Annie's Rooftop: A HOLLYWOOD HIGH STAKES CHASE!
Jess and me having a rare moment of time and leisure to be a little silly while dressing a set.
If you are wondering how they do this…(answer is above)
So one of the last sets I worked on for The Flight Attendant was Annie’s rooftop.
While pretty straightforward: it was more of a logistical challenge. The two biggest challenges being:
Enough outdoor flooring that would cover a huge outside rooftop and be safe for the actors to run on.
Some huge AC rooftop units like the ones on the top of big apartment buildings here in NYC but also big enough for the actors to hide behind.
Jessica Petruccelli, Emmy-Award Winning Set Decorator and occasional rooftop sweeper.
The flooring was a whole thing. The factory messed up, we had to find someone to drive the literal ton of rubber mats overnight from Ohio but thank heavens they arrived in time thank you to our wonderful vendor, old school New York business: Canal Rubber. There’s more drama related to installing this flooring but I’m not going to go into it here. Just know the flooring you absolutely didn’t notice on screen was A WHOLE THING.
It was such a debacle in our department that we decided the best inside joke wrap gift for our wonderful crew of set dressers (almost all of them ended up helping lay down this flooring) were some custom printed coasters using the same rubber flooring material.
The funnier story, for our purposes here, is the drama that surrounded the logistics of these two huge AC units that I bought used from a dealer in Florida.
Since we didn’t need ones that worked, and in fact preferred ones that were emptied out I was looking for used AC dealers. I called some in the tri-state area but none were as responsive as this guy Bob in Florida. I’m telling you if every vendor I worked with was as responsive and on top of it as Bob, set decorating would be a breeze.
I mean Bob even sent me a photo of the units we bought from him strapped onto the flat bed truck as it left his warehouse in Florida en route to us in New York City. He gave me the number of the driver who called me as he was leaving and I was basically in touch with the driver during their drive up.
So many things can go wrong on a long drive like that and man, the whole scene was depending on these very specific units to make it to us in time and in tact.
When the drivers hit NYC I breathed a big sigh of relief. …But then the driver called me an hour later saying he was having trouble finding our warehouse address. Our office and warehouse were in a fairly confusing section of Greenpoint, Brooklyn where addresses aren’t so prominent and the driver said he had never been to NYC before.
So I offered to drive over to meet him and personally escort him to our warehouse. I met the guys where they were waiting and drove slowly back to our warehouse so they could follow.
We were three blocks away and then…
Wait why was the truck stuck? And then I saw…
😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱
exactly how I felt
Yes, these AC units traveled all the way from Florida to Brooklyn and then in the last three blocks, THE LAST THREE BLOCKS, there was an accident.
It was so tragicomic the only real reaction was to laugh. The police basically had to help close down a street to facilitate the truck (with our AC units!) out, but as you can see from the set photos and on screen, they finally made it safely and on time to their intended final destination.
I sent a copy of this photo to Bob in Florida AND the super sweet and wonderful (and probably slightly traumatized) truck drivers who safely escorted these babies to their cinematic destination.
HOW DID WE KNOW we would have a parallel shot of Cassie and Miranda on the rooftop taking this photo before the crew even arrived to shoot this scene? I guess not only are we set decorators, Jess and I, are also able to see into the future!