A few weeks ago, my Frigidaire appliances showed up: a refrigerator, dishwasher, stove, and microwave (the washer and dryer are coming later).  If you’re picturing a couple of guys, a handtruck, and 15 minutes to set up and clean up (like I was), you’re in for a surprise (like I was).  Five guys descended on my house and took over.  They were fantastic.  They weren’t ordinary appliance delivery guys, they were event staging guys.  If you’ve ever seen Kelly Ripa standing in the middle of Central Park in a full kitchen, chances are good that these are the guys who got the kitchen there.  Still, my little brownstone probably challenged them in ways that the Javits Center would not.

Getting things into and out of brownstones is never easy: the entrances are small, there’s usually a tight turn right after you get in the door, and the staircases are narrow.  The guys were thrilled that these were going on the ground floor, but they still had to get them inside.  I’m not sure how they did it, especially with the fridge.  I couldn’t watch.  But somehow they did get everything in, and then they got to work installing.  The microwave worried me a little, as it’s basically hanging on the other side of my neighbor’s brick living room wall.  But they got everything set and were on their way, a short five hours later.

At long last, a dishwasher!

Once they had cleared out, I knew exactly what I was going to do first: run the dishwasher.  It’s been three-and-a-half years since I’ve had a dishwasher.  The funny thing was, I’d grown up without one, and only had one in the condo we lived in from 2002-2006.  But once you get used to a dishwasher, it’s really tough going back to handwashing.  It just takes so much time!  During the really intense part of the renovation we used paper and plastic everything.  I was actually a little sad when the plastic tarps came down after about six months, because with them went my excuse for paper plates, and I had to start washing actual dishes.  I became maniacal in watching over how many dishes were used.  If something was cooked in a pot it was served in that pot.  If a drink came in a can it was drunk in that can.  Soup, spaghetti, and cereal were the only foods I didn’t consider finger foods.  I tried as hard as I could to end up with as few dishes in the sink as possible, but still I spent about 90 minutes every single day washing dishes.  And if we had people over?  Forget about it.

I had The Ass bring down all of the dusty boxes of kitchen items that I hadn’t seen in years: the “good” plates (meaning you wouldn’t bring them on a picnic), actual glass glasses, serving items.  Everything had to be washed, absolutely everything.  It had all been in boxes since we’d moved in years ago, packed by sweaty guys who may or may not have washed their hands that day.  He then went into the next room to let me do my thing, but stayed close enough to make sure I actually did it.  He knows me too well: if left totally on my own I would ignore the big picture, and spend the entire evening organizing the spice jars, or labeling everything, or counting the silverware to discover that we’re missing two forks, a knife, and a spoon.  But I was working hard getting our kitchen set up.

After about an hour, he tiptoed and surveyed the mess.  He asked if there was anything he could do to help.  “No, I’ve got it.”  “Are you sure?  I could at least run some dishes through a light cycle to get the dust off.”  Well, score one for the new Frigidaire dishwasher, because it had been on and running for an hour, and he hadn’t even heard it!  I think that’s the best compliment someone can give a dishwasher: I didn’t know it was on.

So, just having my new Frigidaire dishwasher has given me back at least an hour every day, probably more.  I no longer dread clean up, I no longer let the dishes pile up because I can’t stand the thought of washing each one individually.  It’s been heaven.

I wrote this review while participating in a Test Drive Campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Frigidaire and received a Frigidaire Refrigerator, Range/Microwave, Washer/Dryer set, and a Dishwasher to facilitate my review.

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 2. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information. Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, and the NYC Moms Blog.

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted.  Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information. Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, and the NYC Moms Blog.

I’ve been part of the Your Shape Challenge for the past eight weeks, and while I’ve mentioned the game a lot and talked about a few different aspects of it, I haven’t really done a full review, so the people running the challenge have asked me to do one.

First of all, I should mention that since the challenge started, I’ve lost ten pounds.  At this point that’s two pounds more than my goal, which was to lose one pound a week.  And of course I can’t attribute all that to the  Your Shape game – I’ve been eating 1,500 calories or less whenever I can manage it (I’d say that was roughly five out of the eight weeks), drinking more non-carbonated liquids (that would be watered-down Crystal Light, averaging about 24 ounces a day) and just generally trying to be more active.  But on top of that, I’ve been exercising with Your Shape two or three times a week (except during those three weeks when I wasn’t eating well – see how that works?!?).  I feel stronger, and with the weather getting warmer I’m also going to incorporate some jogging into my routine in addition to Your Shape.  All of those things together have combined into a pretty smooth and painless ten pound loss.  I haven’t done anything at all drastic, I haven’t been at all miserable, and I’m fitting very comfortably into my size 14 pants – a couple of them are even too big.  That’s been the great thing about this challenge: the people running it never said “Go use the Your Shape game twelve times a week and then tell us how much weight you’ve lost.”  They understand that it’s part of some over-all changes that are helpful for losing weight.

