A cultural exchange?

Japanese TV comes to Bayonne: site of Spielberg's new movie

By Al Sullivan
Reporter senior staff writer

East met West in a unique cultural exchange in Bayonne last week when a film crew and several stars from Japan paid a visit to the sites in which Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise filmed War of the Worlds.

The crews had come to the city in order to film a 30-minute television segment on the making of "War of the Worlds," and visited many of the people who had the closest contact with Cruise and Spielberg while the filming was going on.

This is for a Japanese TV special program called "Coming Attractions from Around the World".

The one-day shoot coordinated by Milky Way Media was directed Hitoshi Tanioka and produced by Kazuhiro Watanabe for Nappon Television, the oldest television network in Japan and an affiliate of NBC TV.

With comedian Smiley Kikuchi and actress/model Aki Higashihara as the tour guides for the Japanese viewers, the crew paid visits to already internationally known sites such as the house of Henry Sanchez, which was used as the home of War of the World's main character.

"They very nice people," Sanchez said.

The crew had come a day earlier to survey the shooting site before retrieving the Japanese television stars from a Newark Airport.

At Sanchez' house, they went over the details of the movie shoot, including re-enacting the moment last August when Steven Spielberg knocked on Sanchez's door to ask to use his home for the movie.

The two stars reacted to mementos left behind - such as the War of the World hat, coffee mug and several signs posted in the garage area alluding to the film's main character played by Cruise.

Sanchez led the stars trailed by the entourage of camera crew through the house, detailing specifically what sections were used for the film, such as section of the front living room where partisans were installed, and the rear den that served the film hero as kitchen.

Sanchez, showed photographs of the sound stage located in studios on the former Military Ocean Terminal in Bayonne where Spielberg's staff had duplicated the interior of his house, but also constructed other rooms where the main characters children slept.

Three floors of the fictional house were constructed on platforms with pull-away walls for easy access by cameras for the extensive filming Spielberg did. These sections were later transported back to California to be used for re-shoots if necessary.

The 30-minute TV special features only Bayonne - although the crew did visit Grover's Mills the fictional site of the 1939 War of the Worlds invasion radio broadcast by Orson Wells.

"The staff was impressed and amused by the Grover's Mill plaque," said Goode. "It's a pretty ironic place because it's in a very idyllic park setting."

It is also coincidentally not far from where Steven Spielberg lived after moving to New Jersey from Cincinnati.

Meeting the real Private Ryan

Although Sanchez said he was impressed by Japanese interest in American science fiction films, one of the crew noted that some of the genre is based on the culture of Japanese Samurai warriors - something that is particularly evident in the Jedi of George Lucas' Star Wars series.

Goode said she saw about the same promotional level for War of the Worlds in Japan that is going on in the United States.

"They haven't blitzed the cities with billboards and trailers the same way some movies are promoted," she said, but noted also, "Spielberg and Tom Cruise are very popular in Japan."

Although all of the sets were long gone by the time the Japanese film crew arrived, one piece of the set remained: The Bayonne Bridge, the stanchions of which run right behind Sanchez' back yard.

Both Japanese stars stopped to look over the den featured as the kitchen in War of the Worlds, where Sanchez's World War Combat medals and other related memorabilia were on display.

The stars and the crew spoke no English, asking questions through Nancey Goode of Milky Way Productions - who translated the questions and answers for the production.

While stars seemed impressed with the room full of images from a war that had ended sixty years ago and had pitting Americans against Japanese, the crew trailing the camera paused, their fingers touching the picture frames with a great reverence that needed no translation. Born decades after the war, these crew members actually seemed in awe of the heroic acts Sanchez described. Both stars were even more impressed when they learned Sanchez had been on Normandy Beach during the Allied Invasion, asking him about Steven Spielberg's other film, "Saving Private Ryan."

