Sometime in the mid nineties when Seattle was surfing atop the Microsoft wave, the TV show Frasier decided to shoot on location up here. The show had Seattle based Frasier Crane and his brother Niles get mugged somewhere in downtown Seattle. Some of our city fathers cried foul, they did not want to see what they thought was the Emerald City's prestige image soiled by the depiction of crime on her streets.
If that image really ever existed, it was shattered a few years later when thousands of protestors took to Seattle's Streets during the conference of the World Trade Organization in 1999. I worked in Downtown Seattle at the time and for that entire week it felt like I was in a war zone. I remember watching on Television in absolute disgust as punk kids where shown breaking windows and burning waste paper bins. I remember the Sheriff Dave Reichert (in front of a running camera of course) jumping out of his limo in true Leslie Nielson style to arrest a protester. I remember how tough it was to get a bus home on one particularly scary night.
Things have come full circle as the Seattle Times reports that a movie is in the works that reenacts that fateful week. Charlize Theron, an Oscar winner in 2003 will have a starting role as an innocent bystander who becomes the protagonist of the movie. Susan Sarandon is slated to play a journalist who is sympathetic to the protestors.
Theron's boyfriend Stuart Townsend is writing and directing the movie which is scheduled to start shooting in Vancouver next month.
1 comment:
Interesting book related to WTO mess is "The Race to the Bottom" that I am reading. Taking class next week on globilization. Quite unrelated, I recall my week at the UPI Hollywood Bureau writing crap about teen idol Ricky Nelson.
see. www.cheezymovies.blogspot.com
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