Today was my last shoot for The Wiseguys: “We Pick The Winners.” It’s been so much fun working with such fantastic people and getting to improvise each week. I played my ditzy-est character to date and it was a blast!
Also, a clip from one of our episodes is going air on Showtime’s Inside The NFL during the playoffs. For now you can check it out(we come in at around the 1:50 mark) at Showtime’s website: http://sports.sho.com/browse/video-portal-infl.html?id=721384043001
That’s super exciting and makes me proud, but the real reason for my post is this insane story: How the cast and crew of The Wiseguys saved a woman’s life on the day of my final shoot.
We were filming in an apartment location. The shoot started normally and then we smelled a faint burning smell. First, we checked the lights and gels, as that’s what usually causes a burning smell on a set. When an actor stepped into the hallway of the apartment that we were shooting in to make an entrance through the front door, the smell got stronger, but it just smelled like burnt cooking, pretty faint and we didn’t hear any smoke detectors going off. As we continued to shoot, the smell got stronger and we still couldn’t figure out the exact source. One actress said “It smells like someone boiled water and burnt the pot.” Still no smoke detector sounds or anything so we just wrinkled our nosies and decided that we wouldn’t want to try eating with any of the neighbors. Then the actor went into the hall again for his entrance and suddenly popped his head back in the door.
“There’s smoke coming out of this door!”
He began pounding on the door next door and shouting “Are you okay in there?”
We all rushed into the hall and heard some incoherent shouting from inside. He kept pounding a yelling and finally the door opened and we were hit with a wall of smoke. I’m serious. It was the most intense smoke-filled place I’d ever seen. Even our camera op. said he was a former fire fighter and had never seen that much smoke in a place.
An elderly woman opened the door and was quite confused and disoriented. There were flames on her stove behind her and the guys rushed in and turned off the stove she then came to and put the pot in the sink and turned on the water. She’d been boiling eggs and had fallen asleep. The knocking on the door is what woke her up to her home full of smoke and a bunch of strangely dressed strangers yelling to her. I doubt she would have woken up at all if it had been much longer.
The guys then set up fans around her house and opened all the windows for her, so it would air out. She couldn’t find her cats and no one saw them anywhere. I’m hoping they found somewhere low to hide, but that amount of smoke would have killed a human in a fairly short amount of time, so I’m not sure there is much hope for the kitties. I really hope they made it.
I’m so glad we happened to be filming today and at that exact time and that we’d had an actor making entrances for multiple takes. So, yeah, I guess sometimes movies save lives.