Detroit Ville Sauvage
In 2008 I was visiting a friend in Detroit’s famed Fourth Street enclave and met French film director Florent Tillon, who was exploring the neighborhood. We bonded over my local knowledge and filmmaking pursuits. He had completed a short documentary called “Detroit Wildlife,” which viewed the city through the lens of resurgent nature amidst human abandonment, a perspective close to my own at the time, as I had moved in from the suburbs the previous year.
Soon he returned to town to make a feature-length film on the city, which became “Detroit Ville Sauvage” or “Detroit Wild CIty,” and became THE LOCAL GUY. I combed through archival footage, secured filming locations, and otherwise helped out.
By the time the film was released, my perspective on life in Detroit was already drifting away from Florent’s, and I ended up feeling that his shorter “Wildlife” may have captured the zeitgeist more accurately. Most of my work wasn’t used in “Sauvage,” but it was a thrilling experience, especially filming from the roof of Detroit’s most beautiful 1920s skyscraper, The Guardian Building, at daybreak.
Detroit’s parking meters were active from 7am to 6pm at that time. To film from The Guardian Building at dawn, I had to arrive earlier than the meters, so I knew it was likely that I’d have a parking ticket when I came back. That’s OK, they used to cost $10. When I got back to my car after the shoot, sure enough, there was the ticket, but then there was also a dude with a camera in my face, who wanted me to be really upset about the ticket. He was from the TV show “Parking Wars.” I signed a release to appear on the show, but they didn’t use me. I wasn’t angry at all. I had just watched the sun rise from the top of the most beautiful high-rise in the city with a couple of very interesting French filmmakers. I went online and paid the $10.
In one scene, Florent films city booster Jeanette Pierce as she rattles off tour information, and he juxtaposes this with scenes of the city’s failures. I didn’t know about this scene until it had been filmed, but I had known Jeanette since high school. She had always been a fan and supporter of my old improv comedy troupe, Mr. Rogers’ Sweatshop. Between the time these scenes were filmed and the release of the DVD, I had been hired to work for Jeanette at the new Downtown Welcome Center she had founded, D:Hive, and I found myself acting defensive when I told her about the film’s release, because of its use of her for satire. She didn’t give me a hard time over it, because she’s rad.
This film was made just before drones became a thing, so a helicopter was rented at significant expense for dramatic views of the city. I wasn’t able to ride along and had no work to do on that scene, but I decided I’d get some photos of the helicopter as it flew around the city’s famous abandoned train station. May as well, I lived right next to it at the time. I captured the helicopter from several angles as it circled the building so I could surprise the crew later on. When I finally showed off the pictures, I learned that I had been photographing some other helicopter. Apparently two helicopters had gone out to circle the same abandoned building on the same day. How about that?