April 27–May 4, 2000

hot seats

Hot Seats

by Patrick Rapa

Where: Penn’s Landing When: Sat., April 15, 2:30-5 p.m.

It’s a gray gray day in Philadelphia. The skies are a light, milky gray. The Delaware River is a murky charcoal gray. And every building, boat, bridge and bit of pavement is a shade of gray somewhere in between.

This is how Philadelphia will look on VH1.

But that’s OK, the over-30 music network isn’t here to make a tourism video. The VH1 crew, along with some local help, is setting up shop at Penn’s Landing to shoot a show about the way music affects people’s lives. The stormy weather suits the mood of the project well. Not that it makes their job any easier.

Ondi, the hip, no-nonsense director in her late 20s, and Jeff, the younger, baggy-clothed associate producer in prescription shades, have been on a whirlwind tour across the country, attempting to churn out 13 22-minute episodes in two months. The show is the yet-to-be-debuted Sound Affects, which will mix celebrity interviews, video clips and shots of regular people talking. No host.

Among the regular people gathered here today is another guy named Jeff. He’s a restaurant manager from Lancaster who, a couple of years ago, was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, a disorder that corrupts the way the nerves communicate with the muscles.

During the difficult rehabilitation process, Jeff was helped out by his fiancée, Melinda, and encouraged by Bruce Springsteen’s song "No Surrender." (His story’s actually a lot more complex than that, but VH1 wants to tell it to you.) Melinda is standing here in the rain today, too. The Boss is presumably somewhere across the river, indoors.

Also standing in the rain today: Mark, a WMMR DJ who’s going to talk about Springsteen too; Mark’s son, who keeps wandering too close to the railing at river’s edge; singer/songwriter Amy Carr, who has something to say about Shawn Colvin; Amy’s friends and her twin sister; and a reporter from Philadelphia magazine, the only one who’s dressed appropriately for the weather.

While waiting for everything to get set up, Ondi picks up a hand-held Super 8 and directs Jeff and Melinda to walk hand in hand along the river — first toward the pile of trash bags and Corona boxes on the sidewalk, then away from it. Ondi makes them kiss for the camera. A piece of debris floats by like an extra from Jaws, unseen parts of it hidden beneath the surface of the Delaware.

Mostly, there’s a lot of milling around. A passerby asks if anyone knows where the "Liberty Bell Boat" is. Nobody’s ever heard of it. Somebody opens a fold-up map and tries to help him out.

Finally the two big cameras (one color, one black and white) are set up beneath a poncho in a small huddle facing northeast, the blue-gray Ben Franklin Bridge in the background. Jeff signs a release form under an umbrella, then gets wired for a mike and is told where to stand. He’s just about to start telling his story when Ondi becomes aware of a faint humming in her headphones. One of the local crew members hears it, too. They look around. The hum becomes a rumble.

A minute later, the big Liberty Belle riverboat cruises in slowly and loudly to dock exactly where the shot was going to be. Ondi watches it in silence. Then she whips out the Super 8 to film it.

"Wave," she yells to the three guys on the Belle’s deck, "you’re on VH1." The guys just stare back. They probably didn’t hear her over the engine.

Ondi starts pointing all of the cameras further east and sends VH1 Jeff over to see if the boat can shut off its engines soon. Jeff puts his denim jacket back on and stands with Melinda under an umbrella. Amy and company stand in a huddle around a two-liter bottle of iced tea.

Mark tells me about "Tunnel of Love," a Springsteen song that speaks to him. He interprets and recites it: "You have to learn to live with what you can’t rise above." Twenty minutes earlier I overheard him saying the same thing to the Philly mag reporter. But Mark’s not being insincere or dropping quotes, just practicing for his turn to be interviewed.

"What movie is it?" a passing kid asks.

"We’re doing The Fifth Sense," somebody replies. Ha ha. We’re all slowly freezing to death.

VH1 Jeff comes back with the news: The Belle’s engine will be off in five minutes. A little bit later the news comes that everybody has to be off the boat before the engine can be turned off. If nobody’s on board, who’s left to do the job? In the wild wind and the pissing rain, we find this somewhat funny.

We all sit on the 5-inch curb or lean on the wet railing. VH1 Jeff shows off the watch he bought yesterday in New York. It’s stopped working since then. Occasionally he wanders away to answer the cell phone connected to his ear by a wire from one of his many cargo pockets. One of the local crew members, a self-professed history buff, tells Ondi how her relatives may have been famous outlaws in the New Hope area.

Finally somebody somehow gets the Belle’s engine to shut down and Ondi gets everybody ready to roll. The Spirit of Philadelphia, docked on the right, has, by this time, revved up its own engine. But everyone’s sick of waiting, so Jeff stands in his new spot and starts telling his story. With the Ben Franklin Bridge on the left and the gray fog rolling in from the right, it all looks a little like a San Francisco postcard in Ondi’s black-and-white monitor.