Honestly I don't get Gossip Girl and never will, but I do love me some Ugly Betty and my blood pressure skyrockets everytime you see something "New York" in what could only be any city but New York (LA, I guess?)

Cranky way of saying: fun!

Michael Urie. Sigh. I had such dreams for him when he was in dirty off off-Broadway plays. Then he had to go and get discovered. Ruins everything.

Tales of a Miserable Hack is being filmed in my office at this very moment.

Don't forget that it's actually now cheaper to film in NYC than stand-in-NYC Toronto.

Thanks W.

I'd pay real money to see Vanessa Williams get her stiletto snapped off in a sidewalk subway grate.

Unfair! I used to work in the building they use as the Mode office!!

And would someone explain to The Hills producers how all the paparazzi shots of Heidi and Spencer back together and all lovey-dovey work against the show's credibility??

"An insider at the show says it's cheaper to shoot on location"

Translation: Someone on staff has a boyfriend/girlfriend in NY.

As long as Vanessa Williams kicks ass and takes names, I don't care what city she's in.

i dont watch this show, but. it seems to me betty is getting much less ugly as the show goes on. seriously, loose the braces and lower the neck line on that dress a few feet and she looks like julia allison. (except less shiny)

That darling Mark Indelicato better watch out. If I see him on the street I may just snuggle him to death.

@rina: Hilarious how his voice changed during the strike.

Plus, LOS ANGELES IS NOT FUCKING NEW YORK CITY. We can tell that CSI: NY is not really shot in NYC but rather in the same fucking L.A. soundstage / whatever because you know why? NO STREET IN NEW YORK CITY ENDS AT A BUILDING, NO MATTER HOW MANY WAYS YOU DRESS THAT STUPID BUILDING UP. And CSI has used the same "NYC street" for a an episode where a building blows up... and a kid gets shot... and a "Harvey Weinstein" character dies sneaking out onto a fire escape to get at his secret stash of candy... I could go on. Just shoot your goddamned NYC-based film, sitcom, whatever in New York fucking CITY already! We have two perfectly good studios (Silvercup and at the Navy Yard), and the most realistic NYC set EVAH. And, we'll gladly move out of your way for a shoot! Just ask the guys who park their cars in YOUR spots for like 12 hours in advance of the time and date printed on the NYPD permit and put traffic cones on top of their Honda Civics to Stake. Their. Claim! "Excuse me sir, you can't park here." "Why the hell not?" "BECAUSE DO YOU NOT SEE THE TRAFFIC CONES ON TOP OF MY CAR ROOF????!!!!"

(Well, SOME streets in NYC do end right at buildings, but those are the stupid streets.)

While on the one hand, shooting on location gives a show *some* authenticity, a soundstage is a soundstage is a soundstage, and LA -- for all the bleating around here about it being a second-class city -- is still better equipped and more industry-oriented to seamlessly manage a hit TV show.

Plus, the best part about being a famous TV producer is having coke-fueled gay sex orgies in your Mid-Mod in the Bird Streets of the Hollywood Hills. Coke orgies aren't as fun in a doorman building!

@procrastinator, esq.: I love you, and you can be my lawyer, but no. And, the doorman can keep the cops away. WITH HIS EPAULETS.

One night a few years ago, I returned from a month-long trip out West to my place on lower Sixth Ave. As I came out of the subway I saw flames shooting out of the windows of the apartment right below mine. There was a bustling crowd outside the building, a fire truck, spotlights, a crane moving toward the fire. Then, just before I flatlined, I realized that it wasn't a fire hose atop the crane, but a camera. Yes, it was a film crew shooting on location.

I sure had a good laugh at myself after I stopped hyperventilating and feeling returned to my limbs.

@In Other News...: Wow... I sense this is an issue that you're passionate about.

All the "New York sets" in the LA studios are based on a south-of-14th Street layout, for what it's worth. If you've noticed, most streets in the Village *do* intersect at weird angles like that.

But, really, all you can come up with is that NY has two "perfectly good" studios? It's a fringe industry for New York, at best. LA has literally hundreds of studios and an infrastructure, economy and workforce tailored to the TV and film industry which makes shooting there almost a foregone conclusion for most of the stuff you watch on the tube (except the stuff they ship off to Canada). While it would be nice if NY-based TV shows could be filmed there, do you really expect "ER" to be filmed in Chicago, "Cheers" to be filmed in Boston, and "Who's The Boss?" to be filmed in Fairfield County? For what it's worth, even "The O.C." was filmed in Manhattan Beach (LA County), not Newport.

