A few months ago sometime in early April, there was this green magazine kiosk like the ones you see in New York built right in front of the building where I work. I thought to myself “Great.. I can buy mags and nick nacks from there and don’t have to walk so far now”. Only a couple of days later that I realised that it was built purely for the making of a movie. Later on that week, on Saturday to be exact, I went to work at 7am and found myself stunned to have seen such a dramatic overnight transformation of the whole street at the front of my building. I had to walk through cables, lights, cameras, trucks, screens, people etc. It was really messy at that time and I guess they were just starting. I wondered what’s going on…

Only then I realised that they made the whole street into New York. It was awesome! I was really amazed by the whole scene… Although I was spewing that I didn’t bring my camera with me. You really felt like you were in New York, the whole street was blocked and there were yellow NYC Taxis everywhere, Newspaper posts, grafitti, an abundance of extras who dressed up like New Yorkers, a hot dog stand and of course the green magazine kiosk..! That stand has everything.. from small lollies, cigarettes, snacks, souvenirs and of course, magazines and news papers. I tried to sneak out and watch the shooting as much as I can and at the same time tried to figure out what movie is this for. I looked around and hope to get a glimpse of some famous actors.. All they did for that whole day was shooting the part where the NY times van came by and threw the newspaper near the kiosk, and the camera man came running towards the newspaper and zoomed into it. They must have done it for at least 200 times… I kid you not. It must’ve been something to do with the angle of the front page of the paper or something, because I could see the director was very frustrated by the end of it and started screaming. I still didn’t know what movie it was for and I was going to ask them after work only to find out that they’ve packed up and left..:( I was told that the area of where I work do lots and lots of movie making and Vancouver is the 3rd most common movie making city in North America, the first being LA and New York City comes second.

So the other day when Saj and I were watching Fantastic 4 and I saw that scene about the newspaper. I was like… OMG.. that was it!! So we rewound it and I could see the bridge and steps at the front of my building. Mind you, most of the scenes of Fantastic 4 were shot in Vancouver, even the part where they were in China (it was done just behind my building too) but I didn’t get to see it. It’s pretty cool I thought..

Too bad about the kiosk though, I really like the idea of having something like that around… they took it apart the very next day.