Marshall Greene and Chloë Sevigny rest at the Ol’ Susquehanna Mine during the shooting of James Franco’s Black Dog, Red Dog. about the dedication of our volunteers, you need to hear his comments after a night with us on that train. Once again, we were approached for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010). It’s another project that went nowhere past initial contact. They wanted a steam train for something in the film to be shot in Hoboken. Price was no object to Disney. Having seen the finished product, you would have no idea where it would have fit in. It seems the original plot may have had flashback scenes that were deleted from the final script. After all, Nicholas Cage’s character was 1,000 years old. While, granted, production plans change as a film progresses, the finished film didn’t give any hint as to what they were originally thinking. Next up came Black Dog, Red Dog, another independent film by James Franco, also starring Whoopie Goldberg and Olivia Wilde. We didn’t get to meet any of them as their filming was in another segment of what is an episodic film and apparently was already completed by then. We did get to hob-knob with Logan Marshall Greene and Chloë Sevigny. Shot in 2012, the IMDB kept pushing the date back having cited “in post-production” until about August, 2014. Now marked “completed” as of this writing, it still has no exact date for release. Again, several of our people were used as extras. Our president, John Stocker played the conductor and got a couple of lines. Finally, the impetus for this article is to report on the latest effort. Another independent company is shooting a dramatic short, Figs For Italo. It’s a family story set in World War II Italy. While the budget is low and thus prompts our use as an Italian railway – bigger stretches have been done – some shooting actually occurred in Italy. The two days of shooting in and around Lehigh Junction were the final segments to complete the filming after which it went to postproduction. The producers want it ready for a film festival at the end of the year. IMDB shows it as a 2015 film. One last note: our Society president, John Stocker, had now appeared in three of these films, each time playing a conductor – type casting to be sure. Besides Black Dog, Red Dog, where he actually has lines, you might also hear him in Becoming Santa talking with other of our members in that unscripted documentary. In this latest film, he just got to run a lot as the scene involves an Allied bombing of the train. Fortunately, that scene is easily embellished with modernday special effects and we had no mess to clean up. We are well of aware the reason why there are so few people in this country running steam locomotives. They are expensive to maintain and to run, they require specialized talents to do either and they have special needs, like a pile of coal to burn. We pride ourselves on the fact we continue to carry that torch. While our engine is a 1930’s design and our cars are from the 50’s and 60’s, which tends to limit us in what we can reasonably give the appearance of, I expect there will still be more opportunities in the future to strut our stuff for the camera. During filming of “The Mercy Man” Guenia Lemos rehearses a stunt on the back of our caboose, under the watchful eye of cinematographer Roy Kurtluyan 8
9 Publizr Home