Hard-core Hollywood fans catch action at movie-set blast
By Lauren Carter
Boston Herald
September 27, 2009
BRIDGEWATER – Yesterday morning’s staged aircraft explosion here attracted its share of eager would-be spectators hoping for a show of Hollywood magic.
But the stargazers who hung around long enough to see a broken 727 fuselage go up in flames at 5:30 a.m. were a die-hard few.
Dozens of locals set up camp near Curve Street, where Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz were filming part of their new movie “The Untitled Wichita Project.”
A “Curve Street Residents Only” sign and detail officers kept wannabe onlookers out of the filming area, a 263-acre farm. Said Kevin Chiocca, a retired Bridgewater police lieutenant: “We’re just here to see that the well-meaning curiosity-seekers don’t interfere with the production.”
Chiocca said several had been arrested for trespassing by midnight. Those who opted not to go to jail congregated at lookout spots on Auburn and Summer streets.
Carol Blackden, 52, of Bridgewater, said she’d been hanging around all week in hopes of reliving her days as an extra on such locally shot movies as “Witches of Eastwick.”
“Mercury is in retrograde right now, and usually you want to recapture the past,” said Blackden, a former Navy photojournalist and now a fortune teller. “I’m trying to go down memory lane and see if I can recapture my youth.”
It would be a long stretch of idle staring. By 4 a.m., many took to beeping horns, flashing lights and yelling, “Start the fire!”
By 4:30 a.m., 18-year-old Tony Lopez of Raynham gave up, calling the experience “cold and disappointing.” His friend Mike Moynahan, 17, of Bridgewater, hung on until 5:20 a.m. “I figured it’d be something fun, but it was a very long experience of nothing,” he said.
Just 10 minutes later, the few bystanders with star-powered stamina were jarred out of semiconsciousness with a glowing fireball and thunderclap followed by a mushroom cloud of smoke, all highly visible from a field off Summer Street.
“Awesome,” said John Falvey, 39, of West Bridgewater, who had just gotten off work as a trucker. “I expected it to be more of a cheesy gasoline fireball. It was a legitimate explosion. Very intense.”
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