For those of you who don't know, Dennis Quaid and Sarah Jessica Parker have been filming a movie ('Smart People') entirely on the CMU campus and in Pitt. Quaid's character is a professor who has a very boring life and Parker plays his ex-student who falls in love with him (or vice-versa...)

Anyway, they decided to do some filming in my building over the last 2 days and I didn't think too much about it (except for the huge parking inconvenience which bugged me). So on Thursday night I returned home after part 2 of Tristan's 21st birthday celebration and was fast asleep by 1 a.m. At 2 a.m. I heard this incessant knocking which I initially assumed was either in my head or some weird noise from my fridge. When it didn't cease, I realized someone was at my door... at 2 a.m.! Talk about a night call. I walk to the door and see 3 men wearing flak jackets. Weird. I try to listen in on their conversations and it soon strikes me that they are part of the filming crew. I open the door and they inform me that they really need to install spotlights in my room near the balcony. Since they had already woken me up, I decided to let them in (that and my curiosity).

Over the course of the next half hour I learn that Sarah Jessica Parker's character lives in my building! They used a vacant room on the 3rd floor to shoot the indoor scenes. They now needed to shoot a scene where Quaid is standing outside my building and looks to Sarah's apartment, sees the light on and realizes she is still awake. Turns out the director decided that my apartment's balcony was the only one suitable for the shoot. :-)

So here are some of my musings from this amusing incident:

1) They actually chose my building and a room identical to mine for Sarah to live in. I think that says a lot about my choice of residence ;-)

2) The fact that it took me 15 minutes to open the door probably cost them thousands of dollars -- especially since they were 2 hours past scheduled wrap time. Who says you can't put a price on sleep ;-)

3) Apparently you can find the glamor of Hollywood, if you're able to look past the boring time spent re-shooting a scene over and over again.

So when the movie does come out and if the scene doesn't get cut, you'll see Quaid looking up at Sarah Jessica Parker's apartment window and you can say "My friend lives there" ;-)