Going for a ride

From my journal archives:

Fun fact I learned this week: In movies, when there's a long scene with actors talking in a car that's driving around the city, sometimes they like to control the cars you'll see behind the hero car.  So there's a "follow car" whose job it is to stay directly behind the hero car.  My job this week?  To be driven around in the follow car getting a tour of lower Manhattan while listening to an AD tell stories and watching pedestrians turn to stare at the tricked-out-with-a-camera hero car containing two of the biggest movie stars there are.  And this of course took multiple takes because staying directly behind another car in Manhattan isn't exactly the easiest thing to do.  So the driver more than earned his money handling all the "we're turning here!" and "go straight here!" last minute directions that came screaming through on the AD's walkie (punctuating the AD's calm storytelling and overall calm demeanor and efforts to make sure the driver understood that not getting in a crash is far more important than staying behind the hero car), and the pedestrians walking in front of him, and the cars cutting him off, and the expletives hurled his way, while we just chilled in the back seat, looking out the window and chatting about one of my favorite shows the AD worked on....  Gosh this industry is weird sometimes.