As serious a blot on my city's cinematic history as this cringeworthy horror show
is (though there's been worse, like the mindnumbing C. T. Nelson snoozer TV
show called, with dull appropriateness, The Dissed Trick), still I have a certain
fondness for it. Nothing to do with the finished product, which I recall got
absolutely savaged by critics back in the day, but instead because I had an
impromptu front-row seat to an actual scene being shot on my streets resulting
in being "Yoo-hoo!" distance from Gene Hackman! I was out riding my bike
downtown very late 1 night & glimpsed some very bright lights in the vicinity of
the Municipal Building/police HQ/older courts buildings on Indiana Avenue NW.
So it was I rode right into a scene that evidently had been a certain difficulty to
shoot. I settled myself on a slight slope in front of one of the old courthouses
directly across (north) from the Municipal Building, which clearly was the focus
of the scene all lit up like a prison courtyard. Some people who quickly stood out
as extras - that area not being much populated by foot traffic that late - were
being instructed by somebody (a "director" of some kind?) as to how they
should stroll along the sidewalk as - it turned out - old Hackman himself & some
other actor emerged from the Municipal Building having some kind of argument.
This had not gone & did not go well after my arrival, with me witnessing no less
than 5 takes of the scene, both from Hackman & whoever else (this was 31
years ago after all) not coming out of the building into the middle of the street as the director wanted - plus some nitpicking about the inflection on certain words! - and, even funnier, that the people on the sidewalk couldn't get their passing-by timing right. Three in particular - a young black couple & some old grandma - really gave the director fits as he wanted them to amble along at a certain speed to appear at X time behind the 2 actors while they ranted (the final version, a closeup of Hackman & whoever, barely even shows the luckless extras). After seeing these flubs 5 times - the "kicker" line was "me & my lobotomy!" - I had my fill of Hollywood on the Potomac & rode off while they were wearily resetting up for yet one more take. I had 1 other encounter - while enjoying lunch in Meridian Hill Park a few days later, a noise down on 16th Street NW caught my
attention, & I turned around to see an immaculate 1949 Ford station wagon
being pulled up the hill by a pickup truck, a camera strapped to its hood facing
the windshield. Nobody was in the car, so it was being taken somewhere else for
filming (& suffered a terrible fate in the movie). Other than the arduously filmed
scene I witnessed - which was humorous in unintended ways - I didn't get a
single giggle out of my single viewing of this movie (but plenty groans, as in the
locations purporting to be in Washington but weren't). Still, even as it lives down
to being an actual representative of "Sacre bleu! That picture stinks!" (from the 1955 classic Pepe le Pew cartoon Past Perfurmance), I recall it with warm fuzzies - while wondering if Hackman & Ackroyd had some serious financial difficulties of one kind or another to sign on to this Loose Bomb!
Review of Loose Cannons
