ELEMENTARY my dear Lucy

Yet another version of the Sherlock Holmes / John Watson relationship!? Hmmm... not so elementary -there is complexity afoot. Between Lucy Liu's first-ever depiction of Watson being a female and Johnny Lee Miller (of Eli Stone and Dexter fame) as a rather diminutive Sherlock... I don't know... I can't really say.

On my way to holding, my wife called me to let me know that a deathly ill cousin (about to be placed on hospice care) whom we've been visiting in the hospital for the past week, had come out of her high-fever coma-like deterioration and is sitting up and talking normally. When you hear news like this... it just makes everything else have a blissfull aura. And with that happy attitude I continued on to find "holding".

Our holding area was in St. Agnes on New York City's East 43rd Street, where about a hundred or so of us extras arrived at 7:00 PM and were processed to be subway travelers for this pilot shoot. From what one of the crew told me, this was the only episode being shot and then it's pitch-and-sell time to CBS. Sudden flashes of Spike Lee's MONY, my first TV pilot participation, came into memory. That particular pilot never made it to the boob tube... let's hope this one fares better.

We were placed in Grand Central Station's subway shuttle (S train) platform for about 4 hours. The director on the set was a man in a ND-grey shirt named Michael Cuesta (Homeland).

Our direction was to act like typical New Yorkers going for the train as Lucy Liu and Johnny Lee Miller were passing in front of us, preceded by a cadre of steady-cam assistants. I was paired up with a stunning looking young lady and our banter between takes made the hours very bearable. Our dash into the train was routine but unpredictable as to just how much nano-second screentime we'd be getting on this simple scene's final cut.

No food for the extras tonight... only a bottle of welcome water while we were on set and in holding. An AFTRA agent told us that this would not happen if we were in the union. He also told us that AFTRA and SAG were coming to a resolution on merging and that the voting results were being counted this Friday. I said I'd wait to join them... aha, yeah... check's in the Saturday mail.

I was somewhat hungry for a snack when they released us at midnight. Nothing seemed to attract my appetite -it was as though I really didn't need food. So I bought a simple tea and a croissant at Penn Station while letting my stiff body slide into the relative comfort of a metal chair in this multi-food shop. Suddenly the thought of a recovering cousin came back to memory and I was feeling great again.