The Your Shape Game

So, the game itself: to recap, there’s a little camera that sits either on top or at the bottom of your TV and connects to your Wii, and that camera shows you onscreen in the Your Shape game.  You’re on the right side of the screen, and a Jenny McCarthy avatar is on left, talking to you and showing you what to do.  The goal is to mimic what she’s doing.  It’s not a good idea to stare at yourself in the game for two reasons: #1, there’s a tiny bit of lag between what you’re doing and what you see on the screen, which will mess you up.  And #2, you’ve really got to watch Jenny.  So why have the camera at all?  That also has two reasons: #1, you can see if you’re doing what you should be doing: getting your legs up high enough, getting your arms straight enough, etc.  In fact, I discovered pretty early on that if I thought my arms were straight out, they were actually hanging down a surprising amount.

Reason #2 for the camera is the whole point of this game: it tells you how well you’re keeping up with Jenny, and  you don’t have to hold anything or strap anything to your body.  The camera just reads it.  It took me a few tries to get it positioned right.  I started out with it at the top of my TV, and that was no good – it was telling me that I was only doing the exercises about 50% right, and I knew I was doing better than that.  Then I moved it below the TV, and it got a lot more accurate.  Finally I got it positioned just right at the very front of my TV shelf, and it reads me really really well – I’m consistently between 80 and 90%.  If it’s telling me that I’m doing an exercise 85% right and I concentrate on getting my arms up a little higher, I watch the % tick up a few numbers.  If I try to slack off a little, I get almost instant feedback telling me that I need to focus.  It’s like having an aerobics instructor in front of you, except you don’t have to put on a perky spandex outfit and leave your house.

The one thing that the camera doesn’t read so well is the floor exercise portion.  My % score usually drops by about ten as soon as the workout moves to the floor.  But, like that five pound weight gain that I get every single month when I have my period, I just expect it and ignore it.  The other problem with the floor exercises is that often you’re supposed to have your head down, or even turned away from the TV, and Jenny does not do a good job telling you that you need to change sides or do the next rep.  For the next version of the game I think the designers really need to focus on those exercises that need more audio cues, and have Jenny count you down and tell you to change sides and all that, every time.  This is never a problem with the standing exercises though, only the floor exercises.

My favorite part of the whole thing is that you get to choose which muscle group you really want to work on, and then get to further choose between burn, strengthen, or tone.  I mean, all of your muscles are going to get some kind of work out, but if you choose abs, expect a lot of crunches and double leg lifts.  If you choose legs, you get less floor work and more jumping.  And if you own hand weights, a balance ball, or an aerobic stepper platform, the game will incorporate those into your routine as well.  Whatever I choose, there’s good variety and after eight weeks I’m not at all tired of the exercises.  There are muscle groups I’ve never chosen, so I’m sure there are a lot more exercises for me to explore.

The workouts that I’m getting are intense.  I almost always do a 30 minute routine, and the first 20 minutes just kill me – constant movement.  After that it slows down a bit, with some floor work and more breaks.  At the end I’m always sweaty, a little out of breath, and tired – just what I want from a workout.  I never felt that tired after a workout DVD, and I realize now it’s because I wasn’t pushing myself hard enough.  It’s so easy to slack of when nobody’s telling you that you are.  As hard as I’m working, though, one small thing on the game that just seems wrong is the calorie counter.  It will tell you how many calories you’ve burned, but it will lie.  Monday, for example, I did a 30 minute burn routine focusing on legs.  It was intense, and I absolutely got a great workout.  But there’s no way that I burned over 600 calories in 30 minutes.  I would only burn half of that jogging.  So until they fix that equation, ignore it.

There are other parts of the game that I don’t really use.  For example, there are challenges that can get you ready for a bathing suit, a New Year’s resolution plan, and a de-stressing challenge that’s basically yoga.  My daughter loves to do that one.  I set her up with her own profile so that she would stop messing with mine, and she’ll do yoga for an hour at a time.

