Amy's Robot

The Departed on 46th Street

Following in the footsteps of Al Pacino and Jonathan Demme, trendy filmmaker Martin Scorsese is shooting some scenes of his next blatant Oscar bid on 46th Street today. The Departed is a remake of Hong Kong gangster movie Internal Affairs, about a cop (Leo) who goes undercover with a gang, and a gangster (Matt Damon) who goes undercover with the cops, and their efforts to sniff each other out. Watching these two clean-cut all-American vanilla boys play tough-guy gangsters, and tough-guy cops pretending to be gangsters, should be fun. See some set photos (that I did not take) here, including some of Jack Nicholson covered in blood.

Interestingly, Scorsese is setting the movie in Boston, but due to New York's generous 15% tax credit for filming here, opted to shoot most of the movie in New York and try to make it look like Boston. I guess that will mean moving out everybody who isn't white and closing up all businesses at 11. I'm not sure what this says about New York's cache as a movie location, real or otherwise, but Toronto might be a little nervous about its future as the go-to cheap stand-in for New York.

categories: Movies, Robot-on-the-Spot
posted by amy at 9:55 AM | #