Rather than lying in bed last night, a Powell St. resident was sitting in Burger King until almost 11 p.m. That was to avoid being poisoned during the filming of “Psych Season 2″ outside her apartment. Last month, she sat in Burger King until almost 11 p.m. on Mon. August 20th. That was to avoid being poisoned during the filming of “Circle” outside her home.
This woman got carbon monoxide poisoning during the filming of a Honda commercial in 2000. She claims that the Vancouver Film Office responded to the poisoning by continuing to create the conditions that caused it.
“The Vancouver Film Office was created in order to ensure that filming takes place in a way that is least disruptive to the citizens of Vancouver.” Vancouver Film Office website
During the filming of the Honda commercial, the resident alleges, the crew left a generator running just below her window, along with an idling truck, for most of the day.
After a year of struggling to have health and safety standards recognized on Powell St. during a period of mounting film fatigue in the over-filmed Downtown Eastside, the resident did get a letter from Muriel Honey, Manager of the Vancouver Film Office, dated Sept. 24, 2001. “The complaints you raised during the filming were valid — specifically the problems with generators spewing fumes right under the window of your home. . . .” It is now six years later and the same conditions continue to be re-created.
The resident did not get much satisfaction from Honda either. She told Honda in writing in 2000 that she had gotten sick. How did they respond? “They didn’t”, she says.
Mercedes Benz was responsive though, she says. In September 2001, Mercedes Benz canceled a commercial at that location at the last minute. “I bet that cost them something,” she says.
There is no mention of this background, of course, on the BC Film Commission website which promotes this strip of Powell St. as a prime filming location on their home page.
The public image promoted by the Vancouver Film Office and the BC Film Commission is that they value cooperation with residents, but this resident says it’s been her experience that residents who expect genuine cooperation are seen as “troublemakers”. The fact that she spoke up during the filming of “It’s a Girl Thing” starring Kate Capshaw (Capshaw is married to Steven Spielberg who appeared to be on the set too) was used against her by a location manager during the Honda commercial. The location manager, “Brian”, wrote a memo ridiculing her.
To find out how she was ridiculed in the memo, what the problem was on the set of “It’s a Girl Thing”, and why this Powell St. resident sees internet exposure as one solution to alleged unfair filming practices, read the full text of this original article at the Downtown Eastside Enquirer
Loading ...
2 users commented in " Filming Abuses Land Woman In Burger King "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackSounds like she is a paranoid schizophrenic.
Or maybe she is after money..
The percentage of carbon monoxide from an outdoor generator going into a window is minimal. Hint: wind. She might be chemical sensitive, of course, and I sympathize: like most women who are “chemically sensitive”, I could easily become neurotic about it and then paranoid…this lady’s obsession suggests she prefers paranoia to simply moving or setting a fan in her window on exhaust…
You mention money. The residents of the Downtown Eastside don’t get reimbursed when filming disrupts their lives. Years ago they did, but that’s unheard of now.
People were reimbursed when a Claude Van Damme movie, one of the first shot on the 100 block Powell Street, disrupted their lives. People remember it because it was in the early days of “Hollywood North”. This movie lit up the entire block late at night on a week night when people had to get up in the morning, and people came streaming out of their apartments to find out what was going on. People who had apartments low enough that they couldn’t sleep were personally given $100. But dealing directly with individuals affected by filming soon became a thing of the past for the film industry on the Downtown Eastside. That’s because the poverty industry on the Downtown Eastside smelled money.
The poverty industry organizations soon arranged to divert the film industry money toward themselves. The Downtown Eastside Residents Association, for example, got donations from the film industry to publish their newsletter and they got funding to hire local people to work with the film companies as “liaisons” to the local people. And they often, of course, hired their friends and relatives. (The woman in my story, though, was pleased that the DERA liaison supported her by confirming to “It’s a Girl Thing” that there was no permit to film at her address.) But by giving DERA and other organizations money, the film industry took the position that they no longer had to deal with individuals whose lives were directly disrupted by the filming. (I don’t know which organizations currently get film money; filming has slowed down.)
And the film industry representatives even started to talk like the big earners in the poverty industry who constantly have the word “community” on their lips. (The left-wing handlers who run the poverty industry favor collectivism over the individual; there’s more grant money in it.) The film industry were suddenly finding ways to “give back to the community” instead of the individuals affected by filming. One thing the film industry started doing was put on a turkey dinner at Oppenheimer Park every December. Oppenheimer Park is a favorite hang out for drug dealers and addicts; povertarians are paid to run it. So residents have the option of lining up there with junkies in the December drizzle (remember, David Duchovny said it rains alot in Vancouver) for a turkey dinner. This has been going on for years now, at least five, may seven years. The turkey dinner has a reputation for being tasty, but people on the west side of the City, far from the heart of the poverty industry, are not given turkey as a substitute for compensation.
I saw an example of this on the local news. Some homeowners on the west side were upset that a film company sprayed phony snow around and people could feel it in their lungs. A woman was on the local news complaining about it. Then she said, as accurately as I can remember, ‘Of course, we got compensated’, as though that was a given. This woman has no poverty industry handlers standing between her and the film industry.
You said that the woman in my story sounded paranoid. According to records in the case, she spoke to a fireman on the block — there’s a fire station at the end of the block — on the evening of the Honda incident and he said that the conditions created were dangerous. She wasn’t the only one who complained either. A teacher also complained and arranged to have the generator moved from a school doorway.
Leave A Reply