What's more, when you throw in child labor laws and union regulations into the mix, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to stage productions in the US outside of Los Angeles County, at least on a semi regular basis. Have you ever heard of the Thirty Mile Zone? It's what keeps productions in LA, and incidentally the namesake for TMZ.

TV is fake anyway. Who cares?

CSI: NY films in downtown LA aaaalll the goddamn time, not really a soundstage. The outdoor shots for Ugly Betty? Same.

Sometimes you see the giant orange LA Metro buses go by in Ugly Betty.

Heroes? Also downtown LA. City National Plaza is where season 1's finale was set.

@procrastinator, esq.: Downtown LA, when nobody lived there, was basically a film dream. Like a giant, real-life set. Now that people are living there, there's a ton of conflict between residents and the industry. People don't like having their sleep disturbed by the lights and noise of filming. But it's still basically our industry and city agencies bend over backwards to help films/shows/what have you shoot around here.

@tunamelt: I know, I work downtown and see them film stuff all the time. It's fun! When it doesn't screw up traffic (try driving downtown on a weekend).

If you notice most of the outdoor Ugly Betty scenes take place on 7th Street between Figueroa and Flower.

@In Other News...: Maybe that's just a very dangerous street. Stay off it.

Hate to break it to you, but the Gossip Girl writer's room is right here in sunny Burbank.

It is currently fairly cheap to shoot in New York because the state offers sweet tax breaks that California traditionally hasn't, and won't have to consider offering in the near future due to the shitty Canadian exchange rate (i.e., Vancouver isn't cheaper than LA any more).

But there are so few studios in New York, and a real, population-dense city is such a giant pain in the ass, location-and-entertainment-infrastructure-wise, that you shouldn't hold your breath if you're waiting for more shows to be shot there. The most common executive note for all new shows is still, "can we switch the location to LA?"

Sorry.

It's about time. I get so tired of watching shows that don't shoot on location. It's so obvious BATTLESTAR GALACTICA doesn't actually shoot in space. And it shows! Totally ruins my enjoyment every time I watch it.

@procrastinator, esq.: I work in downtown LA, too, in a building that's weirdly popular for filming. It's exciting, until you realize that for the 90 millionth time your route home is being screwed up by a car commercial or a Visa commercial or something really stupid.

@GingerVitis: Even if the writer's room is in Burbank, I still think the show's New York immediacy is demonstrated in the scripts. It just helps, tonally, to film where you're set.

@tunamelt: I see my office building (which isn't pretty or distinct enough for close-up shots) in Pechanga commercials and in those stupid GMC commercials that have the slowed-down version of "I'll Stop The World And Melt With You" with random car parts floating in mid air. It's depressing to see your quotidian workaday life transported into quotidian workaday commercials.

@Richard: Yeah, but Ugly Betty gets New York "immediacy" too (witness the other week's reference to the "Pemberley Inn"). Although I just realized the show's constant references to Pinkberry may prove your point (no one goes there in NYC, right?).

@procrastinator, esq.: Very passionate. And - you guys bleat? :-)

But seriously, yes I know it's fringe, but the film industry was sorta born in this area (in the wilds of Fort Lee, right across the Hudson from Upper Manhattan), and there's plenty room here for new studios - for instance, the Homeport on Staten Island. (DON'T say it.) So why can't it flourish here? They get tax breaks, many actors own apartments here, and COOL SETS! Plus, Vancouver is... Vancouver.

It's funny how my perception of cities are based on how they are portrayed on TV. So I always think Miami is tanned and sunny... that Las Vegas is dark and crimey... and... Hey, I guess I only watch CSI! But seriously, I think it's because I don't really travel that much, and I have no choice but to take the image of a city, as its presented to me by a TV show, at face value. On the OTHER hand, I know EXACTLY what New York City looks like, and it ain't nothing like the street that Kramer, Jerry, Elaine and Costanza are running down in Seinfeld.

@Richard: But how much of that is actually location, versus just having a good/talented writing staff?

If they shoot on location, how are they going to make the N/W train run through Jackson Heights?

