"Leverage"
August 2009
Illegal arms buyers on the deck of "Il Falcone Maltese"
I did my first extra work for the TNT cable series "Leverage" on July 17, on an episode about a con man psychic played by guest villain Luke Perry. Those scenes were shot in Old Town/Chinatown Portland, on NW Third and Couch, renamed Pine for the Boston location, and near NW Second, which became Devonshire.
These photos were taken on August 30-31, during the filming of the second season finale, with Paul Blackthorne playing the arms dealer Kajic. I and the other folks shown were potential buyers, gathered on an oil pumper that had been cheekily renamed The Maltese Falcon in Italian for the show.
The most interesting part of the day's shoot occurred after dark, around 10 p.m., when we descended into a cargo hold for scenes between the show's star Timothy Hutton and Blackthorne, with us examining boxes of semiautomatic weapons and grenades in the background.
An incredibly bright spotlight was shone down the hatch from the deck to make it seem as if it were still daylight outside, as our deck-walking shots had indicated, rather than long after dark. Fortunately the blazing sun had set and it was not stifling hot down in the hold, as we had been led to believe it would be.
Here's a shot of the two female "buyers" posed with the fake guns carried by Kajic's bodyguards. These three photos have an overexposed, "glowing" appearance because they were taken with portable phone cameras at sunset on August 31.
Over the course of its shooting this year, the show used a tremendous number of extras and local Portland actors for bit parts. Just four days before these photos were taken, the local news had announced that "Leverage" had been renewed for a third season of fifteen more episodes. Christian Kane, who plays muscle man and martial artist Eliot on the show, and who also fronts a country band, had told a crowd at the local club Dante's as early as Sept. 5 that the show would be back in town.
On September 25, the Oregonian reported that an official announcement confirmed that the third season would be shot in Oregon. With any luck, I'll get a walk-on role with some lines next year.
Just in case you're tempted to think this was all very glamorous, let me show you what were doing for roughly 85 percent of the time we were on the set:
I was reading The Year of the King, Antony Sher's autobiographical account of rehearsing for a production of Richard III.