Black Money

Last year, I videoed the greenway from Canarsie Pier to Coney Island along Jamaica Bay. On March 27th, a body was dropped off Paedegat Bridge, Shore Parkway, between Canarsie and Bergen Beach. So I had the video of the bridge and its approaches and did a voice over to match.







On March 31, we learned that there was another body dropped that night, both part of a "Black Money" scheme, according to NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly. An early report in the Daily News was sketchy but gave the address, 78th Street & Dumont Ave in South Ozone.

A beautiful day. I arrived at Conduit Blvd and asked a woman which way to Sutter Ave, and after pointing, she gave complete directions, very much a small town, South Ozone. Right on Ruby, left on Dumont to 78th Street, a dead end with an enormous dump. It was the noon hour, little wind, no clouds, barking dogs behind chain fences, no humans.

I started to video and after awhile, I noticed red tape, as opposed to the common "Crime Scene" yellow number to which it was attached. It was where a dumped body from a car would have been, and that was my guess. The silence was impressive.

With the temperature in the low twenties, the Federal courthouse at 500 Pearl Street in lower Manhattan was fully supplied with media people when I arrived about 2:45. The TV people were there, the local stations and lots of young folks with professional HDTV tape equipment. There was a measure of people like me, mostly with SLR still cameras. One still photographer had his NYPD press ID, a green picture affair, stuck in the band of his fedora. A few had a pad of paper.

There were lights across the block and up and down the street. The front of the courthouse had barriers leaving just a space in front of the door for a dash to a car. As everyone said often, his had Louisiana plates. One light shone directly down that path from across the street.

Eventually, the crowd poured out of the courthouse and gave those waiting the news, the magistrate's decision continuing bail was affirmed. The people around me attached to TV and maybe radio dictated into phones. One woman stand-up TV reporter was giving a verbal report into a TV-labeled mike while pacing up and down. John Slattery of WCBS-TV came by me to wish a cameraman Happy New Year and make arrangements.

Now the video cameramen got up on step ladders (in front of me) and there was a buzz and some shouts as Bernard Madoff came out and into his SUV.




I left.

Me & Jonathan get Bernie

Bernard Madoff, the hedge fund boss accused of a $50bn fraud, has put up $10m bail and in effect been placed under house arrest. He will also be fitted with an electronic tag and will have to seek permission to leave his apartment/flat/penthouse.


I went across on the tram to Christmas shop, and, since I was there, I took my camera and camcorder to picture 133 East 64th. There, where I had taken a backup shot while featuring, wrongly, the building across the street, there was now a crowd of paps.


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Since my last video spree, I have invested $26 in a lens shade, which I don't need except once in a moon, but dresses my fancy. Yes indeed, the paps, having rechargeable batteries and much memory, were taking flash pictures of me as I took video of them with my lens shade.



On the subway downtown I thought that the paps were there because of the 2 pm hearing, Bernie has to come out to see the judge. I walked down to Pearl Street -well, too much peanut butter yesterday. It was of course after 1 pm.

There were paps at the court at 500 Pearl, and I set about videoing them. There was a slap of leather on wet street as folks ran, and I looked up, swinging the camcorder, and there was the instant arrival of a black SUV, apparently a dash of Bernie in a baseball hat and black coat, and the crowd of paps flashed their flashes.



There were tents on the street down across the way, so I went and videoed, but the guy started talking into a mike, so I moved while still shooting to a vantage point in time for him to go ape. He was the only guy that had it, he was really excited, yelling at his young intern (?) and his not young female producer (?) who took notes when he yelled in a small notebook, to get the news about the black SUV to "64th" (ha, I knew what that was) And into the mike how he wanted them to handle it.

He looked once at me and so did the others. I got 4 minutes and 29 seconds.





It develops this is Jonathan Dienst, WNBC political reporter. He has a blog and says this:

"Minutes later I see a black Acura SUV with Connecticut plates pull up out front. I think to myself that it might be Madoff's ride.

Fortunately our camera guy kept his lens trained on the courthouse door and recognized Madoff even in his "Seinfeld-style" get-up. "

blog


NBC has a clip of the uptown scene:



That shows many of the paparazzi from earlier in the day, in a swelled throng.

JASON O'MARA, HARVEY KEITEL, MICHAEL IMPERIOLI, JONATHAN MURPHY

I went down to watch briefly on three days. What looks interesting on day 1 soon becomes workers on a job. Especially for the extras, who are needed for scenes lasting a minute or two, which takes time to set up and then are repeated a number of times. In this clip, we can see four of the principal players, doing a walking rehearsal - stepping into the old phone booth - and studying their lines from a script.

Life on Mars ABC TV show on location

Life on Mars

Walking toward the subway on Roosevelt Island, which is in the middle of the East River opposite Manhattan, the lamppost had two signs: Life on Mars with an arrow, and Life on Mars holding.

Okay, I followed the arrow East to the Queens side of the island and South to the tall screens on which spotlights played, giving diffused light to a crowd of 1973 police cars with their lights rotating, a NYPD command center van, an old Channel 3 TV truck, and a vintage glass enclosed telephone booth. The premise, from a British TV series, is that a present-day detective finds himself transported to 1973.

“Life on Mars” easily makes the transition from Manchester, England, to New York City — gritty cop shows with big cars, big guns, chase scenes, kicked-down doors and blaring sirens are an all-American genre, after all. read


The lights were in the back of Goldwater Hospital, an old VA hospital now used by the City of New York. The back is in need of paint and through the windows, ceiling panels were missing, perhaps in a section no longer in use.

In the middle of all those big old cars were a camera, a sound boom, say five principals, and twenty-five others, extras or whatnot. Lined up on the guard rail at the edge of the island were another twenty-five at least, a "patient" in furry bathrobe, assorted health care workers and others.

I watched five takes. They were all the same for the 'background action' but the distant sound boom moved from actor to actor, so perhaps the camera was moving from one to the other as they said their lines. One person, presumably the lead, had a white reflector held below his waist so as to light his face maybe.

The shouted commands were "okay" "rolling" "background action" and perhaps then in lower volume, a signal to the far away principals.

At "background action" the players each had a role that they repeated, some twenty of them, a policeman held a door, a nurse hurried out a white-coated doctor, then ran forward between several more police, the police approached the door looking up, more police around a cruiser drew revolvers and pointed them up. Various bodies came and went across the background, nurses, visitors, detectives.

"Okay, break" said the shout and down came the white screens, barriers were wrapped up in seconds, and people dispersed.