I'm no John Cougar Mellencamp, but I live in a small town. It just happens to reside in the biggest city in America. It's often been remarked that New York City isn't exactly a city; it's a collection of small towns that share the same real estate. Inwood is living proof of that.
I wound up here kind of by accident. You talk to people who live here and either they were born here, or they knew someone who lived here who turned them onto it. Me, I found it basically the same way that Eddie Murphy found Queens in Coming to America: spun a globe, dropped my finger and said, "Well, that sounds like a nice place." Okay, I exaggerate, but it's close.
My friend Adam and I interned at a theatre together, thought we'd be good roommates and decided to look for a place. This was way back in the Dark Ages: 1996. We took the train out to Queens, either Astoria or L.I.C. and were unimpressed. It seemed sleepy and dead and all made out of concrete (and there go our readers from Queens...thanks for coming by!). Then we went up to Inwood. One of us heard from someone who heard from someone who read in the Times that it was the next big thing. That sounded good to us. (We were young.) So we took the A train (yes, we sang the song. We were young.) and got off at Dyckman Street.
There was life there. A big green leafy park. A little diner, right by the subway. Next to a slightly sketchy Irish bar (it would be about a decade before I set foot in there). Across Broadway was a strip of shopping, Dominican restaurants, a Spanish-language bookstore. During the Great Home Run Race of '98, two years later, Sammy Sosa would take a victory lap here. This wasn't some outer borough. This was cool.
Adam and I moved in and I never left. 12 years later, I still see the same faces, the kids who ran up and down the hallways of my apartment building have grown up, some familiar faces are gone, some new ones have shown up. But the town still hums with life.
For me, it's a place where people know you, know how you like your coffee or what your drink is, know when you're heading to work or what you want on your pizza, know the people you know (and you know the people they know), all separated by at best two degrees, where people know, well, honestly, entirely too much about you and your comings and goings, but that's okay. They're still New Yorkers, so they'll keep it to themselves. (You hope.)
If this project is about anything for me, it's about showing people that, even here in the big city, we're all just small town folks.
- J. Holtham
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
So this guys walks into a bar......
There's no joke, I just wanted your attention.
Blog blog blog… I hate the word. I guess it’s like taxes these days a necessary evil of sorts.
Anyway, we were able to shoot some initial monologues for the "In the Wood" series thanks to the good folks at Irish Eyes Bar on 213th street & Broadway & my pal Eddie MacDonald who helped set it up.
Good stuff, there is a shot of me drinking at the bar, I took this role very seriously, in fact, I researched the role for the better part of the last 2 decades. I believe in suffering for my art.
I’m not really sure how this whole “blog” thing works. I mean, what do you people want to know about this endeavor? It’s not a documentary , which I heard I was making much to my surprise. What am I? a thin Michael Moore (Relatively speaking)? It’s a series about people and the relationships between them in this crazy little enclave we call Inwood. My home, and there’s no place else I’d rather be from or spend my days. Well, Hawaii would be nice, but the Pizza and Bagels suck outside of New York. I guess your stuck with me Inwood.
More to come
My Inwood observation of the day is the correlation between the number of friends you have with nicknames and the number of years you've lived in Inwood. Think about it. If you've been in "upstate manhattan" for, let's say, 5 years, you probably have between 3 and 5 Inwood native friends with nicknames. If you grew up in Inwood and are past the age of 30, this number jumps exponentially to roughly everyone you know!
Cheers
Maybe I'll finish that joke next time, maybe...
Scotty
Blog blog blog… I hate the word. I guess it’s like taxes these days a necessary evil of sorts.
Anyway, we were able to shoot some initial monologues for the "In the Wood" series thanks to the good folks at Irish Eyes Bar on 213th street & Broadway & my pal Eddie MacDonald who helped set it up.
Good stuff, there is a shot of me drinking at the bar, I took this role very seriously, in fact, I researched the role for the better part of the last 2 decades. I believe in suffering for my art.
I’m not really sure how this whole “blog” thing works. I mean, what do you people want to know about this endeavor? It’s not a documentary , which I heard I was making much to my surprise. What am I? a thin Michael Moore (Relatively speaking)? It’s a series about people and the relationships between them in this crazy little enclave we call Inwood. My home, and there’s no place else I’d rather be from or spend my days. Well, Hawaii would be nice, but the Pizza and Bagels suck outside of New York. I guess your stuck with me Inwood.
More to come
My Inwood observation of the day is the correlation between the number of friends you have with nicknames and the number of years you've lived in Inwood. Think about it. If you've been in "upstate manhattan" for, let's say, 5 years, you probably have between 3 and 5 Inwood native friends with nicknames. If you grew up in Inwood and are past the age of 30, this number jumps exponentially to roughly everyone you know!
