Greenpoint is "green" rather entertaining. There was a time Greenpoint was green. This has not been the case for some time. Unless of course if you count Newtown Creek. It is green. It is also one of the most polluted waterways in the United States and it sports an oil spill that is larger--- MANY TIMES LARGER--- than the Exxon Valdez. Then of course, my humble 'nabe is home to the eastern seaboard's largest waste treatment plant. The digester eggs (we call them the Shit Tits) at this facility are lit up blue at night. This is (I shit you not) public art. You can purportedly see them from the observation deck of Empire State Building. Mind you, I have never personally verified this. I'm actually a big fan of NFT but they're a little bit off here. In addition, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that my community does have its inimitable charm: it does. If it didn't I wouldn't live here. And on that note I'd like make it known that one of the reasons I like Greenpoint is because it is NOT like Williamsburg. Saying something like that here would in all likelihood get you lynched. We're touchy about that sort of thing... :)
Having resided in central Queens for 4 years, and having traveled through Greenpoint a great deal, I can second what Miss Heather says. And calling that waste treatment plant the Shit Tits? The digester eggs? HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Pure, pure, inspired genius. Those slime domes are something else in the annals of architorture.
Trying to imagine the noose for Miss Heather's hipster lynching. I'm guessing really expensive, designer ropes are used, but all the knots are crappy looking and tied in a half-assed manner.
In Greenpoint, they dip those ropes in Newtown Creek first, 'cause that's how they roll. Leaving 'em all nice and clean is for Babyburghers
Miss Heather, as the author of the NFT entry and Greenpoint resident myself, I playfully take umbrage to your umbrage. I did not write that Greenpoint is green, but merely that through the magic of TV and film production artistry, the neighborhood can LOOK green. When the producers of Flight of The Conchords were looking for an idyllic setting for their imaginary French video, they settled upon McGolrick Park. And, at full bloom, I would put certain blocks of the Greenpoint Historical District up against the most picturesque in Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope. Parts of Greenpoint are no longer industrial, but LOOK industrial...which is really all productions are looking for. And if the shoot can be close to the studios or production offices, all the better (because its all the cheaper). The nostrils do not lie, Greenpoint is hardly "green" in the environmentally viable way. But until Smell-o-vision takes off, expect Greenpoint to continue to play different hyperealistic versions of itself, even if we know better.
It's all good, Cinemario. Truth be told I don't take any of this stuff very seriously. That said, I use your NFT guides (maps) on a daily basis. They're especially useful for Queens, whose gridwork of Avenues, Places, Streets, etc. is MORE than a little confusing! :)
This post is demonstrably false. Doesn't it warrant an update, on the blog itself, not in the comments? It's a blog, but it's still journalism.
I'm a NY Shitty reader and Greenpoint resident who plans to bring my camera and umbrella to the Treme shoot tomorrow night and see if I can get some pics. I'm a big David Simon fan and can't wait for the new show to debut! (Just a bit of trivia: In an episode of Homicide they refer to Baltimore's sewage plant as "Madonna's Bra", apparently as beloved as Greenpoint's own "Shit Tits")
