viva artifice!

my office building is going to be famous, it seems. the infamous they are filming a movie outside it right now. apparently, it's called "two weeks notice" and stars sandra bullock and hugh grant.

and it also means that it's a sad and weeping day to be a smoker. we've been sold out by the owners of this building and stripped of our right to the front stoop.

apparently these joyous stars are on the ground right now. i didn't see them when i slunk outside for my morning smoke. all i saw was the army of extras crossing the street. and crossing the street. and crossing the street. repeatedly and over again. it was kind of surreal, watching a horde of people who have been carefully coiffured to look like they belong down here, to seem as though the financial district is their natural habitat. and then it turns out that they're all unionized actors, and none of them have anything to do with what goes on down here on a daily basis.

knowing that makes me feel strange.

i mean, i recognize that "the magic of hollywood" is designed to create these illusions, and that i have seen and accepted similar things thousands of times. but seeing it here, now, today and tiptoeing through the patch of world i call "familiar," well,it's more than a little bit bizarre. it makes me very aware of the fact that artifice is pervasisve and insidious in the movies--only the buildings are real, and sometimes not even those.

i realize this particularly when when watching the extras between takes. when they have their purpose, when they're crossing that street, they're CROSSING THAT STREET. it's the most natural thing in the world, they cross that street every day.

then you catch them off-camera, and they're all shuffling their feet and looking nervously at the row of skyscrapers that looms around them, wondering if there's a good place to grab a sandwich close by...this is not their territory. these are not their briefcases. these are not their hairdos. and it shows.

i wonder if i looked that out of place down here when i first started.

i wonder how long it took me to rub that shiny patina of foreignness off.

i wonder how long i'd be able to fool people if i had an army of costumers, makeup artists and directors truss me up to look like i belong somewhere else?

i wonder if hugh grant is short in person. i suspect he is.