Today’s thrilling clip provides a view of your writer-director friend Raymond De Felitta (yes, we are officially in the dregs of the clip bin) acting confused. I stand somewhere outside the prison (this was that unpleasant day) staring at absolutely nothing as my a.d. Eric calls for sound to roll and patiently waits for me to say “action”. But I don’t. Instead I stare ahead weirdly, scratch my neck, fold my arms and in general act about as focused and authoritative as a goldfish. Was I unaware that we were rolling? Could I truly have been this out to lunch? Or perhaps there was some problem off screen that I was perfectly well aware of and so I simply was not yelling action and was instead patiently waiting for the problem to resolve itself. Unlikely. I think I was just spacing out.
So as not to make this entry entirely about my own ineptitude (and in honor of the generous–neverending is more like it–season that professional baseball allows itself), I’m adding a little 8mm footage of the once great New York Yankees, shot at Yankee stadium some time in the mid to late 1950’s. This footage came courtesy of some people who live on the block that we shot on in City Island. I asked if they had any home movies of the neighborhood for possible use in the movie and they generously provided us with a pile of old footage. Among this footage was this nugget of Yankeedom. Can you identify the players? I can’t…