"I didn't see it for a year until after it came out," Sanchez told the Japanese stars. "It was just too real to me. When I was there, I spent a lot of time pushing bodies out of the way to rescue the wounded."

Where the film was shot

The awe grew on the faces of the stars and crew as Goode translated, making a strangely moving moment in a place movie magic had already made legendary.

Kikuchi and Higashihara then eased onto the back deck where scenes from the movie had been filmed, and the real star of the Bayonne shoot, stood proud in the bright sunlight - surviving even Spielberg's special effects that will see the bridge destroyed in film. Both stars stared up at the movement of traffic across it, trucks and cars rumbling by just as they had in trailers of the film. Sanchez described the massive alternations Spielberg's crew had conducted in order to make over the block of backyards into the vision he needed for the production, removing swimming pools, furniture, even trees in order to get the effect he wanted for the film. Even more impressive, the crew covered over lawns and tiles with plywood and installed crab grass.

"They watered it every day to keep it green," Sanchez said, the television camera a few feet from his face recording every word.

Sanchez said the Japanese crew helped revive one of the more memorable experiences of his life.

"It was a lot of fun and they were outstanding people," he said. "The represented their country well. They took photos of my pictures to take back to Japan. They were very impressed with the Bayonne Bridge. And they also impressed with the Bayonne community news for all the stories and showed them on camera. They were also stunned by the Bayonne Bridge."

In parting, the film crew gave Sanchez gifts for having hosted them in his home, two fans, and a poster board for War of the Worlds signed by both the comedian and the actor.

The actors, carrying a complete collection of still photographs from the Bayonne shoot - supplied by Paramount Pictures - posed in the way Cruise and actor Dakota Fanning did, to stare up at the bridge at the imaginary invasion from space.

The crew moved out to the garage to film where the Cruise character worked on a 1968 black Ford Mustang in the film. While the cameras rolled, several crew members studied the massive bundle of wiring in the alley, wires for cable, telephone and electricity. They laughed and pointed to the exposed connections not often seen in Japan where most of the utilities are underground and out of site.

The program's producer, Watanabe, brought with him another custom typical in the litter conscious Japan. While Broadway merchants in Bayonne have installed cigarette genies outside their stores to curb the bad habit of dumping cigarette butts on the street, Japanese carrying small pocket genies in which they also flick the cigarette ashes, dumping butt and ashes into other trash receptacles later.

Where Cruise got his coffee

Although the film crew would tour the City of Bayonne filming scenes from the walkway atop the Bayonne bridge, the front walk of City Hall and at the studios at the former Military Ocean Terminal as well as a visit to Harrington's auto repair shop upon which the movie's gas station was modeled, the other highlight of the trip came when they visited Chez Marie café on East 22nd Street, to hear from the café owner, Marie Folger and various customers about the day Tom Cruise walked into café unannounced, looking for espresso.

Folger said the film crew has also come bearing gifts, giving her a fan, a bandana and a set of pens.

"They made take them over to the photographs of Tom Cruise and me," she said. "They made me make espresso the way I did when Tom Cruise came. They even made me act in a skit."

Folger has become something of a local legend for having served espresso for Cruise last October. Last Christmas she even received holiday cards addressed to her and Cruise. People have stopped her on the street. So it was not such a big surprise that during the visit by the Japanese TV crew, her customers would only come in shaking their head.

"They just looked around and wondered what I'm up to this time," Folger said.

During her bit part in the TV skit, Folger was asked to serve a table of Japanese customers say, "With the complements of that gentleman," and point to a figure in the corner made up an alien from outer space.

"They were here about two hours," Folger said, calling the experience, "great fun."

"They were sweethearts," she said.

It also brought back that moment when one of the most well-known movie stars in the world had walked through her door. Since that day, patrons have kept close track of Tom Cruise's life, often commenting on his latest exploits during morning coffee conversations. Like Bayonne, Chez Maries will never be the same for having gone through the filming of War of the Worlds.