Here is the clip of last night’s Law & Order: SVU scene that fictionalized our Frozen Grand Central mission.
I don’t know why we went to all the trouble to synchronize our watches when we did the original. It’s so much easier to just have Mo Rocca stand on a stepladder and yell, “No sheep!” If you watch this video closely, you’ll notice they actually replicated several shots from our video: the woman eating yogurt, the guy tying his shoe, a man pre-freeze who is holding a train schedule exactly like Rob! is in our video.
Here’s a behind-the-scenes video we found on YouTube:
To reiterate, we had no idea this was happening and the show never contacted us. I guess it’s flattering to see our work fictionalized, even if we’re portrayed as murderers who yell, “Sheep!” at everyone. Too funny!
We didn’t see it, but we’ve received about 50 emails this evening about tonight’s episode of Law & Order: SVU. It apparently centered around a group of New Yorkers who stage massive public events. The leader of said group was played by Robin Williams.
(still from the episode)
There was footage of the group staging a freeze in Grand Central Terminal, which I guess makes it a fictionalized account of our Frozen Grand Central with a dose of murder tossed in somehow. The group also organized a public pillow fight (organized in non-fiction New York by our friends at newmindspace.)
For the record, we had no idea about any of this, and the show didn’t get in touch with us about it. Last year the Idiotarod was fictionalized (also with a murder!) by CSI:NY, so I guess crime drama writers are really plugged into the public spectacle scene in NYC.
If you saw it, let us know how it was in the comments. And if you have a link to video of it, post that too.
Several folks have emailed this story to us over the past couple of days. It seems a group of Libertarians in DC went to the Jefferson Memorial on Saturday night to celebrate Thomas Jefferson’s birthday by dancing silently with their iPods (similar to our Mp3 Experiments.) The event was broken up by DC police, and one of the participants was arrested and detained for several hours.
In the [first video] you can watch the group as they quietly danced around the memorial (which, to be clear, is open to the public 24 hours a day, according to its web site). A U.S. Park Police officer can then be seen approaching the dancers and telling them to leave.
The second video, posted below, shows the dancers arguing with Park Police officers about why they’re being asked to leave. They say they were quietly dancing with headphones on to celebrate Jefferson’s birthday, and that they weren’t breaking any laws (which, as far as we can tell, they indeed were not). Toward the end of the video, you can see Oberwetter, 28, being handcuffed and taken into custody.
We got a nice note from the people at the “remhq” YouTube account: “Sincere apologies and do note us on team REM love the stuff you guys do.” They added the appropriate credit to the YouTube video description. Thanks guys! I’ve been listening to R.E.M. since I bought Document on cassette back in middle school, so it’s cool to find out that they (or at least their marketing people) are Improv Everywhere fans.
UPDATE: remhq removed the video from their YouTube account and sent us a note saying they are going to re-edit the footage to credit us in the video itself.
UPDATE 2: R.E.M. decided to just remove the video for good.
Improv Everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere has executed over 70 missions involving thousands of undercover agents. The group is based in New York City.
Subscribe
Search
Advertisement
Bad Behavior has blocked 1969 access attempts in the last 7 days.