To sum up, I would definitely recommend this game for anyone wanting a tiring routine with lots of variety.  You’ve got the freedom to move around without holding a controller, and the added motivation of seeing yourself on camera.  It’s helped me get stronger and smaller during the coldest part of winter, a time when I usually wouldn’t be getting any purposeful exercise at all.

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has Compensation Levels of 1 & 8. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information. Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, and the NYC Moms Blog.

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has Compensation Levels of 1 & 7. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.  Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, and the NYC Moms Blog.

XBox has been a big part of my life for years.  We started out with an original XBox – it was actually our very first DVD player!  When the XBox 360 came out, I got my husband one for Christmas, then an XBox Live membership, and as a reward got to sit next to him on the couch as he talked into a little microphone strapped to his head.  I amused myself by telling him that yes, I would like fries with that.

Once Jake was old enough to hold a video game controller – a day I think my husband had been waiting for since our firstborn had emerged from my womb, pointy-headed and be-penised – the two of them would sit on the couch together, shooting two-dimensional people and blowing things up and driving fast in cars to get to other places to blow other things up.  Sometimes it’s a plane.  Sometimes there are soldiers, sometimes girls in bathing suits.  I think I might be talking about more than one game here, but they all look basically the same to me.  When Jake and Daddy play XBox together, Fiona and I exchange a look that says it all: we don’t get it, and we don’t want to.

But then Rock Band came out, and suddenly I had a use for the XBox.  Fiona, who was born singing, grabbed the mic immediately (she had always been a loud child and definitely didn’t need amplification, so we learned quickly how to turn off the mic’s sound and still have it register in the game).  We discovered that Jake actually had a talent for drums, complete with rock-star like tantrums when he can’t master a section of a song (seriously, he’s throwing his sticks at a fifth-grade level).  The Ass showed his inner Hendrix on guitar.  And then there was me, all thumbs, stuck in the back playing bass: our little band’s very own Mike Huckabee, playing the same few notes over and over again, knowing I would never be as cool as the rest of the band.

Well, eventually I got better.  Actually at this point I kind-of kick ass at Rock Band, on bass and guitar (but no drums, it’s truly embarrassing how uncoordinated I am).  And thanks to the good people at XBox we’ve got more family games to play together, like Sing It and Scene It, and an XBox Elite to play them on.  We’ve moved beyond just gaming with our XBoxes, using them to watch Hulu and Netflix and stream music from our computers.  Someday I expect them to cook me breakfast.

XBox Live Giveaway – enter by March 8th

XBox Live is running a fantastic giveaway, the XBox Live Just Press Play giveaway, but you have to hurry: entries will be accepted until a minute before midnight on March 8th.  And you want to enter, because here’s the prize:

• a $2,500 gift certificate to Crate & Barrel
• an XBox 360 Elite
• a 47 inch LG HDTV
• a Bose speaker system
• an XBox 360 game pack
• a Netflix account
• 4,000 Microsoft points
• some wireless stuff to help you get everything set up and play wirelessly

It’s all worth about $5,000.  That’s right, $5,000.  You can register here, and good luck!

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has Compensation Levels of 1 & 8. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.  Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, and the NYC Moms Blog.

But I digress.  (Sorry, I watch way too much TV, and even when I’m not watching it I think about it more than a healthy amount.)  Chandra Wilson is facing a lot of the same issues that us non-Hollywood moms are facing, and I got a chance to talk to her about it in a recent phone/video interview.  We also talked about a great charity she’s been working with, the Downy Touch of Comfort Program.  Please check it out, it’s a really sweet idea.  I know that giant charities do a lot of good and are very needed, but I tend to give to programs where I can draw a direct line between what I’m doing and giving, and the person benefiting.  You can see Chandra here, visiting a hospital for the program.

My phone rang for the interview about twenty minutes earlier than I was expecting, and as much as I wanted to accommodate Chandra at that moment I was right in the middle of cooking breakfast for the kids, and knew that I couldn’t do both. So I nicely asked if the producer could call back at the scheduled time, so that I could give it my full attention. Chandra’s got kids, I was sure she’d understand.

So thanks so much to Chandra Wilson for the fun conversation, and to Downy for participating in this worthwhile program.

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted.  Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

Anyway, I’ve been blogging for a little while now, on other people’s sites and my own.  And not a day goes by when I’m not tempted to write about blogging.  I do it every once in a while, but honestly I didn’t think it ever fit with the rest of the blog.  And tracking my statistics I’ve noticed that I bring in a completely different audience whenever I write about blogging, one that I don’t generally see again until I write something else about blogging.