Cheers
Maybe I'll finish that joke next time, maybe...
Scotty
Feedback on George's teaser
While shooting the teaser for our webisode series In the Wood, I received some interesting feedback for the voice over that I wrote for George, a character in the piece.
I have only written for theatre, so I haven’t had an opportunity to shoot on a location before. Fun day, though it didn’t begin so well. The bar owner ran late and we couldn’t get inside at the scheduled time. It was beastly cold on the corner of 213th and Broadway, dirty snow on the sidewalk, windy, bitter . . . February. We all stood near Irish Eyes and sipped coffee near a collection of desk and floor lamps that we collected for lighting . . . low budget filmmaking!
Roman, who is playing George Kazlowski, had some exterior shots anyway. So the director started preparing shots. Details became important. What tie should he wear? Purple? Is the blue one too nice? How about the paisley? Why is he wearing that suit anyway? Does he need to wear a tie? Can he wear jeans? Well, I think he wears a tie, a full suit. Why? Well something will happen with that suit later. What happens?
We talked it over, made our choices, and soon enough, Roman was walking to the bar in his suit, a camera following him. His hair shot up as he crossed 213th Street. The wind smacked him sideways. He crunched his shoulders a little as he walked. He squinted into the sun as he checked for traffic. I saw much of myself in his walk to work. This is funny and disturbing. When you see George Kazlowski in action, these mixed feelings will make sense.
Anyway, the bar owner arrived and we camped inside Irish Eyes with our equipment, bags, folders, notebooks, and so on. Roman changed out of his suit and was now wearing his waiter uniform, finishing the last part of the teaser. As he served drinks to his customers in the scene, we played a scratch track of his voice over, an inner monologue, his secret thoughts at work, which are not so kind or sensitive (or remotely appropriate). After we wrapped up the George teaser, I walked to the bar and ordered a beer. One of the bartenders smiled and asked if we were making a porn. My first thought was “hmm . . . too much? A little too much? Maybe?” I don’t want people to think this is smut. But we all have wayward thoughts at jobs that we hate (or love) or when we talk to people who do not really hold our interest. We are all George, at least a little bit. And maybe there’s a little porn in that, but I’d rather think of it as . . . I don’t know . . . something that isn’t porn. But I must confess something: I also liked that she thought that about the piece. It might even be perfect. I told her that the scene was just a guy who didn’t really want to be working at this place and these are his private thoughts and she said, “oh I sure know that!”
-Tom Matthew Wolfe
I have only written for theatre, so I haven’t had an opportunity to shoot on a location before. Fun day, though it didn’t begin so well. The bar owner ran late and we couldn’t get inside at the scheduled time. It was beastly cold on the corner of 213th and Broadway, dirty snow on the sidewalk, windy, bitter . . . February. We all stood near Irish Eyes and sipped coffee near a collection of desk and floor lamps that we collected for lighting . . . low budget filmmaking!
Roman, who is playing George Kazlowski, had some exterior shots anyway. So the director started preparing shots. Details became important. What tie should he wear? Purple? Is the blue one too nice? How about the paisley? Why is he wearing that suit anyway? Does he need to wear a tie? Can he wear jeans? Well, I think he wears a tie, a full suit. Why? Well something will happen with that suit later. What happens?
We talked it over, made our choices, and soon enough, Roman was walking to the bar in his suit, a camera following him. His hair shot up as he crossed 213th Street. The wind smacked him sideways. He crunched his shoulders a little as he walked. He squinted into the sun as he checked for traffic. I saw much of myself in his walk to work. This is funny and disturbing. When you see George Kazlowski in action, these mixed feelings will make sense.
Anyway, the bar owner arrived and we camped inside Irish Eyes with our equipment, bags, folders, notebooks, and so on. Roman changed out of his suit and was now wearing his waiter uniform, finishing the last part of the teaser. As he served drinks to his customers in the scene, we played a scratch track of his voice over, an inner monologue, his secret thoughts at work, which are not so kind or sensitive (or remotely appropriate). After we wrapped up the George teaser, I walked to the bar and ordered a beer. One of the bartenders smiled and asked if we were making a porn. My first thought was “hmm . . . too much? A little too much? Maybe?” I don’t want people to think this is smut. But we all have wayward thoughts at jobs that we hate (or love) or when we talk to people who do not really hold our interest. We are all George, at least a little bit. And maybe there’s a little porn in that, but I’d rather think of it as . . . I don’t know . . . something that isn’t porn. But I must confess something: I also liked that she thought that about the piece. It might even be perfect. I told her that the scene was just a guy who didn’t really want to be working at this place and these are his private thoughts and she said, “oh I sure know that!”
-Tom Matthew Wolfe
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