The only question left is: Do I drink the water?

I just got back from…wait for it:

THE SET OF IRON MAN 3.

So, I guess, the obvious question: No, Robert Downey, Jr. wasn’t there. It was second unit. Or not even that. Principal shooting has been done on Iron Man for awhile. No, this stuff was filler. Extra scenes that just need to fill the seams in the movie. Doesn’t matter. It was still awesome.

Great stuff below.

I stumbled across a news article talking about some shooting being done for Iron Man 3 listing location and times. They started shooting at 7. I found the post at 7:30 while I was in a writers’ meeting. The meeting I was at was two blocks away from the shoot. I decided to wander down to see if I could get a shot of them blocking off the street. The article said they were blowing up something (spoiler, I guess?), so I thought I’d see something maybe. Not really. My heart wasn’t set on it, but even a shot of the police blocking off the street was exciting for me.

Oh, just you wait. No peeking to the end of the post.

The street was open to walkers, closed to cars. I had been to this mail before on a cold rainy day and knew where there might be a cool vantage point near the action. All these cars were lined up to do the scene. There were supposed to be some crashes.

A lot of it was hurry up and wait for something to happen.

And this did.

But, noble reader, was I satisfied. No. I could do better.

Here’s a tip on set crashing: be nice. This extends to the company you keep. If you’re kind and nice, you can always kill them with kindness. In my kindness killing, I met some people from the art department. I was chatting with a husband and wife team, asking about the job, what company their with, how things work in the biz. I asked them what movies they’d done.

GUYS! THEY HELPED BUILD THE MODEL OF THE WHITE HOUSE FROM INDEPENDENCE DAY!

When they say that, I totally platzed. I go, “I LOVE that movie!”

Them: “But it was so long ago.”

Me: “No! That movie is amazing! You’ve got to own it!” I swear, if I’d had my copy with me, I would have asked them to sign it right there. I mean, maybe you’re not a fan of Independence Day, which means you’re wrong.

So, someone goes off to grab some water from Kraft Services and accidentally grabs an extra one. He offers it to me.

GUYS! I HAVE IRON MAN WATER!

I thought I wouldn’t do this. I thought I wasn’t the person to go all babbly (to my credit, I didn’t actually start quoting Independence Day, I just talked about how awesome the scene with the White House was {the helicopter’s caught in the explosion!}).

Well, as promised, here’s the best part of what I got: movie footage. No, I’m not in the next Iron Man movie. But, guys. How can you not love LA?

And, of course, as the title asks: Do I drink the water?