Last night (or rather, early this morning) I started a kind of sub-blog of Selfish Mom’s, called Behind the Screen, where I’ll be writing about blogging.  It has lots in common with Selfish Mom – graphics, disclosure and about pages, advertising (for now, at least) – but has its own separate sign in and RSS feed.  I hope to have lots of guest posters, and develop interesting discussions about the ins-and-outs and backstage stuff having to do with blogging.  I may occasionally run giveaways there where the prize pertains more to bloggers than the general population.

I won’t be doing too much cross-promotion between the sites.  Please check it out, and sign up for the RSS feed if you’re interested.  And if you have an issue you’d like me to tackle, or if you’d like to post about it yourself, please send me an email at Amy@selfishmom.com.  And now, back to talking about my kids…

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted.  Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

And when you start talking about BMI for kids, it gets more complicated, because a BMI that’s considered OK for a ten-year-old is obese for a seven-year-old.  I don’t think using BMI to track kids’ health is a good idea at all.  (However, unlike most of the commenters on the ABC piece, I don’t think trying to improve kids’ health is a commie-liberal-big brother idea either – those commenters get paranoid and nutty pretty fast.)  [Please note: the comments link has been working on and off all day; the link is correct, it's a problem with ABCNews.com.]  Whether a kid is healthy or not is complicated.  My son was in the top 5% on the BMI charts for a seven-year-old when he was seven, which is what triggered the note home.  The problem is that the kids’ charts compare kids by age.  My son was towering over the other kids in his class, so the comparison was completely out of whack.  The charts allow for the fact the older kids are supposed to have a higher BMI, but not for kids who are very tall for their age.

It’s just one of those things where a number or a label without information is useless.  I knew the assessment was ridiculous, but had to actually look up the info and explain the BMI-by-age concept to The Ass to talk him down after he saw the letter.  He’s not a stupid guy.  He’s actually quite smart, smarter than me in many ways.  But the government told him his son was obese and he took them at their word.  That’s a problem on many levels.

What’s the answer?  I have no clue.  I’m lucky that I have one kid who chooses to eat like a health nut and another who is active enough that he burns off the huge amount of carbs that he consumes.  If one of them had a health problem I would expect my doctor to talk to me about it.  He’s got all of my kids’ information right there in front of him, and even more important, he’s got my kids right in front of him.  Does he need the government’s guidance talking to me about my kids’ weights?  I don’t think so, but if they’re going to tell him anything, I’d rather it be something useful, like whether or not my kids can run and play with their classmates and how they do on fitness tests.  What their blood tests should look like.  And yes, whether their measurements are in a safe range, based on many factors.  Using one number to target kids will include kids who don’t need the intervention and exclude kids who actually need the help.

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted.  Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

The Reluctant Daddy

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted.  Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted.  Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

But my love for my websites was apparently greater than my fear of food poisoning, because I managed to snag a reservation one of the nights they were shooting and convinced The Ass to go with me.  I was hoping to write it all up for Filming In Brooklyn, but of course the production made me sign so many papers I decided in the end it wouldn’t be worth the headache and kept quiet (online, anyway) about our little adventure.  So, basically, we paid a babysitter to watch our kids while we paid to go eat in a restaurant that we knew to be so incredibly bad it had made it onto Kitchen Nightmares.  We did this willingly, enthusiastically even.

If you ever get a chance to eat during the filming of one of these shows, you want to do it on the last night – after Chef Gordon Ramsay has worked his magic and brought the restaurant around.  We were definitely not there after the make-over.  The food was pretty bad.  But of course, we weren’t there for the food.  We were there to see the show get produced, maybe hear a few expletives straight from Ramsay’s mouth, and perhaps even get on TV.

We were seated against the back wall of the restaurant, which gave me a good view of everything that was going on, and gave The Ass a great view of the back wall and the giant boom mic that would occasionally hover over my head.  I would know it was there because we’d be talking about something personal – the kids, gossip, it was a date after all! – and all of a sudden The Ass would ask me how my food was, out of nowhere.  That was the only way I knew we were on camera – the cameras were zooming in on us from across the room.

