Here's a report about what you might have seen, had you gone to check out Scorsese's shoot yesterday. The below reporter didn't have the best of times, but perhaps I should have warned y'all. Sometimes the shoots are dead, a couple of shots, done over and over again. For me, the excitement comes from the personal knowledge that I witnessed a film being shot. In this case, it would be my place in filmic history. Imagine watching one second of TAXI DRIVER being shot. Say... just DeNiro sitting in traffic looking over at the campaign headquarters. Let's say it took all day to capture that one glance, that one look. But you know what, perhaps you saw that one look that we have all seen... but you saw it from a different angle, you saw the lights, the cameras, the gaffers, the sound crew, you saw Martin Scorsese gesturing to DeNiro. That... that reality that you could have witnessed... even if it's takes all day and into the night, if your legs cramped and the rain fell. Even if you were sick for a week after... wouldn't it had been worth it? I think so. Is this TAXI DRIVER? I don't know, probably not, but it is Scorsese, and this man heard him say ACTION, that'd be enough for me.

I love your site and when I saw on it that Scorsese would be shooting in Manhattan, I decided to go. Seeing Scorsese direct is a once in a lifetime opportunity so I was glad to spend a Friday night (and Saturday morning) doing just that.

Unfortunately I didn't really get to see him direct. I hope others did but I think everybody else was in the same boat as me. Although there weren't very many people watching for an extended period of time, mostly people watching for a couple of minutes and leaving. What happened was that once I got where they were shooting I was pushed behind equipment at very bad angles to both what was being filmed and Scorsese. I couldn't hear any of what Scorsese was saying (I did hear him say action once) and I normally couldn't see him because crew kept passing in front of me. Scorsese was also only on set a third to a half of the time I was there. Mostly what I saw were half-obscured lighting setups. I realize that the crew were just doing their job and I was just standing around gawking. I did take your advice though; I was ninja- like. Absolutely silent. A couple of people in the crew even thought I was a member of the crew. I showed up at about 10:15 pm and I left at 3:15 am. When I got there I thought I might stay until they were done (I assumed that to be about 4) but that changed at about 1. I kept thinking that I should go in 5 or 10 minutes unless things got better but 5 or 10 minutes would pass and my legs would refuse to let me leave. I really wanted to enjoy the shoot. One of the crew members who thought I was part of the crew passed by me looking at his feet and appearing very tired said to me "Three hours to go. What a life." I left a few minutes after that.

Now that I've said (more than) enough about what I saw on the shoot this is what appeared to be going on. Goodman and Cage were both there dressed as EMT's. There didn't appear to be much dialogue in what I saw shot. I saw two shots set up. The first was a steadicam shot where Cage's ambulance pulls up to a curve and he gets out. It might track more than that but I couldn't see a monitor to find out exactly what was going on. The second shot was from inside the ambulance, I'm not sure exactly what was happening but I think that Cage was going to wheel somebody into the ambulance. I assume they will shoot Cage putting the person on the stretcher as an interior later.

I am a huge Scorsese fan and I'm very sorry that I didn't enjoy this more but at least I walked away from it with a good Scorsese anecdote, let me remind everyone before I write it that Scorsese is extremely short, so much so that he has an undersize director's chair. There was a guy snapping photos (a professional, not somebody with a point-and-click) of Scorsese early in the evening and at one point the guy was about to take photos of Scorsese with Cage when Scorsese indicated for the guy to wait a minute. What Scorsese did next was move Cage across the street from where they were shooting to the wall of a school. Before the wall there is a minor embankment which Scorsese stood on. Scorsese motioned for Cage to stay on the sidewalk before the embankment so that Scorsese appeared almost as tall as Cage and then let them photographer take the pictures.

They will be shooting again on Monday night. If anyone wants to go then some information I observed might prove useful. They were shooting at 49th about midway between 9th and 10th avenues. There are production people who will try to stop you from going on the street by asking you to get to 10th Ave by using 48th or 50th street. Just tell them that you live on that street (49th) and they will let you pass. They will even be a little falsely apologetic for stopping you on your own block. I don't think they will ask for the number of the building you live in but if they do give an even number 434, 436, 438, 440, 442, 444, 446. Don't give an odd number because most of the other side of the block is a school and I don't remember if there were any residential buildings on the odd side of the street whatsoever.

If you put this on the site call me Walker Easterling.