In a Place As Strange As Brooklyn

Being fully caught up with the editing and having a half-day wait for new film, I decided to hang out on set. Today the show started in Times Square then moved to Brooklyn. Deep, distant, heart-of-darkness Brooklyn. I didn't go to the Times Square shoot but I did grab the 'D' train and trundled to Fort Hamilton.

Fort Hamilton has a mighty concentration of orthodox Jews. That probably explains why the hospital at which we were shooting is called Maimonides Medical Center.

This is Maimonides

The scene involves two of our principal male characters accidentally running in to each other at a sex therapist's office, each one loathe to admit the real reason why they are there. I was drafted to play one of the patients waiting in a chair outside the office. So when the two leads get in to a bit of a shouting situation, blurting out humiliating details, myself and two others have to be drawn by the commotion then pretend to be uninterested. It was fun.

Ville Haspasalo plays Sauna. In the story, Sauna owns a gym. He's a ladies' man. But not after St. Valentine puts a dispiriting curse on he and his friends. Hence their encounter at the sex therapist's office.

Below, Aleksei and Ville rehearse.

And Marius & Co. watch...

Richard Murphy is our set mixer, the guy who records the sound.

Richard recorded "Miracle at St. Anna," some "Sex in the City," and about a bajillion Laws & Orderesses.

Below is a comely extra.

Monica sits across from me in the scene. We created a mutual backstory for our characters in which we had gone out for Indian food, gotten sick, and come to the hospital. Our intention of falling to the floor and writhing in gastrointestinal distress was met with skepticism from Marius.