No sign of Hugh Jackman, but it was pretty cool watching work crews for the new Jackman film 'Real Steel' turn the old firehouse building across from Cobo Hall into a boxing gym earlier today. From what I've heard, the movie is sort of a sci-fi sports flick in which robots replace humans as boxers.
Trailers loaded with studio gear are parked all over the place within a block of the old building, which is just across Larned from the old Ponchartrain Hotel. The sidewalk on Washington Boulevard (facing Cobo) has pretty much been turned into an off-camera work area, and trucks are lined up and down Larned, Congress and Shelby streets.
Co-stars of the film include Anthony Mackie, Evangeline Lilly, Dakota Goyo and a few other actors I've never heard of, but Steven Speilberg is working as co-executive producer and rumor has it Sugar Ray Leonard is offering some helpful insights to help make the fight scenes true to sport. The movie is due to be released in November 2011.
In the Guardian Building, everything looks like a work of art. Even the drinking fountains look cool. But the most memorable piece in the building is the enormous, six-story mural depicting Michigan and its many areas of commerce. It's a must-see if you ever have a little time to spare downtown.
It was painted by a Traverse City-born guy named Ezra Augustus Winter, whose other notable works include the Fountain of Youth mural at Radio City Music Hall in Rockefeller Center in New York, and Canterbury Tales mural at the Library of Congress Building in Washington, D.C. The guy had skills.
Unfortunately, Winter was injured while working on one of his enormo-projects when he stepped back to examine his work but forgot he was painting from an apparently lofty scaffold. He fell, busted up his tailbone pretty good, and was never able to paint again. So rattled was Winter that he committed suicide in 1949, but he left behind some awesome work, and one his most famous creations is right here in our backyard.
In case you missed this story in the Detroit Free Press last week, here's a recap. The picture above – which I cleverly captured through a gash in the mesh fencing that surrounds the work site that will eventually be the new Capitol Park – was taken about a month ago, without my knowing that the guy with the shovel was actually looking for a casket in them there grounds. Allow me to explain. Here are the pertinent facts.
Michigan's first governor was a young 19-year-old named Steven Mason. The capitol of Michigan was at one time Detroit. The capitol building stood on what is now Capitol Park. When the boy wonder died of pneumonia at the tender age of 31, his remains were first buried in New York but in 1905 were moved at the request of his sister to Capitol Park. In the 1950s his remains were moved again, this time to the other side of the park. Unfortunately, nobody bothered to jot down exactly where.
The other day they found them.
Since we all like a happy ending, here's what will happen next. Mason will be re-interred in an above-ground crypt that will serve as the centerpiece of the park, which is scheduled to reopen in August. He will be, according to the freep, surrounded by a model of the state's first Capitol building, new benches and lighting, and interpretive signs.
The movie cameras continue to roll throughout downtown Detroit, most recently for the spy flick "The Double," starring Richard Gere and Topher Grace. The movie is set in Paris, and Detroit is providing all of the backdrops because of the wide range of architecture available here.
One scene was shot Tuesday at Coaches Corner, a bar in Harmonie Park that takes on the brief roll of a French bistro in the movie. By Thursday, there was little evidence remaining that a movie crew had come in on Monday and tore everything off the walls, taped the scenes on Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and put everything back together on Wednesday. This chalkboard - which announces the name of the place in the movie as Le Petit Escargot - was left hanging by the front door. The manager also showed me a few splatters of fake blood outside on the sidewalk that were left behind. (The scene included a stabbing of some sort.)
Scenes for "The Double" are going to be filmed throughout Detroit, including in a nine-story garage across the street from work where many Free Press and News employees park. We at work cleverly refer to the building as The Nine-Story Garage; in the movie, it's going to serve as the exterior for a hospital in Paris.
No sign of Hugh Jackman, but it was pretty cool watching work crews for the new Jackman film 'Real Steel' turn the old firehouse building across from Cobo Hall into a boxing gym earlier today. From what I've heard, the movie is sort of a sci-fi sports flick in which robots replace humans as boxers.
