Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: The Unofficial Companion (17 page)

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Authors: Susan Green,Randee Dawn

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Munafo: “I had no luck at bait stores. They’re no smaller than seven inches on the Jersey shore. We need three to four inches. Finally, a pet shop in San Diego had ‘zigzag eels.’ They sent them overnight for $8.95 an eel, plus the $40 shipping cost. I got a fish tank, hoping they would survive over the weekend. I used tweezers to feed them dried blood worms. They grow up to eighteen inches. I hate to see them go after all I went through.”
Peter Leto and season one shirt
TUESDAY, JULY 15
9:50 A.M.
Stabler is interrogating two male suspects who created a faux-rape porn video and simultaneously overlooked a genuine rape-murder happening on the same block. But their video camera may hold a clue.
Outside the interrogation room, director Peter Leto and script supervisor Stephanie Marquardt watch two side-by-side monitors that show similar images of the cast. Writer (and supervising producer) Daniel Truly, in from Los Angeles, keeps an eye on events. By take four, Leto paces up and down a bit, takes a deep breath, sits, and calls out “Action!”
10 A.M.
Dann Florek arrives and hugs Meloni. This is the cast’s first day back on the set after a two-month hiatus. Hargitay shows up and kisses Florek on the cheek. As she starts to rehearse, her two-year-old son August—“Mr. Hermann” is printed on his T-shirt—tugs at her, pleading: “Mama out! Mama out!” (August’s father, Peter Hermann, who recurs as defense attorney Trevor Langan on the show, is married to Hargitay.)
Stephanie Marquardt
Another interrogation scene. This time Vince, a hopped-up addict (young novice actor Dane DeHaan), is the suspect. He’s alone in the room, trying to peer through the one-way mirror.
Vince: “Hello? Someone gonna come talk to me? I can hear you watching me. Yoo-hoo! Come in, Calcutta.”
Cragen (on the other side of the glass): “Where’d this guy beam down from?”
Stabler: “The planet Methamphetamine . . .”
Plaque indicating Capt. Cragen’s promotion
10:25 A.M.
With his nanny nearby, August toddles through the production office while mom’s in front of the camera elsewhere.
10:40 A.M.
Leto points to the bottom of the monitor to show Truly where the annoying network promotions inevitably will be and says, “Next week on NBC!” A final, successful take of Vince’s scene is cheered by Leto: “Cut! Hee-hee-hee!”
11 A.M.
Meloni and Hargitay are guided through the blocking. Leto: “This will be the scene where Warner takes us places.” That means Medical Examiner Dr. Melinda Warner, played by Tamara Tunie, will walk the detectives from one spot to another in the morgue and indicate evidence she has analyzed. All the angles and reaction shots are what take up the time; in the script, it’s only three pages.
11:20 A.M.
Back in the U.S. from his home in France, Richard Belzer (Det. Sgt. John Munch) enters the room and gestures with his hands to encourage applause: “Ladies and gentlemen!” A leash and dog collar dangle around his neck. Bebe, the little poodle-fox terrier mix he adopted from a shelter, trots after him. More hugs among the humans.
Morgue phone—with surprising speed dial names
12:05 P.M.
The make-believe lifeless body of Marga (Kristina Klebe) lies on a slab in the morgue.
12:20 P.M.
After a snack, filming resumes. A juvenile eel—about the size of a garden worm—swims in a plastic Ziploc bag filled with water. Some of us choose to call it Neal, though the writer of this episode, Dan Truly, insists the tiny creature’s name is actually Larry.
Leto (inspecting Neal/Larry): “No animals were hurt in the making of this episode, marine life or otherwise.”
Hargitay: “That’s the eel?”
Tunie: “Imagine how surprised I was.”
Meloni looks at the eel and pretends to vomit. . . . The normally nocturnal Neal fails to move on cue after several takes under bright lights.
Hargitay: “This guy is so fucking tired.”
Leto (suggesting another take): “It’s just for the eel moment.”
When they check out poor Neal, this time around Meloni and Hargitay mime regurgitation in unison . . . After introducing August to Bebe, Belzer asks if the child remembers his name.
August: “Belzer!”
Hargitay (amazed, proud): “He just said, ‘Belzer!’”