The cameras got close to us only when I sent something back.  Sending something back is something that I hardly ever do.  I mean, something has to be just downright awful, or simply the wrong order, for me to send it back.  I’m more likely to leave hungry and never ever return.  But we had been told on the way in that if we didn’t like something, we should let a producer know.  I let the producer know that my rice and beans were pretty gross (come on, how do you mess up rice and beans?), and I would absolutely not say that I was pushed to send them back, but I was encouraged.  Or rather, the producer looked so hopeful that I would send it back that I just couldn’t let her down.  So I sent it back, and got something new, and that was that.  The rest of the meal wasn’t great, but wasn’t worth sending back either.

The whole time we were there, we didn’t hear any shouting, didn’t see any drama, didn’t get to watch Chef Ramsay foam at the mouth.  No staff members fled in tears.  All in all, kind-of a let down.  Chef Ramsay did wander through the dining room a couple of times but never came to our table.  This was his night to observe, to see how the staff and owners do on their own before getting his help.  No fireworks.

The episode finally aired this week (you can watch the Mojito episode of Kitchen Nightmares here) and while we don’t appear in it for even a split second, it’s a good episode, you should watch.  It’s fun seeing how shows are made (and I really wish I could find a way to resurrect Filming in Brooklyn without giving up on sleep entirely), so if the show comes to your town you should try to get in.  But remember, if you actually want good food, try to get a reservation for the last day!

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

The Challenges

So I completely killed the week five challenge for the Your Shape challenge that I’m participating in.  The ten participants get weekly challenges, like drink more water (which I did OK at, not great) or walk 10,000 steps a day (which was easy when I was at home, not so much when I was sitting my ass in sessions at the Blissdom conference).  But week five I was awesome on.  OK, I really didn’t do anything special at all, it’s just that the challenge was to get outside every day, getting some kind of exercise, even if it was only for ten minutes.  And it was the week that I was at Disney World.  I walked miles and miles around the parks every day.  If that challenge had happened last week, though, I would have totally lost.  My family was out of town and I didn’t leave my house for four solid days.  I would make an awesome hermit.  That is, as long as I had access to the internet and could have things delivered to me.

Anyway, the week six challenge was to be innovative with healthy snacking.  Each participant was given a Wal-Mart gift certificate to buy food to make the snacks.  Only problem was, there’s no Wal-Mart anywhere near me, and they don’t sell food online.  So, instead, I tried to stick to the spirit of the challenge, and I bought a few things that would help me to eat at home more.  When I go out to eat, I tend to go a little crazy.  It’s not that the food I’m eating is necessarily all that terrible, it’s just that I have no way of knowing the calorie content.  So, I usually say “screw it” and eat whatever.  Therefore, the more I eat at home, the more likely I am to eat less and better.  So, I bought three things to help me cook at home more, stuff that I love to get at restaurants.  That way, I can control what goes into it and know exactly how many calories I’m eating.

I love getting sandwiches in restaurants, they’re just fancier than what I make.  So I bought a cast-iron panini press.  I love getting nice, creamy soups in restaurants, and I like to make homemade soup but I hate cleaning my blender, so I bought an immersion blender.  And last, my kids – Jake especially – are always dragging me to the coffee shop for Belgian waffles, so I bought a waffle iron.  Besides eating better, I’m hoping I’ll save a little money too!

The Giveaway

What I love about the Your Shape Challenge is that it involves more than just the game.  Drinking more water, walking more, these things all contribute to healthy living and weight loss.  But the heart of the challenge, of course, is the Your Shape game for the Wii.  And I get to give one away! (Sorry, Wii not included.)

All you have to do to enter is leave a comment stating what you weight loss or health goal is: lose ten pounds, be able to do a pull-up, walk up stairs without getting winded, etc.  For a second entry, you can tweet about this giveaway (don’t forget to leave a separate comment linking to your tweet or it won’t count; instructions on how to link to your tweet can be found here). Just make sure to mention what the prize is and link back to this post, or you can just copy and tweet this:

Win a #YourShape exercise game for Wii from @SelfishMom! http://bit.ly/9se1iF

So, that’s a maximum of two entries per household, please. The comments will close at noon-ish on Friday, February 26th and random.org will draw the winner. Contest open to residents of the U.S., and shipping is available in the continental U.S. only. Entrants must be 18 years or older.  For complete rules, please see my Giveaway Rules page.

Good luck!

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has Compensation Levels of 1 and 10. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

Disclosure: I wrote this review while participating in a Test Drive Campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Frigidaire and received a Frigidaire Refrigerator, Range/Microwave, Washer/Dryer set, and a Dishwasher to facilitate my review.

