Park Slope is the new Hollywood

I thought I was leaving the movies behind when I moved out of LA. But I have this sneaking suspicion Hollywood is following me.

I have walked past, through or into more film shoots on the block where I live in Park Slope than I ever did in Los Angeles. Today, for instance, I am not nestled into my usual table at Ozzie’s, the reason for that being that Jason Schwartzman is shooting an HBO pilot, Bored to Death, at my neighborhood coffee shop.

This is constantly happening. A few months ago, Meryl Streep was shooting this Julia Child movie at the restaurant on our corner, so our street was filled with vintage automobile. Scorcese shot the communion scene in The Departed at the church on our other corner, where David and I got married and the kids got baptized. And a few years ago, it was The Squid and the Whale team filming, literally, in front of our apartment.

And just wait ‘til they start shooting that Darren Star Slope in the City series – I won’t be able to push my stroller in between all the craft services tables jamming the sidewalks.

Despite the inconvenience, I love this shit. I think its because although I’ve retired my headshots, as it were, I still have this fantasy that one day I’ll be leaving my house, yelling at the kids not to push each other down the stairs or they’ll break their necks, battling with the double stroller, dropping my diaper bag down the stoop steps so all the contents spill out, you know, just another day in paradise until --- I go to retrieve the tube of Desitin that has fallen on the sidewalk and another set of hands is there, picking up the diaper rash cream and handing it to me. It is Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen who are shooting a movie in front of my house. They look at each other and look at me, and look at my kids and look at each other again, and Apatow says, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” and Rogan says, “You guys oughta be in the movies.”

And just like that, me and my crazy, beautiful, unmanageable children, are discovered. And Primo never has to cry at drop-off again, because he never has to go to school, he’ll be tutored on set, and I will have a team of three Italian au pairs devoted exclusively to the task of insuring that Seconda does not put anything in her mouth that isn’t food. We will hire people to wake up with the children at night and I will sleep 8, 9 hours at a time. I will take bubble baths and get a full head of highlights. David will quit his day job and just write all day, wildly successful literary fiction that reinvigorates the dying world of publishing. And we all live happily ever after.

And the best part is, we won’t ever have to leave Brooklyn, because Park Slope is the new Hollywood.