The legend grows as pileups continue

Volume Number 1 Issue Number 7 / November 10 - 16, 2006

Chelsea Now photos by Ara Chekmayan

Filming for the new Will Smith movie “I Am Legend” continues to cut a swath of pseudo-destruction through Lower Manhattan. After wrapping up a lengthy three weeks of disruptive filming in Washington Square Park — complete with nighttime explosions, bright lights, toxic smoke and pileups of bombed-out cars — the movie crew was next spotted shooting on Saturday at W. 28th St. and Fifth Ave. A fire engine with a sawed-off front was made to appear as if it had been blasted by force of some explosion several feet down into the street, with a few police cars and ambulances thrown into a pileup with it for good measure. Will Smith’s double drove around in a red sports car, with a German shepherd dog head prop in the passenger seat sitting in for Smith’s canine sidekick. According to The New York Times, a set of Washington Square Park is being built for the movie in the Eighth Coastal Artillery Armory in the Bronx. “Much of [the movie] will be shot inside the armory over the next several months,” the Times reported, to the relief of Villagers. The movie is a remake of “Omega Man,” about the last man left alive after a devastating plague.