Last Days of Cruise War of the World filming ends in Bayonne |
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By Al Sullivan |
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For me, watching the crew pack up felt
like the end of a circus; that day after the last performance when the
acrobats and clowns had taken off their costumes and their makeup to take on
grayer garb. They had traded in their magic for the more efficient look of
technicians. The stars had gone onto the next town to
work their magic there, leaving this city to the more ordinary folks assigned
to pick up the remains, pull up the tent pegs and pack up the platforms and
other items they would need somewhere else. For months, people here had looked ahead
in longing to Steven Spielberg's coming, Bayonne playing its small part in
the remake of "War of the Worlds." The film's star, Tom Cruise, had
even wandered around the city, poking his head into the social hot spots,
spreading a little cheer while posing for a few photographs. These things had given the old city some
new thrills after years of decline. Bayonne was the perfect play to film an
invasion from outer space, an industrial wasteland that even the huge
corporations had abandoned in seeking cheaper labor and reduced taxes
elsewhere. Jobs had evaporated in their trail of their leaving, with dust
settling over the icons of the city's former wealth: fuel tanks and pipe
works, magnificent empty brick factories. Citizens here had believed industry would
never leave, tracing back the roots of their families and their ties to each
company, grandfathers passing jobs onto fathers and father's onto sons for as
long as anyone could remember, leaving the last fathers empty-handed when
handing the inheritance to their sons. Spielberg and Cruise brought their road
show to a city struggling to redefine itself. While the two film-makers
merely sought out a landscape that would serve as them as a backdrop for an
invasion from mars, they carried into the city a flow - if not of hope, then
of diversion, a glittering sideshow to which people here could turn their
attention for a while, a special moment in time residents could treasure when
the ordinary grayness of their lives later returned. Although scheduled to film here for only
six days, the build up took months, evolving first out of rumors of
Spielberg's arrival, then the more physical reality of construction. Few fairytales had such charm - as when
Spielberg knocked on the door of Henry Sanchez and asked to use the Bayonne
resident's home in a movie. This is the kind of moment most people
fantasize about, that discovery on a drug store stool in Hollywood that led
to star down, that sudden attention fate gives ordinary mortals that usually
remains a figment of hope rather than a reality. Most dream of famous people
taking note of us, but most of us live our lives in the gray of quiet
desperation, ignored by fate and the famous. Spielberg's attentions, however, did not
stop there. Like an army of Johnny Apple Seeds,
Spielberg's minions spread through the neighborhood, striking deals with
residents for use of their yards, even paying for the privilege of using the
streets outside their houses. This created a sudden social set of lucky souls
whose lives were touched by the magic of movies. They became the instant envy
of hundreds others who lived outside the filming zone. As secret as Spielberg was in shaping his
dream world - sharing its secrets only with the cabala of residents inside
the geographical boundaries of his private vision - some aspects of the
massive undertaking could not be hidden from public view and many flocked to
these icons if only to stare. Spielberg constructed a gas station under
the arches of the Bayonne bridge, using a local Little League field so that
his cameras could have the stunning bridge in their view during filming. The
work on the gas station and the reconstruction of yards behind a row of
houses served as the many-week build up to the six day show when Spielberg
would don his director's cap and Cruise would exercise his talents as an
actor. When the police finally barricaded off the
streets for the shoot and the film equipment rolled into the neighborhood,
most people were ready, lining up at the boundary to start out at the bright
lights and billows of smoke that rose from the filming location blocks away -
each person squinting to make out the distant faces with hopes of catching a
glimpse of Spielberg, Cruise or one of the other start engaged in their
craft. For those days, the excitement mounted,
partly because Cruise was magnanimous enough to greet the crowds when he was
though shooting, giving hand shakes and hugs, sharing words as he posed for
pictures with people whose lives craved for one small spark from this fire of
immortality. All of it eventually cascaded into one last glimpse of Cruise as
he left, the trails of the dream clinging to the wheels of his helicopter as
he took off, each fact staring up with the mixture of joy and sadness at the
rapidly expiring moment of glory. In days that followed, the skies grew gray
as cleanup crews worked in the rain to pickup the last pieces of the dream
and cart them off to some new location where they would be needed to make
magic again. A fog hung over Bayonne bridge, taking a long time to dissipate
like smoke of an already exploded fireworks whose bright colors have already
been committed to memory. |