On the Spielberg Scene Sets give clues to movie plot |
|
By Al Sullivan |
|
I knew Tom Cruise played a man name Ray.
So when I rang the door bell at the house where Spielberg planned to shoot
his adaptation of War of the Worlds, I knew the name on the mail box was
there for the film's benefit, one of those subtle details the camera might
never pickup - there for motivation or inspiration or some other reason only
Steven Spielberg knew for certain. The name plate said "Ray
Ferrier." But a piece of black electrical tape covered over a portion
and - being as nosy as I was - I pealed it back to uncover "Mary Ann
and" suggesting the character Cruise played still ached for his wife. Although I had managed access to the
Spielberg sound stage elsewhere in the city prior to the filming in Bayonne -
where Spielberg had constructed a duplicate exterior and the three floors
where the interior scenes would be shot - I could not get more than a brief
glance over fences and down alleys of the outdoor set, the string of houses
living under the arches of the Bayonne Bridge where many of the exterior
shots were filmed. I arrived after much of the shooting was
done, boldly strolling up the path from the street, to stand on the door step
hoping security would not chase me away. Some of the sets in the house had
already been removed, walls taken down that merely served as hints from the
outside of what the interior shots would later show on the other sets. One
wall installed in the living room where the holes still showed in the
ceiling. Similar holes showed in the ceiling of the bedroom, which was
supposed to serve as one of Ray's children's bedrooms. Workman skipped through the scene without
noticing me, presuming I belonged to the crew. I walked through, swinging my
camera this way and that until I could find something I could shoot. The set
serving as Ray's garage remained unchanged. One staff member said Spielberg
had to re-shoot a scene there. So I clicked off as many shots as I could
without raising suspicion, and then moved out to the back where Spielberg had
turned the world upside down. The garage was a handyman's heaven with
every sort of tool imaginable, many of them hanging above a crowded work
bench - though the staff had been careful to also install a variety of other
objects to testify to the working class aspects of the home, such as the
kid's snow sled standing in the corner. Although the most impressive item in
the garage was the 1964-65 Ford Mustang convertible with its white interior
and engine compartment completely vacant. The hood leaned against a nearby
wall. Piece of the exhaust sat on various flat surfaces. A small green and white sign was posted
among the many items on the back wall calling this "Ray's Garage."
Nearly everything, the staff informed me, had been brought to the location on
the orders of Spielberg, and every item was to be checked against a list
later when they began to disassemble the place. This included every nut and
bolt, wall sign and tool, not to mention the impressive press that few home
handymen could ever afford to purchase. During these shoots, cameras rolled
from every angle, seeking to capture the flavor of the place and the action
that transpired here. To exit this room, Cruise or his two kids (if they were
allowed to even enter this inner sanctum) used a rear door with a fake wall
beyond, designed to correspond with the basement the staff had constructed at
the studio on the other side of the city. The stairs just inside the door
also had their match at the model house so that action ending here with
Cruise leaving could be picked up again later at the more remote location. In order to create a working class world,
Spielberg had do downplay some of the upscale items typical of the middle
class, removing pools and plush grass, installing icons of an era out of
which I evolved: rusted fences, clothes lines, porch carpets. And for a long
moment standing there, I was transported back to my grandfather's home where
these images fit our lives. I stood out of time, stirring up the faces and
images of a world I had thought long dead. I stood on my family's porch
staring out not so much at the arches of the Bayonne Bridge, but at the never
ending string of clothes lines and fences through memory had since wandered
endlessly. The deck, the houses, the neighborhood had all evolved out of an
era that had helped mold me, that haunted working class world that
Spielberg's magic had brought back to life, reshaping these old houses into
houses that I felt I knew instinctively, from the crab crass to the laundry
lines strung with drying clothing. One step and I might have been back on
East First Street in my old neighborhood, hearing my neighbors screaming my
name for the cherry bomb I had just exploded and whose smoke still lingered
over the landscape. Spielberg had gone through a lot of trouble
to transform the more upscale middle class world this part of Bayonne had
become, removing swimming pools, installing rusting fences, sweeping away the
plush green grass for the crab crass my grandfather had perpetually cursed.
Spielberg had even brought out a charcoal grill complete with charcoal, the
kind we could never get lighted short of dumping a gallon of gasoline onto
it. The neighboring yard had a pack of bicycles, as if waiting for a flock of
kids to suddenly appear. I kept expecting a young version of my uncle to pop
out of Ray's garage they way they often had out of my grandfather's boat
store repair shop, their faces streaked with grease and their knuckles
bruised. But, of course, only the parade of staff appeared, part of the dream
weavers who helped shape this phony reality, this working class myth out of
which Spielberg intended to weave his latest tale. Although Spielberg had created the
interiors at the studio, he needed some exterior shots from the back of the
house for the movie. So he ordered the construction of a fake house under
Sanchez's deck, complete with a door, windows and a washer/dryer combo just
inside. One window had a round hole throughj which Cruise threw a baseball
while playing catch with his character's daughter. The back story of Ray Ferrier interested me
more than the science fiction. Cruise played a working class father still
hoping his wife would return, struggling to raise his two children while
still clinging to his own dreams. He loved his car, and even hung out at the
local gas station where he might learn more or get advice when his repairs
went wrong. And in the midst of this struggle to survive, aliens arrive, and
he must step up to become the most unlikely of heroes. |