Making a Shoot go Smoothly

By Cara Zebrowski, special to Tarrytown-Sleepy Hollow Patch

It seems Tarrytown is becoming a movie star in its own right.

Henry's Crime, starring Keanu Reeves, James Caan, and Vera Farmiga, is finishing its first week of filming after scheduling a three-week shoot throughout the village.

"It's great," said Bjorn Olsson, Executive Director of Tarrytown Music Hall – one of the three locations being used for the film.  "As far as we're concerned everything is going really nicely."

Henry's Crime is not the first film that has been shot in Tarrytown. Other films include The Good Shepherd, Mona Lisa Smile, and The Preacher's Wife.

"It's always fun to look back and say, 'that was shot here'," Olsson said.  "The film company has been as nice as can be and we haven't had any problems at all."

That's not to say it's been easy for everyone. Accommodating a film crew inevitably requires careful weighing of potential business impacts and allocation of resources.

"We've experienced issues, possible impacts on some merchants," Tarrytown Village Administrator Michael Blau said.

Blau is ultimately the person who issues a permit to allow filming to take place in the village, and he has been keeping track of the progress and the problems.

Because there are three shooting locations – Tarrytown Music Hall, The Setback Inn on Main Street, and the old Westchester County Savings Bank building on Neperan Road – downtown businesses are primarily being impacted by parking space availability.

Blau said the Village provides a specific number of parking spaces to movie companies for production purposes.

"Those are parking spaces that can't be used by customers or the merchants," Blau said. 

In return, some of the businesses affected on Main Street are being compensated for the inconvenience and lost business.  Blau is not privy to the amount received, since that amount is between the film company and the businesses involved.

A message left with the film's production company in New York on Thursday was not returned.

According to Blau, a permit for the rest of January is being issued for the production, but he can't say exactly how many additional days the crew will be in Tarrytown. 

"We met up with them today and we are going to take a very hard line on them," Blau said. 

So far, there have been minimal violations of the permit currently granted. Concerns that have arisen including the use of a private dumpster for the production crew's garbage, and crew members parking at unallocated meters, have largely been resolved.

"Every time we've found a possible violation to the permit we've brought it to their attention and they have immediately addressed it," Blau said.

He also said that efforts are always being made to minimize merchant impacts by both the administration and the film crew.

With things going smoothly, one question remains: The film itself – will Blau go watch it?

"I don't see why not," he said, laughing.  "I'll see how the reviews are."