Thomas MacMillan Photo
Extras who showed up to appear in a movie being filmed on Chapel Street didn’t know what the plot was, but they had a few clues: A book signing. Hidden cameras. Dogs on the moon.
Those were the significant details of a scene being filmed in the Atticus bookstore downtown on Wednesday.
The movie carries the modest working title, “The Greatest Movie Ever Made.” It’s being filmed partially in Derby and New Haven by David Letterman’s Worldwide Pants production company.
It’s a movie about kids making a movie, said a tight-lipped production assistant, one of several posted outside Atticus Wednesday afternoon. She would say no more about the film.
“Rolling!” she shouted periodically, before dropping her voice to a whisper to urge quiet. “Like a library,” she aspirated.
During a break in shooting, extras emerged onto the sidewalk.
A woman in pink described the scene she had been sitting through all morning.
“I wish I knew the plot,” she said. What she had seen “doesn’t make sense.”
The scene is a book signing. Actor Bill Pullman (of Spaceballs fame) is signing copies of his children’s book, “Dogs On The Moon.” (A poster for the made-up book hung in the window at Atticus.) Three kids come in. Two of them have cameras hidden inside bowler hats, with holes cut out of the front for the lens. One of the kids gets in line, then protests loudly when he finds out the book costs “24 bucks!”
That sketch of the scene was all extras could provide, before they were whisked away by a member of the production team.
“They told us not to talk to you,” whispered the woman in pink.
