"Sex and the City" filming is spectacle in N.Y

By Randee Dawn

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - "Sex and the City" opens in theaters on May 30, but hundreds of thousands of fans have already been watching the movie piecemeal for months.

The big-screen adaptation of the HBO comedy smash started shooting on the streets of New York last September, creating Beatlemania-style pandemonium.

As soon as the four stars -- Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon -- started a-strutting, the paparazzi came a-shooting and fans came armed with video and digital cameras a-rolling.

The only ones keeping any of them in check were a few production assistants, two policemen and an assistant director who earned the moniker "Bullhorn Betty" by climbing aboard a 10-foot ladder and shouting through a megaphone when to keep back, keep quiet and keep out.

In retrospect, it's quite funny, says writer-producer-director Michael Patrick King.

"The very first day, word got out and people started coming. Then, the Daily News started putting our production locations in the paper. Every time I had to give a note, I had to weave my way through the crowds."

It didn't stop there, because many of those same people uploaded their shots to Flickr and YouTube, while the tabloid newsmagazine shows were sharing their own footage.

"I would see a scene on 'Access Hollywood' before I saw dailies!" King says. "It literally was a three-ring circus, every day."

During its run on cable, "Sex and the City" put a glamorous patina on a city that had reinvented itself after decades of neglect, showing off its rapidly gentrifying districts through a scrim of cosmopolitans, five-inch designer heels and independent women on the search for like-minded (or at least hot-bodied) mates. New York City has never lacked character, but the glossy hyperreality of the show made the attractive, seductive old girl actually feel approachable.

"The city is a big fan of the work we did (on the series) and the amount of attention and tourism it brought," says King, who executive produced, wrote and directed for the series (at least a dozen crew members from the HBO show returned to their positions for the film). "The amount of girls coming to New York to have a $17 cosmo -- everybody benefited in a great way by the series," King says.

The city, for its part, was happy to oblige: "If we can do our part to marry entertainment and tourism, and bring more people here to visit our great city, that's added value in terms of economic impact on New York," says Katherine Oliver, commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting.

Still, when the series finally ended in 2004, buzz about a feature film died quickly and the concept went dormant until spring 2006, when Parker began talking to HBO higher-ups about getting the motor running again. It wasn't easy -- things were "completely over," according to Parker, when former HBO chairman and CEO Chris Albrecht, an early shepherd of the feature, left under a cloud last May.

By the time everything was in place, however, suddenly everything had to be done yesterday. The entire shoot lasted 69 days and wrapped on January 15, using Silvercup Studios for most of the interiors, just as the series had.

"It was the quickest a movie has been made in my lifetime," says producer John Melfi. "To start a movie and shoot it in the same year -- we didn't have a script until May and we were in production in June. Unheard of."

Obstacles seemed to melt away when "Sex and the City" needed anything. When the script called for scenes shot at the Bryant Park-based Fashion Week, which is sponsored by Mercedes-Benz, Fashion Week had not yet begun. So in exchange for promotional placement, Mercedes-Benz erected and then deconstructed its branded tents for the shoot -- saving the film hundreds of thousands of dollars.