"Potentially the most blasphemous movie since Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

So they are filming this very heavy movie on my street. The film is called "Across The Universe" and is directed by Julie Taymor (who directed 'Frida'). Guess what the movie is going to be? What the world so needs right now: a baby boomer self-congratulatory sleaze-fest. According to their write-up, it will be "...a psychedelic musical love story using famous Beatles songs as the source for a whirl-wind tour of the sweeping changes the world experienced in the 1960s" And guess who's in it? Bono! Barf? The set designers have shamelessly raped and pillaged the "charming" Lower East Side at the intersection of Rivington and Clinton streets with super-faux, super-cheeseball 1960s ephemera, ham-fisted graffiti, fake store fronts, period cars with "love 'n peace" painted on them... and even piles of fake trash covered in psychedelic colors (piles of trash that are bolted to the sidewalk so no one steals them) Brilliant! I'm used to having my eyes assaulted with crackheads and stabbings and obstacle courses of dog doo... but now this? One business (I think it's a Korean nail salon) has had it's frontage transformed and has now become... that's right: The Black Panthers' headquarters! They even slathered 60s graffiti and a fake beatnik coffee shop sign over the front of ABC No Rio... ugh... please kill me now.

I took these two photos (left and right, click to enlarge). Again, like the nail salon and ABC No Rio, both of these are working businesses... still in operation when the "magic of Hollywood" has gone for the day. I wonder how much dough these places get for this kind of visual disruption? I bet it's gonna be a real come-down when people walk into the Psycedelicatessen asking for an electric brain banana and a dreamcatcher, and see that it's just a Spanish Bodega that sells plantains and Alka Seltzer. I'd love to walk into the other one, a family-run deli made up to look like The Village Gate, and loudly demand to know the next showtime for "Alice In Acidland" is. The Village Gate right down the street from the Black Panthers' headquarters... just imagine! What's around the corner... Spahn Ranch? During the day the streets are shut off for several blocks, while crowds of extras dressed as Woodstock-bots awkwardly shuffle around while a director on a crane screams at them through a bullhorn and 'Let It Be' overloads on a loudspeaker. Last night when I was jogging, they were doing some night shoots, and I saw them filming in front of a fake "TV Repair" shop they had constructed over an old jewelry store, and they were shooting this group of costumed hippies standing, staring, motionless like zombies at the TVs in the window... which all were broadcasting (brace yourself) identical test patters! Heavy! I wonder what Beatles song will go with that?

Speaking of... I hear Madonna is in town right now attending some political heaviness at the United Nations... why not invite her to make a cameo with Bono? Her usual brand of "movie magic" may be just what this picture's sense of groovy purpose needs! No... deserves!

Blogger Bluejake has created the clever game of Movie Extra or Lower East Side Resident? Bet you can't tell which is which! Here are some people talking about Rivington Street on an IMDB chat board. I love how one person calls it "Potentially the most blasphemous movie since 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'." Here is a nice write-up from Curbed. Here is someone named Kathryn's collection of Flickr photos of the area. Apparently they are filming all over town as well.

They say that if you can remember the 60s, then you weren't there. I think that just about says it all... doesn't it?

Comments

[protogenes]

Movies about the 60's should never, EVER, be done by people who weren't alive at the time.

Just folly tends to produce product much like "That's 70's Show"...or "Happy Days"

Gad

[telly]

These immobile piles of trash, they are flammable?

[WmMBerger]

My sympathies. NYC has a real anything goes attitude when it comes to accomodating the film industry, residents and businesses be damned. And another thing...Beatles Beatles Beatles! Didn't anyone learn anything from that wretched Sgt. Pepper movie? Let's put the catalog to rest for a decade or two. And while we're at it, let's retire Beethoven's Ninth and "Spirit in the Sky."

[Jeff Jotz]

How soon can we get some of these baby boomers to check into nursing homes so they can quit ruining our attitudes about their youth culture?

[Hatch]

Uhhh... Julie Taymor WAS alive in the 60s.

[Jeff T]

Boomers have officially knocked Logan's Run into my DVD utopian section.

[squinchy]

Next time you're told to not cross the street by some walkie-talkie wielding PA b/c of some shittyass movie shoot, ignore 'em! They ain't no cops. You walk onto their set; these are your streets, not theirs. Maybe you can even tackle bono and snatch his cheesy sunglasses off his smug face.

[Hell's Angel]

Pray for another Altamont....

[Krys O.]

Golly, why can't they go to Toronto to film like they've always done before?!

[JimmyK]

Oh come on. Obviously none of you remember those delightful curly haired robots in Sgt. Peppers

[Chardman]

But a crucial part of our brainwashing (now entering the rinse cycle) is the cultural respinning of past events.
Forrest Gump taught us all that being a protesting, hippy libertine will get you killed and disobeying authority is wrong, and that if you are stupid, obedient, hardworking and procreate you will be prosperous - all with a groovy soundtrack of feel good hits!
And it was fun!
C'mon America, let's go revisionist!

[The Palaverer]

Yechhhhh. And in addition to Wm. Berger's list of things to cryogenically freeze, I'd like to add Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. It's just not scary anymore. And it wasn't meant to be scary in the first place!

[Jeff T]

Yes, if there is one strong point against the public domain it's Carmina Burana.

[poesboes]

In a decade or two you might find dog doo bolted to your sidewalk. And crackheads, played by leading non-actors of the future, stab eachother, while loudspeakers barf out "Where the streets have no name." (And staged joggers passing by shouting obscenities at mock-up camera crews?)

[Joel]

I think John Lennon would have loved to be killed in the Lower East Side...

[DoveyLove]

Of course, it had to be Julie Taymor... She is SUCH a genius. "Do you like Gladiator movies, Bono?"

[Alexis Dahan]

I spend a good time today watching the set. Enough to make me writing an article about the neighbourhood reactions, if some of you want to write me an email with a one sentence quote about how do you feel being taken as hostage by a movie set, please, don't hesitate!
[email protected]

[Kenzo (lastever.org / kenzodb.com)]

Jesus, you didn't even mention the revisionist geography: See this blasphemous street sign.
(From Curbed)

[nancy]

I'm just looking for the name of the costume designer for this film. Thanks!

[alexis dahan]

photography looks great