Once back in my NYC scouting days, I was working on a TV show that was planning to shoot at a cemetery in Brooklyn. As we were scouting it with the director, an apartment scene was abruptly added to the day’s work, and I was given an hour to find a cleared option for them to see.
Across the street from the cemetery was a row of single story houses that looked small enough to cheat as an apartment, so I ran over and started knocking on doors. No answer on the first few. A few no’s. Then, on the fifth or sixth try, a woman opened the door.
I think she was in her early sixties. Her face was weathered but youthful. I remember she had long, silvery-gray hair pulled back into a pony tail, and a kind smile, and eyes that listened carefully as I raced through my pitch. She said she was interested, and I noticed she had a Russian accent and spoke in a quiet, refined voice.
I hurried to take the pictures of her living room, then thanked her profusely and explained that I’d likely be back with the team within the hour.
I found the director and group waiting at a coffee shop. Showed the pictures. Everyone loved it, and I remember being thrilled that this nice woman was going to get an unexpected payday for her little house by the cemetery.
We went back to the house and she invited us in. The group of seven – director, AD, production designer, a few others, all men – trucked inside and began to look around.
Then, all of a sudden, I noticed: something was in the air. Like everyone was sharing a joke I wasn’t in on.
The scout wrapped up very quickly, which is never a good sign when they’re considering your place for filming. Everyone headed out with polite goodbyes. I thanked the woman again and let her know we’d be in touch, then hurried after the group.
I found everyone walking back to the cemetery, laughing. I asked what was wrong. “Dude, did you not see the stripper pole?” the AD asked. “She’s a fucking prostitute, man. How pathetic is that?”
Apparently, in my rush to photograph the location, I’d missed the fact that there was a stripper pole in one corner, and some other items lying about that made it clear what her day job was.
“What a sad fucking situation,” someone else said. “Can you imagine? Being an old hooker working next to the cemetery?”
“And think about the kind of guys who’d want to bang someone her age,” someone else added. “Fucking depressing.” For the entire walk back to the van, everyone just kept making fun of her. To this day, I hate them for it.
As a location scout, your job is to set foot in an infinite variety of worlds. One day might be Malibu mansions, the next, Skid Row hovels, then on to Everywhere USA suburban homes or trailer parks. And in 20+ years of scouting, two things stand out to me.
The first is that whatever you imagine a situation you haven’t experienced to be, you. are. always. wrong. You might get some of the notes sort of close to the mark, but humans are simply far, far too varied, nuanced, and complex to ever reduce to one-note caricatures.
The second is that there is nothing more vulnerable than inviting a total stranger into your home not only to witness the life you’ve built for yourself, but to cast judgement over it. I’ve seen people hire cleaning crews to scrub their houses from top to bottom before I arrive. Others will literally try to talk me out of considering their place for filming as I’m taking pictures, ashamed and apologetic: “You don’t want to film here. It’s such a dump.”
Which is why I will always consider it the highest privilege to be welcomed into a home as a guest, no matter how expensive it is, how nice the decor, how prestigious the zip code. In fact, I’m not there to judge; my job is to capture it as it is without judgement.
For the woman in the house by the cemetery, all I know is that she was willing to let me into her home and share a glimpse of her life. If anyone should be ashamed, it’s those who accepted her invitation and acted like tourists instead of guests.