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 1. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

This post first appeared on July 7th, 2008.

***

Director Antoine Fuqua didn’t grow up in Brooklyn. And he didn’t grow up in South Central L.A., where his other cop drama, Training Day, takes place. He grew up in Pittsburgh, and got his first taste of filming when a TV production moved into his neighborhood. According to Brooklyn’s Finest producer John Thompson, Mr. Fuqua went to the set every day, hanging around and figuring out what the different jobs were, and how things were done. He said to himself, I could do that.

Four teenagers from the Brownsville neighborhood where much of Brooklyn’s Finest is being shot are getting a similar chance to learn about filmmaking, but they’re not just hanging around the set: they’re actually being mentored by Mr. Fuqua. Mr. Fuqua chose four kids, based on their essays, to participate in the Fuqua Youth Film Program. They received high-tech camera equipment and instruction on how to use it, and were given assignments to complete. They got to meet with Ethan Hawke and Mr. Fuqua, and have been on the set learning how movies get made.

Below are three of the four participants in the Fuqua Youth Film Program. Shown L-R: Bryan Martin, Ethan Hawke, Lea-Sym Feyjoo, Antoine Fuqua, and Terrell Brown (not pictured: Marcus Underwood). [Photo credit: Phil Caruso]

Everyone Filming In Brooklyn spoke with was really excited about this program. They all wanted to give something back to the community that has embraced this production.

Mr. Fuqua was especially enthusiastic about giving back to the community, and about the importance of filming this movie in Brooklyn. Mr. Fuqua was able to take a few minutes during a break in shooting and speak with Filming In Brooklyn.

FIB: You could build a bodega set, and you could build a small apartment on a soundstage, and have complete control of the environment. Why was it so important for you to get into the actual spaces?

Antoine Fuqua: Well, it’s the details. You can’t build the details. You can try but you can’t really capture the details of the people, of the energy…It affects how I film, it affects the actors’ behavior, when you’re in the real environment, when you really can interact with the people who live here, it makes a big difference in what comes off emotionally on the screen.

FIB: And do you find that the crowds that gather to watch you, are they ever a distraction, or do they really just juice everybody up?

Antoine Fuqua: I mean they’re both, honestly, they’re both. They’re a good distraction. They’re always going to be a distraction because there’s some people who you’re getting in the way of their everyday life, and that’s to be expected. They’re just trying to go to work, or take care of their business. And we’re really in the way. But they juice everybody up because the majority of the people so far have been amazing. They’ve just been helpful and excited about it, you know, really cheering us on out here. And I’ve had a lot of guys come up to me and say, keep doing what you’re doing, thank you for shooting here, really appreciative. So, it’s been great.

FIB: The four teens that you gave the cameras to, are you going to follow that long-term? Are you going to see what they’re doing with those down the road?

Antoine Fuqua: Yeah, we’ll follow them long-term, absolutely. I mean, I did the same thing in the jungle, in South Central [L.A.] when I did Training Day. I took some guys with me and one of them went on and did the documentary Bastards of the Party, it was on HBO that I produced, and a few others been in a couple movies, so I always follow through with these guys. I like to stay in touch, see how they do. That’s part of the reason I’m here is to hopefully inspire other young people who don’t get to see it that often. Maybe they could find a love of filmmaking.

FIB: You’ve said about Training Day that L.A. was a character in the movie. Do you feel the same the way about Brooklyn?

Antoine Fuqua: One-hundred percent.

FIB: Could this have been done anywhere else?

Antoine Fuqua: No. Trust me, I’ve had financiers say, well, could you shoot it in Detroit? Or could you shoot it in Canada? I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t have done the movie. I would not have done the movie.

[At this point in the interview, Mr. Fuqua had to pause, because all sorts of commotion had broken out next to us, at the red light. A car was blaring hip-hop music, and as soon as the light turned green and that sound faded, it was replaced by an angry driver swearing and honking his horn repeatedly, trying to move along the drivers who had slowed down to see what all the people and lights and cameras were doing there under the El tracks.]

Antoine Fuqua: See? You can’t- You can’t get that in- This is Brooklyn. Brooklyn style.

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

Disclosure: I wrote this review while participating in a Test Drive Campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Frigidaire and received a Frigidaire Refrigerator, Range/Microwave, Washer/Dryer set, and a Dishwasher to facilitate my review.

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 1. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.