1:45 P.M.
Following a lunch break, technical problems cause a delay.
2:10 P.M.
Meloni wanders into the holding room and makes a beeline for fruit on the snack table. “Cherries! All right! Who’s my daddy?”
Stand-ins for Belzer and Ice-T (Rick Johnson and Storm Chambers, respectively) rehearse a sequence involving an evidence bag full of urine. Leto wants it held higher for the camera. “Show me the pee!” he says. “Show me the pee!”
2:25 P.M.
Belzer saunters onto the set again, singing a
West Side Story
tune: “Could it be? Yes, it could. Something’s coming. Something good.”
Suddenly, something’s not so good. He swears. His eyeglasses are broken. The actor tells Leto he could sport sunglasses instead, but crew members provide a fix. Ice-T (Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola) arrives, concentrating on his BlackBerry
.
2:35 P.M.
A tongue-twister requires several attempts by Ice-T, as he grasps that bag of urine. Eventually, the word “epithelials” is changed to “skin cells” and everything flows smoothly.
3:15 P.M.
It’s time for Uncle Ted’s Story Hour, as everyone calls the weekly session when executive producer Ted Kotcheff conducts a read-through of whatever episode is prepping. The title of this one is longtime
SVU
writer Dawn DeNoon’s “Trials,” in part about a hyperactive foster child subjected to experimental drugs, that’s slated to be the season ten opener. A conference room in which the group normally gathers is too close to the set where “Lunacy” is now shooting, so ten people are instead crammed into Kotcheff’s office to avoid noise problems.
David Platt, director (surveying the crowded conditions): “Ten years and this is the best we can do?”
The reading commences. They reach scene twelve, two pages in which Cragen, Munch, and Fin walk down an SVU corridor with their suspects.
Kotcheff: “That scene is way too long.”
Platt: “We don’t have enough hallway.”
Producer David DeClerque suggests that the transition from a hospital back to the SVU is too abrupt, but Kotcheff says he’s not bothered by the pace.
DeClerque: “If Ted Kotcheff thinks there’s no problem, there’s no problem. I agree with you completely, Ted.” Everyone laughs.
Belzer pops in to say hello, then offers an idea for his conspiracy-obsessed character: “A can of soup falls on Munch’s head in a bodega and he wakes up in Paris. No! It’s black-and-white. November 22, 1963. And he’s a Dallas cop.”
The character’s squad room desk is decorated with several mementoes of John F. Kennedy, including a vinyl record album of highlights from the assassinated president’s speeches.
3:20 P.M
.
Leto cradles Bebe in his arms while directing a rehearsal.
5:10 P.M
.
The morgue, again, for various reaction shots. The scene concludes after much eel-wrangling. “It proved more slippery than expected,” Truly quips.
(Days later, Tamara Tunie confides: “It was was so funny because we walked past a sushi place last night. I was like ‘Eel. Hmm. Yummy.’”)
6:25 P.M
.
A scene from “Lunacy,” with Benson interrogating the suspect named Rosie who was discovered making rape-porn videos.
Leto: “Is this the line when they ululate?”
Hargitay: “Is that when they ovulate? Maybe in a week.”
The merriment ends when another take begins.
Rosie: “Wanna hear me ululate?” Without waiting for an answer, she does.
Benson: “I wanna hear how you can sleep at night making anti-Muslim rape porn.”
7 P.M.
Fatigue is setting in, but the interrogation continues. In the script, Rosie’s comment about her erotic entertainment empowering women provokes Benson to snap back with, “Being raped is empowering? On what planet?”
Hargitay: “This line is not ringing true for me. I can feel it right here (indicating her gut). That’s my button, my empathy, my passion. It’s not a fucking joke to me.”
Truly: “Try saying, ‘You are an idiot.’”
Hargitay: “That might work.”
WEDNESDAY, JULY 16
7:30 A.M.
The day begins for cast and crew with a seminar on sexual harassment, as well as race and gender issues.
The authors have decided to skip this early morning session. Too bad, as it turns out.
Mike Ciliento, the office production coordinator, later reports that the otherwise serious discussion was illustrated with clips from NBC shows
The Office
and
30 Rock
. A spoonful of television sugar apparently helps the medicine go down.

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