Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Ah, Finally some Lost Stuff!

I woke up feeling refreshed and excited, if really needing coffee because, well, it’s me and I can barely breathe without the stuff, much less function properly. While Paul was showering so we could get going with our day, I sat out on the balcony with my cup of coffee and tried to write in my journal. Let’s just say not much got written since I was seriously distracted with the view and kind of stared out at nothing for a while until I hopped in the shower myself.

Finally, it was time to go. I won’t go into major detail about it, but suffice to say that it’s very annoying to drive around parts of Hawaii. All we wanted was to get on the highway. Sounds easy, right? If only it was so, but it’s downtown Waikiki. Two of the ramps were closed with no signage, just a cop car blocking the way. So we found ourselves paralleling the highway looking for an on-ramp, saw some old lady pull out across two lanes of a busy street without looking, and a potential place for Dave to work if we were ever to move to Oahu:

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Wait until you see the picture of the potential work place we saw on the North Shore.

Finally we made our way to where we had caught wind of some filming being done. Again, without giving away too many spoilers, we located where the scene was being filmed at an elementary school and found a decent place to park in the surrounding neighborhood. Once there we asked the producer if it was okay if we watched (he appreciated us asking and was very cool about it) and staked out a decent spot that wasn’t in the way. At first it didn’t seem like anything huge was being filmed, but it was very cool to see what goes on behind the scenes during filming. It looked like nothing spectacular was going on basically...until we saw that it was Locke-stunt scene that is. I’ve put the details of this scene in the spoiler section of my site if you’re really interested in finding out exactly what we saw being filmed.

Aside from giving away the scene, we both got to see Terry O’Quinn (Locke) lying on the ground. Funny that his stunt double was wearing a light blue shirt and him a dark blue, but thankfully someone on the set noticed and he changed for continuity. We were to say the least very thrilled to see a scene being filmed of our favorite actor and character on the show.

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It’s kind of hard to see, but he’s lying on the ground in front of the guy with the khaki shorts on.

They broke for lunch and we decided to see if we could find their ‘base camp’. Well, we did and as we drove by I nearly had an aneurysm when I saw Terry O’Quinn walking out of a trailer. After a quick turn-around we parked across the street and it was a near thing for me to go tearing ass across the street when I saw TOQ again, but thankfully Paul talked me out of it. Bad enough we were sitting there like that, much worse if I ran over like a crazy woman so I settled for snapping a couple of pictures. They’re obviously taken from a car and not high quality, but at the time I was just too excited to see TOQ so close (he looks a lot farther in the pictures than it was in real life).

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It was still very cool to see the trailers for Hurley and Desmond and to later see them walking out to go into makeup, or get food or whatever (didn't take pics of that). We saw Jorge Garcia leave with his little Chihuahua in a pink blanket, cute that he brings his dog to work like that, but then, that wasn’t the only dog I saw on set (no, not Vincent either.)

From there we left as that particular scene was done being filmed and it was onto the next we had heard about at a restaurant downtown. On the way we saw one of the most random things ever in the city: a huge dead boar strapped to the back of a pickup truck.

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The guys saw me staring at them, and at first the one in the passenger seat was giving me an odd and slightly dirty look, but when I smiled and gave him the thumbs up sign he grinned back. From what I understand, hunting boar is serious business and they’re pretty nasty prey. Of course Locke makes it look so easy on the show…

After our lunch where I finally learned how to use chop sticks and actually was able to eat with them the first time, it was back to watch some filming at the restaurant we had heard about. We got there and all the gear was set up outside, the scene being filmed inside, but we hung around and chatted with other Lost fans that showed up. This particular scene was a Hurley scene, but it’s very telling and again, check my site if you want the full details.

Eventually we moved from one side to the other for a better vantage point – originally we were standing by a Denny’s but thought we’d have a better view from the other side. We got to talking with someone that worked on Lost, a man I’d rather keep nameless since he did a huge favor for us and that was letting us go over behind the director and watch what was being filmed inside on the monitors. He also gave us the low-down on what was being filmed and some details (see spoiler section) about the scene and who was in it. Now, I got the impression this isn’t the norm, but hey, we weren’t complaining. All we had to do was watch and keep our mouths shut, which is exactly what we did. Still, felt like winning the lottery. Well maybe not that big but big enough for hard core Lost fans.

Then they broke for lunch and we backed off a bit; everyone was eating there at the food tent including the actors, though Jorge seemed content to text his heart out since that’s pretty much all he did. Paul and I were standing there minding our own business, some other Lost fans were nearby (we’d actually keep on running into them during our stay), and suddenly I’ve got some kid that was an extra on the show trying to hit on me. Really, he did come out of nowhere; I’d peg him at sixteen or seventeen, obviously still in high school.

Now, I know I don’t necessarily look my age which in my mid-thirties, but I certainly don’t think I could pass for my late teens or early twenties. Apparently this kid didn’t care, or really thought I was younger than I really am, for he starts trying to impress me with what he knows about the show. Which of course I already knew, being the Lost geek/fanatic that I am. Finally I dropped the term ‘my husband’ into conversation and he eventually went away. Next to me Paul asked if I wanted some more alone time with him and if so, that was okay. The other three Lost fans – Ana, Stephen and their mother Pat – were also laughing at the “twelve year old” hitting on me. We all got a good laugh out of it and I’m still not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that he has so much confidence.

Things wound down on filming and we saw the actors leave, so decided to call it a day ourselves. Besides, we were hungry and ready to go back to the hotel and chill out. For our first full day in Hawaii, a trip that was planned around Lost, it was off to a very good start.

Inside joke time:

Crazy Hair Guy
New Moon
Twelve Year Old

I’m sure you can all deduce what the last one means. For the rest, you’ll have to ask. ;)

2 comments:

  1. LOL! For a lot of sitting around, that was still an awesome day. The stunt scene, when we realized...the details of what we were seeing...and then getting up close and watching the monitors was really cool, we could have reached out and touched the director. And that 12-year old...cocky SOB! He was all over you, haha.

    As they wrapped, they were handing out calls sheets for the next day. We were hoping someone would drop one, but no such luck. I was going to post here about what one of the staff shouted, when he was 'pretending' to read off of it, but...I realize that what if what he said was true, so I better not.

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