West Village Apocalypse

I was all prepared to write something brilliant for this inaugural post, but I walked by the filming of a new Will Smith movie and I'm totally unable to focus on anything else.

This morning I walked by Washington Square Park and I noticed a pack of people running along a row of burned out, dust-covered cars. Now, the combination of dust and running people is usually something that triggers pretty much any New Yorker's spidey sense, but I had already had an awful lot of coffee and I think the caffeine inspired my curiosity while inhibiting my normally well-honed self-preservation instincts, so I decided to brave the north side of the park to find out what was going on.

I wish I had my camera with me because the next time I see any thing like this I'll probably be, you know, running for my life. There where about a dozen burned-out cars and everything had a kind of post-apocalyptic feel to it--overgrown plants, strewn garbage. But the freakiest part? Crispy bodies---piles of them! They were in all different positions and had this amorphous, burnt look to them. It was so weird and disconcerting seeing them stacked up like that at the foot of Fifth Avenue.

After approximately ten seconds of intensive internet research, it appears that the movie they were filming is I Am Legend, which, according to imdb, is indeed a post-apocalyptic thriller about the last human man (the fresh prince himself) fighting against legions of vampires.

It's well known that Smith has been chasing those Oscar dreams for years, and this is obviously Warner Brothers' idea of a prestige picture, so be prepared to slip this gem right between "Schindler's List" and "Citizen Kane" .

One weird thing is that the imdb description indicated that the movie is set in LA, but it's apparently based on a novel by Richard Matheson (which Amazon calls "One of the most influential vampire novels of the 20th Century"--I honestly had no idea anyone was keeping track), so they must have changed the locale to NYC, because everyone know how much fun we are to destroy.

Looks like some folks took photos, but the crispy bodies were by far the best part.

Apparently, they've been shooting all around town for the last couple weeks, which gets pretty pricey--especially the way they seem to be closing down streets for long periods of time. Anyway, for all the cash they're spending it should be interesting to watch Smith go all Big Willie Style on packs of vampires. Sound awesome? I think so.