@In Other News...: There my be room for studios where you can physically shoot, but (as the writer's strike showed), it's not just the studio, but the entire economy of sound mixers, craft services, florists, SFX houses, hair/makeup, blah, blah, blah, which you can import for a movie but the lack of which becomes a pain in the ass on long-running shows (many of which relocate back to LA after a certain number of years).

New York wasn't built as an entertainment industry town, whereas LA was, and it makes producing TV and movies here infinitely easier than starting from scratch somewhere else.

Canada already had its own entertainment industry, based largely in Toronto and Vancouver, when Hollywood came a-calling.

@Richard: No, it helps to find writers from New York, which many of the GG folk are.

@GingerVitis: Spot on. The problem is a lot of people don't realize how vast the entertainment industry is, and how many things go along with it.

I'd rather blog about Betty than those teen freaks any day!

@GingerVitis: But we wouldn't be starting from scratch. The dough is already in the mixer. And, we have the best kitchen EVER, complete with the Sub-Zero fridge.

@tunamelt: Yes. And that even if you shoot somewhere else, all the producers will waste huge amounts of time and money flying back and forth because every executive and meeting and actor they might want to cast in a 3-episode arc will still be based in LA.

I say this as a third-generation New Yorker who would love nothing more than to move home -- but it's not going to happen. Ever.

@GingerVitis: Essentially, the bottom line of the entertainment industry is that the "industry" part > the "entertainment" part. And I know that the entertainment part leads to the industry profit part, but outside of NYC/LA, there's a whole bunch of people who can't tell/don't give a shit whether or not the city they're seeing on the teevee is actually NYC or LA.

@tunamelt: Wait, people exist in other places?

If so, I've never heard of them ...

@GingerVitis: Agreed. It's the inverse of legitimate theater, or fashion, or dance. For those, the industry is based in NYC, and there's no question about it. Sure you can find great triple threats, contemporary choreographers, and couture designers based elsewhere, but fact of the matter is that the heart of those fields beats in this city. For Broadway it's the scene shops and prop houses and wardrobe technicians, the stagehands, the close-knit collection of theaters and the very theater-specific hardware stores that have sprung up in the cracks between the tourist-oriented businesses around them. For dance it's the range of open classes available to dancers of any level at any hour of the day, the custom-shoe makers, the relative abundance of performing space on all levels of intimacy, the ever-growing number of festivals and initiatives to sponsor and provoke new choreography, and the huge pool of pianists and percussionists who specialize specifically in accompanying dance. For fashion it's the the Garment District and the venerable old fashion schools and venerable old modeling agencies and the venerable old coke industry.

It's not that any other city couldn't, or doesn't, match us on any one element. It's a "product greater than the sum of its parts" phenom. For film, and I've also heard, recorded music, the fact of the matter is that LA is it.

Personally I think we're damn lucky to be on the fringe of that mess. We've got our hands full as it is with Wall St douches and UN absurdity. And globally those things matter almost as much as anything Hollywood produces.

@Zorica: Look at the freakout over Project Runway moving to LA, and how impractical it would be from a Serious Fashion context.

@GingerVitis: It's a rumor I've heard. Never had it confirmed. But obviously someone is watching Two and a Half Men, and I know it's damn well not me.

I have mixed feelings about on-location shoots in NYC. My old neighborhood was incredibly popular for middling films and Law & Order franchises, and those shoots were all kinds of disruptive, with their loud machineries and bright, bright lights.

That said, fake-NYC sets bug the shit out of me - as hard as they try, they can never seem to get it right. And a thing that mystifies me - they'd shoot all above ground scenes on location, but shoot subway scenes in Toronto. Fuck, there's a perfectly good set in the form of the abandoned platforms at Hoyt-Schermerhorn.

BTW, the Hawaiian set of Lost looks NOTHING like the real island where the 815 crashed.

On the DVD of Ugly Betty, there's a featurette on all the green-screen work they do. Apparently they make geographic screw-ups (especially with the subway), but they put a lot of effort into their Manhattan/Queens settings, filming locations or not. It's not like on Friends when Joey got a job on a soap opera that filmed in Los Angeles in real life.

UB seems to be all about the celebrity cameos these days, so I wonder if a move to NYC would hurt it in that department.

You're all off base. Clearly what we see in Ugly Betty is NYC as Tommy Westphall's been imagining it.