Mark in the Middle (of Glendale)
I recently went on my friend Mark Chaet’s website to check something out, and while I was there I wound up watching the clip in his comedy section of his appearance on “Malcolm in the Middle.” I couldn’t help admiring the comic glee with which Mark character delivered the good/bad news to the harried parents that yes, they were going to have another child. I shot Mark an email telling him that, and he responded with a great little story I thought I’d share with you. Here goes.
Lee: Don’t know if I ever told you this story, and it’s one of my favorites. I sometimes think that the best thing about pursuing showbiz is the stories one accumulates. This is brief, but requires a bit of lead up time.
When you shoot on an indoor set, and your set is a room with windows, and the windows are supposed to be to the outside, they set things up so that should the camera see out a window, what it sees will be appropriate.
So they’ve come up with a way to make absolutely enormous photographs, on some sort of curtain. I mean these suckers are huge, possibly life size photos of real places.
So I’m working on “Malcolm in the Middle,” got a scene where I tell Jane Kaczmarek she’s pregnant. I’m playing a doctor – be kind of weird if I was playing the local blacksmith, or a luggage handler. And I walk onto this set that’s supposed to be my office and I look around a little, get a feel for it being my space. And something draws me to the window. And I look out the window at this street scene, and there’s this brick red wall across the street, and some sort of glass chandelier or light, and a large address number in brass, and I think that’s a Jamba Juice and I realize I’m looking at Brand Blvd. in Glendale, about 1/2 a mile from my apartment. And I realize – hey! – I can walk to work. I loved that.
This reminds me of the time about five years ago when I exited the subway station downtown and couldn’t for the life of me figure out where I was. For some time, I had two different offices downtown, so I got to know Central City and the Historic Core pretty well, but when I got to street level I was flat-out lost. All the signs were wrong. The one in front of me said 46th, which sure didn’t seem possible, because I should have been on 7th. Then I noticed the newspaper boxes were all wrong, too — and that the lead one said “Daily Bugle.” It was then that I realized I had walked onto the set of “Spider-Man 2.” Even with that, it was difficult to figure out where I was and get to my office.