Plane Truth to Bollywood's New York

Joseph Tornatore(blue shirt) filming an action scene in the movie New York.

Having filmed only one day on a hundred day shoot, it s a minor achievement to make the final cut as a recognizable actor in the Bollywood movie, New York. Playing an FBI agent, the camera captures my harrowing reaction to a terrorist attack in close-up during its signature scene about 1 hour 22 minutes into the film. You can also see glimpses of me pointing, holding my arms on top of my head, and running like a scared kitten out of an FBI building as pictured. I was surprised to find this movie New York already posted to You Tube.

This preamble leads me to an interesting outtake from working on this movie, which epitomizes how art imitates life.

Background actors stood in the middle of the city street aligned with NYPD cruisers blaring flashing lights. As the precision heavy trample of an armed SWAT team moved, a crowd stared up at the Federal Bureau of Investigation high tower building with our necks cocked. We were told to act panicked. Act like your worse nightmare is happening is the directive I kept in my head.

The wide lens camera captured the chaos on our faces. With yellow caution tape weaving through a wooden horse barricade, a police cruiser skidded right in front of our position. A faux news reporter broadcasted the staged event.

While giving the take my best impending doom stare, a low flying passenger plane flew low over the city. The jet flew horizontally between the top floors of buildings. I spocked it heading in the direction of the FBI building under siege in this exact scene. Since I have been in movies where the crew purposely does not let actors know scene elements in the hopes of capturing their raw emotion, I paused.

A few actors gasped at the unlikely notion that the production company has somehow recreated the infamy of the events of September 11th. A chill casts over me and I fall out of character. I leap frogged from pretend panic to real dread and finally back into character. Alas, it turns out to be a coincidental optical illusion. A better actor than myself might have carried the more intense natural look without a Big Apple lump knotted in their throat. Here is the Boeing 767 plane truth of the matter. It is hard to act accordingly in New York during the exact moment the world changed.